Essays

Essays

The Unfolding of Time in Paint

My encounters with Joan Mitchell's panels
Rachel Cohen
Sepia toned photograph showing painter Joan Mitchell behind a canvas in her studio
Memoir

The Talented Ms. Highsmith

I worked for the novelist in her final months. I thought she wanted to kill me.
Elena Gosalvez Blanco
A Closer Read

Taking Offense

Reading through bad feeling
Garth Greenwell
Essays

How Mrs. Dalloway Began

Slipping into Virginia Woolf’s sentences
Edmund de Waal
Essays

When Does a Divorce Begin?

Most people think of it as failure. For me it was an achievement.
Anahid Nersessian
Dan Fox as a child with his nain, or grandmother, in the chicken-filled yard of Siambr Wen, near Llanrwst, North Wales, UK
Essays

What Happened When I Began to Speak Welsh

By learning my family's language, I hoped to join their conversation.
Dan Fox

Browse

Essays

From the Archives

The Novels of Turgenev

Virginia Woolf
December 1, 1933
From the Archives

Social Issues Before the Supreme Court

Felix Frankfurter
March 1, 1933
From the Archives

Goethe

Thomas Mann
June 1, 1932
From the Archives

Aurora Leigh

Virginia Woolf
June 1, 1931
From the Archives

Memories of a Working Women’s Guild

Virginia Woolf
September 1, 1930
From the Archives

Augustine Birrell

Virginia Woolf
June 1, 1930
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour

Vita Sackville-West
September 1, 1929
From the Archives

Street Haunting: A London Adventure

Virginia Woolf
October 1, 1927
A painting of a woman reading at a table.
From the Archives

How Should One Read a Book?

Read it as if one were writing it
Virginia Woolf
September 1, 1926
From the Archives

The Powers of the President

William Howard Taft
October 1, 1914