Category: Literary Essays
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George Gissing: The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
At the end of the nineteenth century, George Gissing (1857–1903) was one of the three most important English novelists of his time. Born in the north of England, he studied at the precursor of the University of Manchester, fell in love with a young prostitute, and began stealing from fellow students to support her. He…
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Till Eulenspiegel: The mischievous trickster
Like Don Quixote, Till Eulenspiegel is a literary character who has never ceased to entertain generations of readers. He was first featured in medieval stories in which he ridiculed the foolishness and hypocrisy of the wealthy nobles, clergy, merchants, and in particular the impostor physicians and quacks. He is believed to have been born around…
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Jean Racine (1639–1699), tragedian of body and soul
In the second half of the seventeenth century, Jean Racine established himself as one of the two most accomplished composers of tragedy in the French language. Sharing this distinction with the earlier Piere Corneille, he drew his subjects mainly from mythology and Roman history, describing historical events and relating classical stories. He was raised after…
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Voltaire: Medical
François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire (1694–1778), remains one of the Enlightenment’s most brilliant and biting voices. He is remembered as a satirist, philosopher, and champion of reason, but less often as someone deeply engaged with the medical questions of his time. Yet Voltaire’s life, writings, and even ailments reveal the profound influence of medicine…
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Leo Tolstoy: Medical
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), one of literature’s greatest novelists, lived through an age of intense change in medicine. Nineteenth-century Russia was a country caught between ancient folk remedies and the rise of modern scientific practice, and Tolstoy himself straddled both worlds. His health was fragile, his writings repeatedly explored themes of illness, suffering, and death, and…
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Plato: Medical
Plato, the Athenian philosopher of the fourth century BCE, is remembered chiefly for his dialogues on ethics, politics, and metaphysics. Yet embedded within his philosophical works are numerous reflections on medicine and the human body. Living in a time when Greek medicine was undergoing a transition from superstition to rational observation, Plato drew on contemporary…
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Mencken: Medical
Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956), the caustic “Sage of Baltimore,” earned lasting fame as journalist, critic, and satirist. Best remembered for The American Language (1919 and its subsequent expansions), his multi-volume study of how Americans shaped English, Mencken also trained his sharp gaze on medicine, physicians, and the very words of health and disease. Though he…
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Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) occupies a unique and often controversial place in American literature. Best remembered for his unflinching realism, his exploration of ambition, desire, and social constraint, and his massive, detail-laden novels, Dreiser was both acclaimed and censured during his lifetime. His works, particularly Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925), stand as landmark…
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W. Somerset Maugham: Medical
William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) is remembered primarily as a master of the short story and as a novelist whose lucid style made him one of the most widely read writers of the twentieth century. Yet beneath his literary reputation lies another identity: that of a trained physician. Medicine was not just a stage in Maugham’s…