The History of Literature

By Jacke Wilson / The Podglomerate

Amateur enthusiast Jacke Wilson journeys through the history of literature, from ancient epics to contemporary classics. Episodes are not in chronological order and you don't need to start at the begi... more

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FAQs about The History of Literature:

How many episodes does The History of Literature have?

The podcast currently has 704 episodes available.

The History of Literature episodes:

May 29, 2025705 Runaway Poets - How the Brownings Fell in Love (And Why It Matters)
Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861) was one of the most prolific and accomplished poets of the Victorian age, an inspiration to Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, and countless others. And yet, her life was full of cloistered misery, as her father insisted that she should never marry. And then, the clouds lifted, and a letter arrived. It was from the poet Robert Browning (1812-1889), admiring her from afar, declaring his love. How did these two poets find each other? What kind of life did they share afterwards? And what dark secrets had led to her father’s restrictions…and how might that have affected his daughter’s poetry? Host Jacke Wilson takes a look at the story of the Brownings.
This episode originally ran as episode 95 on May 29, 2017. It is presented here without commercial interruption.
Additional listening:
415 "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti

130 The Poet and the Painter - The Great Love Affair of Anna Akhmatova and Amedeo Modigliani

138 Why Poetry? (with Matthew Zapruder)
Music Credits:
“Handel – Entrance to the Queen of Sheba” by Advent Chamber Orchestra (From the Free Music Archive / CC by SA).
“Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” and “Piano Between” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.

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1h
May 29, 2025 Introducing The World with Marco Werman
Jacke encourages you to check out The World with Marco Werman. It is an in-depth global news show covering American topics from the perspectives of those outside the US. We highly recommend it as a great complement to The History of Literature.
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3min
May 26, 2025704 Butterflies Regained
Poetry, butterflies, and original music oh my! With some help from poets Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, William Wordsworth, and John Keats, along with original music by composer Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal, Jacke tackles the topic of butterflies. Yes, yes, we all know that butterflies are symbols of beauty and transformation - but can great poets get beyond the clichés? Why did Keats imagine himself as a butterfly in his love letters? Did Robert Frost mansplain poetry to Emily Dickinson (and do we agree)? In this episode, we flit and float and fleetly flee and fly through literature, life, music, and poetry - like a butterfly, maybe? (Maybe so!)
Additional listening:
John Keats

More John Keats

700 Butterflies at Rest
The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com . "Two Butterflies" performed by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal and Allison Hughes.
Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature .

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1h 27min
May 19, 2025703 D.H. Lawrence (with David Ellis) | My Last Book with Dorian Lynskey
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) is one of the most famous novelists of his era - and one of the most difficult to pin down. Was he a tasteless, avant-garde pornographer? Or the greatest imaginative novelist of his generation (as E.M. Forster once said)? What should we know about his hard-luck childhood and turbulent adult life? In this episode, Jacke talks to biographer David Ellis (D.H. Lawrence: A Critical Life) about the struggle to capture and convey the essence of Lawrence's life and works. PLUS Dorian Lynskey (Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World), an expert in literature about cataclysmic events, stops by to discuss the last book he - and others - might turn to at the very end.
Additional listening:
508 Lord Byron (with David Ellis)

694 Apocalyptic Literature (with Dorian Lynskey)

87 Man in Love: The Passions of D.H. Lawrence
The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com .
Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature .

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1h 10min
May 15, 2025702 Writing in the World of Jane Austen (with D.G. Rampton) | Disaster at the Book Festival!
Jacke talks to D.G. Rampton, Australia's Queen of the Regency Romance, about her love for the novels of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer - and what it's like for a twenty-first-century novelist to set her novels in the early-nineteenth-century world of intelligent heroines, dashing men, and sparkling banter. Find PLUS Jacke dives into the story of a book festival gone horribly wrong, searching for signs of hope amid the literary wreckage.
Additional listening:
280 Romance Novels

303 The Search for Darcy: Jane Austen, Tom Lefroy, and the World of Pride and Prejudice

535 The Australian Novelist Who Writes History Through Women's Eyes (with Pip Williams)
The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.
Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

