Categories for 19th Century
19th Century, Literature
The Story Behind Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus
A stormy evening closes in on a villa not far from Lake Geneva. The group of friends gathered there read ghost stories to pass the time. Inspired by these tales… Read More
19th Century, Literature, Videos
The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Sherlock Holmes
Watch a short film featuring Las Vegas bookseller Embry Clark discussing the ups and downs Sir Arthur Conan Doyle endured while living with his most famous creation Sherlock Holmes. Read More
19th Century, Literature
The Story Behind Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
In January of 1851, a 40 year old homemaker and mother of six received $300 from a Washington D.C. newspaper to write a short antislavery narrative. Staying up nights after… Read More
19th Century, Literature
Saved From the Flames: The First Series of the Poems of Emily Dickinson
In 1886, an elderly and reclusive spinster died in a small New England town, leaving instructions to her younger sister to burn all her surviving correspondences. The town was Amherst, and… Read More
19th Century, Literature, Videos
The Story Behind Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Watch a short film by Las Vegas bookseller Embry Clark with the story behind Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Read More
19th Century, Literature
The Story Behind A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
…how he wept over it, and laughed and wept again…how he walked thinking of it fifteen and twenty miles about the black streets of London, and many a night after… Read More
19th Century, Literature
Twenty Thousands Leagues Under the Sea: The Influences of Jules Verne
We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones. It is a great irony of 19th century literature that Jules Verne owed the inspiration for his first… Read More
19th Century, Literature
The Story Behind the First Sherlock Holmes Novel: A Study in Scarlet
In 1882, a young doctor waited for patients to arrive. To pass the time, he began writing short stories. The man named Arthur Conan Doyle later became embarrassed by these… Read More
19th Century, Literature
The Story: Walt Whitman’s First Edition Leaves of Grass
One of the world’s most important books of poetry may never have been published if the poet had not been a printer himself. I speak of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass,… Read More
19th Century, Literature
Mark Twain’s Controversial Masterpiece
Mark Twain is one of America’s greatest writers, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is his defining novel, popular and controversial from the time of its publication in 1885 to this… Read More