Fetch My Embroidery!
/Was Eleanor of Aquitaine a power in medieval politics or a glittering figurehead? This wife of two kings and mother of four stars in a new novel by Alison Weir - but will the real Eleanor please stand up?
Read MoreArchive
The complete Open Letters Monthly Archive.
Was Eleanor of Aquitaine a power in medieval politics or a glittering figurehead? This wife of two kings and mother of four stars in a new novel by Alison Weir - but will the real Eleanor please stand up?
Read MoreAlice Perrers is reviled by history for insinuating her way into Edward III’s bed and Queen Phillipa’s jewels. Now Emma Campion’s new novel aims to rescue her tattered reputation.
Read MoreSofonisba Anguissola was the best-known female painter of the Renaissance, but before that, she was art instructor to a willful young queen. A new novel revives those sad, glorious days.
Read MoreIn mythology, Alcestis is the model wife, willing to give up her own life for her husband's. In Katharine Beutner's lyrical retelling, the truth is more complex.
Read MoreIn our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
Read MoreAnne Easter Smith’s The King’s Grace builds its plot around the mystery of the Princes in the Tower—and borrows its conceit from Josephine Tey’s classic A Daughter in Time. Finch Bronstein-Rasmussen examines the book and the mystery.
Read MoreSusan Fraser King in her debut novel Lady Macbeth cries “Out, out!” to the blot on her main character’s reputation put there by Shakespeare; Finch Bronstein-Rasmussen seeks to determine if King’s efforts signify anything.
Read MorePowered by Squarespace.