Melville House Books

Literary history

• Put Down Old People at Birth, and other writings discovered in the Scarfolk archive

  Anyone who, like me, grew up in the North West of England will tell you that a childhood spent in Northern suburbia was a spooky one: eerie, identical streets, weird… Read more »

• In defense of Stephen Joyce

  In an essay at the Smart Set, Jessa Crispin defends James Joyce’s hated literary executor, grandson Stephen Joyce, who has for years complicated scholarly access to papers and permissions to… Read more »

• And then all the unmentioned Brooklyn authors bawled in their beers

  Wait a second. Wait. Drop everything. Hold on. Sit down. Are you sitting down? Are you holding on? Wait. Have you dropped everything? Drop it. Except for your socks. Hold… 1 / Read more »

• The Golden Gate Bridge: 75 years in literature

  This coming Sunday San Francisco marks The Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th birthday with a series of tributes, festivals, and readings. The suspension bridge is known across the globe for its grand towers… 1 / Read more »

• Melville House Recycling: What Bolaño Read

  This is the tenth installment in the two-week series “What Bolaño Read” by former Shaman Drum Bookstore manager Tom McCartan. The series celebrates the publication of Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview… Read more »

• Hail & Farewell: The Encyclopaedia Britannica

  One of the greatest ongoing publications in publishing history is coming to an end: The publishers of the fabled Encyclopaedia Brittannica announced late yesterday that, after 244 years, they are… 2 / Read more »

• SLIDE SHOW: Famous writers’ stationary

  For those of us interested in the evolution of the written word (and who also enjoy rifling through celebrities’ personal effects), Retronaut has posted a series of letterheads from famous… Read more »

• Why don’t serious novelists write about finance?

  Writing in the Financial Times, John Lanchester—the author of the novel Capital—asks why it is that so few novelists and poets tackle banking and finance: You can assemble an entire… 10 / Read more »

• When de Maupassant met Swinburne

  At the wonderful Public Domain Review, Julian Barnes tells the story of when Guy de Maupassant met Algernon Swinburne, over lunch at the Normandy home of a man Swinburne was visiting… Read more »

• New book says Nixon was just collateral damage for an ambitious Deep Throat

  Jack Shafer has high praise for a new book about Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate reporting and their most famous source, W. Mark Felt. The book is Leak: Why… Read more »