Sylvia Beach

by Elyse Graham During the nineteen-twenties, the literary capital of the United States was a bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris, on an alleyway off the Boulevard St. Germain. The store was called Shakespeare and Company; out front hung a shingle bearing a portrait of the Bard. The front windows displayed rows of covers… Continue Reading Sylvia Beach

The Craft of Fiction

by Michaela Bronstein Percy Lubbock’s 1921 volume was one of the first major works of literary criticism to focus on the novel as a form. Literary criticism itself was in its infancy, but more importantly the novel seemed a less notable subject for criticism at the time than poetry and drama. Lubbock’s book is not… Continue Reading The Craft of Fiction

Mina Loy

by Christina Walter “Feminist Manifesto” is a polemic against women’s subordinate position in modern Western culture, penned in 1914 by Anglo-American writer and painter Mina Loy, who was then living in an expatriate community in Florence, Italy. This polemic, unpublished in Loy’s lifetime, is one of her earliest prose works and offers a rather violent… Continue Reading Mina Loy

Lulu

by Qingyuan Jiang Lulu is a five-act play written by German playwright Frank Wedekind (1864—1918). Early critics considered it to be “the climax of Wedekind’s artistic creativity” and “the most significant of the author’s works,” and such positive opinions have prevailed in the critical literature since that time.[1] The Lulu Play(s) According to Alan Best,… Continue Reading Lulu

Spring Awakening

by Monika Grzesiak Spring Awakening is a play written in 1891 by Frank Wedekind (1864-1918), a German playwright.[1] The work depicts schoolchildren in a German provincial town in the 1890s whose struggle to reconcile their budding sexual feelings and the moral code of their society leads them to tragedy. Biography of Frank Wedekind Frank Wedekind… Continue Reading Spring Awakening

Science as a Vocation

by Mariel Osetinsky Max Weber was a German sociologist, economist, and politician of the 19th and early 20th century. Although his passions were varied, Weber achieved a phenomenal level of influence in every area of work in which he became involved. He served in a number of positions, including hospital orderly in World War I… Continue Reading Science as a Vocation

Politics as a Vocation

by Brad Rathe In the late teens of the twentieth century, Max Weber, a sociologist and highly respected intellectual, gave a series of two lectures by invitation at the University of Munich.[1] These lectures cover the topics of, first “Science as a Vocation” (in November 1917) and then “Politics as a Vocation” (in January 1919).[2]… Continue Reading Politics as a Vocation

Poems and Last Poems (Edward Thomas)

by Emily Cersonsky Though an active literary critic for most of his life, Edward Thomas did not write his first poem until late in 1914, and proceeded to produce his entire oeuvre (over 100 poems, most published posthumously in the collections Poems and Last Poems) before his death in 1917 at the Battle of Arras.… Continue Reading Poems and Last Poems (Edward Thomas)