Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
British Literature
The author of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ never set foot on our shores, but he had a clear and highly personal vision of what we were and what we had been
FOR A WHILE George Orwell thought of calling his novel about life in a totalitarian future The Last Man in Europe. Read more >>
The storm that wrecked the Virginia-bound ship Sea Venture in 1609 inspired a play by Shakespeare— and the survivors’ tribulations may well have sown the first seeds of democracy in the New World
The story of the British ship Sea Venture is one of history’s most remarkable sagas, an almost unbelievable tale of shipwreck, endurance, and human resourcefulness. But it is more than that. Read more >>
America acted deeply on the Elizabethan English imagination, working its magic in the minds of poets and men of science
During the reign of Elizabeth I, as the interest in and knowledge of America gathered momentum, so their reverberation in literature and the arts became louder, more frequent, and more varied. Read more >>