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53min
May 12, 2025701 Emerson's Struggle with Slavery (with Kenneth Sacks) | My Last Book with Victoria Namkung | We Had Sex Inside Moby-Dick!
For several decades, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was perhaps the most prominent writer and intellectual in America. As an advocate of personal freedom living in Massachusetts, surrounded by passionate abolitionists, one might expect that his positions regarding slavery would be obvious and uncomplicated. And yet, Emerson struggled with the issue - not whether it was wrong (he was opposed to it), but the extent to which it obliged him or others to take action, and if so, how best to act in a way consistent with his philosophical principles. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Kenneth Sacks (Emerson's Civil Wars: Spirit in Society in the Age of Abolition) about what Emerson's wavering between self-reliance and collective action can tell us about who he was as a thinker and person - and whether his journey has lessons for the rest of us. PLUS Victoria Namkung (An Immortal Book: Selected Writings by Sui Sin Far) stops by to discuss her choice for the last book she will ever read. AND ALSO Jacke jumps into the belly of the clickbait whale, following the headline "We Had Sex Inside Moby-Dick!" to learn about Japan's love hotels and their connection(?) to the Herman Melville classic.
Additional listening:
667 Sui Sin Far with Victoria Namkung

603 Rethinking Ralph Waldo Emerson (with James Marcus)

111 The Americanest American - Ralph Waldo Emerson
The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.
Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

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1h 12min
May 05, 2025 700 - Butterflies at Rest
Returning to some devastating news after a trip to Paris, Jacke searches for lost time.

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29min
April 28, 2025699 Gatsby's Daisy (with Rachel Feder) | My Last Book with Francesca Peacock
F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby might be one hundred years old, but it's still incredibly relevant: one list-of-lists site ranks it as the number-one book of all time. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Rachel Feder about this classic tale of reinvention - and the reinventing she did for her book Daisy, which retells the Gatsby story from the perspective of a messy, ambitious, and possibly devious 1990s teen poet. PLUS Francesca Peacock (Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish) stops by to discuss her choice for the last book she will ever read.
Additional listening:
583 Margaret Cavendish (with Francesca Peacock)
281 The Great Gatsby
Gatsby Turns 100 (with James West)
The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.
Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

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1h 13min
April 24, 2025698 Dante in Love (with Ellen Nerenberg and Anthony Valerio) [Ad-Free Archive Edition]
It's springtime! A great time to be in love - and if you're a poetic genius like Dante Alighieri, a great time to catch a glimpse of a girl named Beatrice on the streets of Florence, fall madly in love with her, and spend the rest of your life beatifying her in verse. In this episode, we present a conversation that first aired in February 2018, in which Jacke talks to Anthony Valerio and Professor Ellen Nerenberg about their love for Dante and his great prose-and-poetry love story, La Vita Nuova.
Additional listening:
650 Dante's Divine Comedy (with Joseph Luzzi)
589 Dante and Friendship (with Elizabeth Coggeshall)
469 A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (with Gina Buonaguro)
Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

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1h 6min
April 21, 2025697 Race in European Fairy Tales (with Kimberly Lau) | My Last Book with Rolf Hellebust
Anyone digging into fairy tales soon discovers that there's more to these stories of magic and wonder than meets the eye. Often thought of as stories for children, the narratives can be shockingly violent, and they sometimes deliver messages or "morals" at odds with modern sensibilities. In this episode, Jacke talks to Kimberly Lau about her book Specters of the Marvelous: Race and the Development of the European Fairy Tale, which reveals the historical racial context that profoundly influenced these ubiquitous stories. PLUS Rolf Hellebust (How Russian Literature Became Great) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read.
Additional listening:
604 How Russian Literature Became Great (with Rolf Hellebust)
531 Fairy Tales (with Jack Zipes)
377 The Brothers Grimm
The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.
Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

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1h 22min

FAQs about The History of Literature:

How many episodes does The History of Literature have?

The podcast currently has 704 episodes available.