Literature

Vanessa Zoltan (co-host) and Ariana Nedelman (producer) of the celebrated podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, along with Huntington curator Vanessa Wilkie, discuss how media format shapes message. The podcast team discusses why they choose to do their program as a podcast (as opposed to a reading group, blog, or book), the opportunities of this media, as well as its limitations. This program was presented in conjunction with the exhibition “The Reformation: From the Word to the World.” Recorded December 21, 2017.

David Loewenstein, Erle Sparks Professor of English and Humanities at Penn State, discusses the daring originality of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” This year marks the 350th anniversary of the great poem’s first publication in 1667. This talk is part of the Ridge Lecture Series at The Huntington. Recorded Nov. 1, 2017.

Author and sculptor Matthew Spender talks about the friendship between his father, Stephen Spender, and Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, from the late 1920s until Auden and Isherwood emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. He will focus on the intense relationships between these three British writers, their homeland, and Nazi Germany. This talk is part of the Isherwood-Bachardy Lecture series at The Huntington. Recorded September 25, 2017.

Architect David Martin discusses his book Joy Ride: An Architect’s Journey to Mexico’s Ancient and Colonial Places. A journal of his travels filled with sketches, photographs, and observations, Joy Ride celebrates the timeless sophistication of Mexico’s architecture and offers fresh insights into the country’s history and culture. Recorded July 27, 2017.

Based on the acclaimed science fiction novel Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, a new graphic adaptation by Damian Duffy and illustrator John Jennings gives fresh form to Butler’s powerful tale of slavery, time travel, and the inexorable pull of the past. Duffy and Jennings discuss the continuing relevance of Butler’s writings and how it has influenced their own work. Recorded July 24, 2017.

Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell was described by an eminent historian as “not biographable.” Faced with an intractable puzzle, can a novelist do better? Hilary Mantel, two-time Booker Prize–winning author of “Wolf Hall” and its sequel “Bring Up the Bodies,” describes her 10-year effort to pin her compelling and elusive subject to the page. Mantel is currently working on the third book in the trilogy. Her papers are archived at The Huntington. This talk is part of the Ridge Lecture Series at The Huntington. Recorded May 11, 2017.

Stephen Orgel, J. E. Reynolds Professor in Humanities at Stanford University, discusses books and their marketing throughout history, emphasizing the ways in which books are embedded in history, and how literary interpretation is at least partly a form of archaeology. This talk is part of the Zamorano Lecture series at The Huntington. Recorded Mar. 20, 2017.

In recognition of the centenary of Jack London’s death, The Huntington’s Sue Hodson, curator of literary manuscripts and former Jack London Foundation Woman of the Year, speaks about Jack London as a novelist, sailor, journalist, social activist, photographer, and adventurer, as well as about the importance of The Huntington’s 50,000-item Jack London collection. Recorded Dec. 8, 2016.

Amy Kind, professor of philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, and Shelley Streeby, professor of ethnic studies and literature at the University of California, San Diego, explore futuristic notions of family and reproduction in the work of science fiction author Octavia Butler. Butler’s short story “Bloodchild” is a special focus of the discussion. This event is part of Radio Imagination, a series of programs and artist commissions exploring Butler’s legacy, organized by the arts group Clockshop. Recorded Nov. 3, 2016.

Novelist Edmund White (“A Boy’s Own Story”) discusses the lasting impression that Christopher Isherwood’s groundbreaking novel “A Single Man” had on him as a young author assembling his gay identity in the pre-Stonewall era. Recorded Sept. 29, 2016.

Benedictine monk Father Columba Stewart, executive director of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, explains how a Minnesota-based monastery has digitized 50,000 manuscripts originating from Syria, Iraq, and other places where traditional culture is threatened.This talk is part of the Zamorano Lecture series at The Huntington.

Saul Bellow has been called the greatest writer of American prose of the 20th century. Zachary Leader, professor of English literature at the University of Roehampton, explores this claim and tests it. This talk was part of the Ridge Lecture series at the Huntington.

Kenneth Warren, professor of English at the University of Chicago and the R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Fellow for 2010–11, examines how the rise of segregation in the late 19th century created an imperative among black writers to produce a distinctive African American literature.

David Hall discusses the challenges of writing and publishing in colonial America, when authors sent documents to England for publication, only to see them altered dramatically by far-away editors and printers. Hall is professor of New England church history at the Harvard Divinity School. He delivered the annual Zamorano Lecture, an event sponsored by the Zamorano Club, Southern California’s oldest organization of bibliophiles and manuscript collectors.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman came to Pasadena to live in 1888. Here she wrote “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” a harrowing story of a woman’s descent into madness, fueled by her own experience. Helen Horowitz, professor of history, Smith College, and the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington in 2010–11, considers Gilman’s life in Pasadena and the making of the story.

The famous relationship between lexicographer Samuel Johnson and his friend and biographer, James Boswell, is discussed in a lecture by Paul Ruxin. A noted expert on this literary pair, Ruxin is the owner of one of the largest collections of Johnson and Boswell materials in private hands.

By the time James Boswell published his monumental biography of his friend Samuel Johnson in 1791, the latter’s life had been more fully documented than virtually any other figure in Western history. But Johnson, the famed lexicographer and man of letters, was also the subject of various forms of visual documentation. Richard Wendorf , Stanford Calderwood Director and Librarian of the Boston Athenaeum, surveys all of the known portrayals of Johnson, including the famous portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds now at The Huntington.

Loren Rothschild, a noted collector of the works of Samuel Johnson, talks about the life and work of the great 18th-century man of letters who compiled the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language.

How significant are books for the circulation of written texts?  The question has become more urgent in the age of digital media, and yet historically books have often been rivaled by other textual forms. Peter Stallybrass, Annenberg Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, explores how marginal the book has been for some of our most famous writers, including Dante, Shakespeare, and Benjamin Franklin.