The discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the subsequent decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics captured the imaginations of nineteenth-century American writers and provided a focal point for their specu
Early in the twentieth century a new character type emerged in the crime novels of American writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler: the "hard-boiled" detective, most famously exemplifi
In The Mystery to a Solution, John Irwin brilliantly examines the deeper significance of the analytical detective genre which Poe created and the meaning of Borges' efforts to "double" the genre's or
Originally published in 1975, this edition of Irwin's psychoanalytic study of Faulkner's fiction is expanded by the addition of two essays: one examining Faulkner's self-conscious manipulation of dete
In one of his letters Hart Crane wrote, "Appollinaire lived in Paris, I live in Cleveland, Ohio," comparing—misspelling and all—the great French poet’s cosmopolitan roots to his own more modest ones i
Weldon Kees is one of those fascinating people you’ve likely never heard of. What is most captivating about Kees is that he disappeared without a trace on July 18, 1955. Police found his 1954 Plymouth
"Fitzgerald’s work has always deeply moved me," writes John T. Irwin. "And this is as true now as it was fifty years ago when I first picked up The Great Gatsby. I can still remember the occasions wh
Since its founding in 1979, the Johns Hopkins Poetry and Fiction series has published forty volumes of short fiction, beginning with Guy Davenport's acclaimed Da Vinci's Bicycle. The series was launc
