The Norton Library Podcast

• Tell Your Students about Edith Wharton! (The Age of Innocence, Part 2)

  In Part 2 of our discussion on Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, editor Sheila Liming returns to discuss challenges for first-time readers, the correlation between fluctuations in Wharton's reputation and historical literary (and political) trends, and whether or not The Age of Innocence is truly a love story. Sheila Liming is Associate Professor at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. She is the author of What a Library Means to a Woman: Edith Wharton and the Will to Collect Books (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) and creator of the web database EdithWhartonsLibrary.org. Her other books include Office (2020), published through Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series, and a scholarly edition of Wharton's novel Twilight Sleep (forthcoming through Oxford University Press). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Lapham's Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney’s, and The Chronicle Review.To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of The Age of Innocence, go to https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393870770.Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social. 

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• A Hieroglyphic World: Social Rules in Wharton's Novel of Manners (The Age of Innocence, Part 1)

  In Part 1 of our discussion on Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, we welcome editor Sheila Liming to discuss the author's friendship with Henry James, a culture of elitism in New York, and the ironic meaning of "innocence" in the novel. Sheila Liming is Associate Professor at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. She is the author of What a Library Means to a Woman: Edith Wharton and the Will to Collect Books (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) and creator of the web database EdithWhartonsLibrary.org. Her other books include Office (2020), published through Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series, and a scholarly edition of Wharton's novel Twilight Sleep (forthcoming through Oxford University Press). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Lapham's Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney’s, and The Chronicle Review. To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of The Age of Innocence, go to https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393870770. Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social. 

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• Taylor Swift's "Anti-Hero" and Hemingway's Flawed Characters (The Sun Also Rises, Part 2)

  In Part 2 of our discussion on Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, editor Verna Kale returns to discuss the vintage bullfighting posters that inspired the cover of the Norton Library edition, a "hot take" on the traditional hero of the book, and the loss of sentence-level writing in adaptations of the story.  Verna Kale is an Associate Research Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University and Associate Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project. She is the author of a biography of Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway, part of the Critical Lives series; editor of Teaching Hemingway and Gender; and co-editor, with Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel, of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 6 (1934–1936).To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of The Sun Also Rises, go to https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324045717.Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social. 

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• Don't Try This At Home: Hemingway's First Major Novel (The Sun Also Rises, Part 1)

  In Part 1 of our discussion on Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, we welcome editor Verna Kale to discuss a young Hemingway's life experience leading up to writing the novel, his captivation with bullfighting and insider knowledge, the distinction between fairytale and reality, and the lack of a moral of the story.  Verna Kale is an Associate Research Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University and Associate Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project. She is the author of a biography of Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway, part of the Critical Lives series; editor of Teaching Hemingway and Gender; and co-editor, with Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel, of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 6 (1934–1936).To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of The Sun Also Rises, go to https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324045717. Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social. 

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• The World Was All Before Them (Paradise Lost, Part 2)

  In Part 2 of our discussion on John Milton's Paradise Lost, editor Stephen B. Dobranski returns to discuss his own first encounter with Milton in a high school classroom, the experience of editing the Norton Library edition from historical source texts, and how students should build up their Milton muscles by reading other poetry before turning to Paradise Lost. Stephen B. Dobranski is Distinguished University Professor of English at Georgia State University and the editor of the journal Milton Studies. He has published nine books including Readers and Authorship in Early Modern England (2005); The Cambridge Introduction to Milton 2012); and Milton’s Visual Imagination: Imagery in “Paradise Lost” (2015).To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of Paradise Lost, go to https://seagull.wwnorton.com/ParadiseLostNL.Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social. 

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