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Lit Hub Daily
February 25, 2026
john keats
TODAY: In 1830, Victor Hugo’s play Hernani premieres in Paris, eliciting protests from the audience for its attack on Classicism.

Joan Tote
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“Imagine a wealthy Oxbridge don giving their teenager a blank check for their Brontë birthday bash and you might begin to grasp the vision.” Emily Van Duyne on Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. | Lit Hub Film
 
“Why I don’t regret the ‘pornographic’ scene that got my book banned.” Julia Scheeres on the American right’s unslakable desire to censor things. | Lit Hub Politics
 
Josh Ireland chronicles the deadly, power-hungry rivalry between Trotsky and Stalin. | Lit Hub History
 
How Pong became a hit for Atari: “One spot. Two paddles. A square ball, net, and score. That’s it.” | Lit Hub Technology
 
“Jesse Jackson loved us—sometimes before we loved ourselves.” Steven W. Thrasher on Jackson’s legacy of support for LGBTQ rights and HIV/AIDS prevention. | Lit Hub Politics
 
David J. Silverman considers race, religion, and the European myth of indigenous savages. | Lit Hub History
 
James Martin recounts a day in his life as a paperboy in 1974. | Lit Hub Memoir
 
“Grace forces new considerations, reformulates positionalities, and disrupts familiar modes of thinking.” Báyò Akómoláfé explores the intersection of philosophy and fable. | Lit Hub Criticism
 
Sarah Bruni recommends books about radical care at the end of the world by Samanta Schweblin, Brit Bennett, Quiara Alegría Hudes, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
 
“Not sure what’s more embarrassing, that at fourteen / I still lusted for stuffed animals or that mum’s target / at the claw machine was way better than mine.” Read “Astro Mischief,” a poem by Preeti Vangani from the collection Fifty Mothers. | Lit Hub Poetry
 
“Table Fourteen Seat #1 let his wife do the talking at the host stand.” Read from Rebecca Kauffman’s new novel, The Reservation. | Lit Hub Fiction

THE UNCONSCIOUS: A CULTURAL HISTORY
the unconscious
A highly original cultural history of the unconscious, by Antonio Melechi.
 
“A fascinating tour of our sometimes futile and always contested efforts to demystify the unconscious—from ancient Greece to modern neuroscience, via Nietzsche, Freud, and more.”
–Christian Jarrett, editor, Psyche Magazine
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LOVE, LOSS, AND BOG WOMEN
our numbered bones
In this adult debut from award-winning children’s novelist Katya Balen, a grieving author heads to rural England for a writer’s retreat, only to stumble upon an incredible historical find that may be the key to healing her trauma.
Learn More

“His office spent the past half year trying to put an independent reporter critical of the New York Times in prison.” On the persecution of Alexa Wilkinson and attacks on journalistic free speech. | Jacobin
 
How bookbinders helped the Nazis build databases of people to target. | The New York Times
 
Why are so many men reading bell hooks’s All About Love? | Harper’s Bazaar
 
James McWilliams considers the life and work of Everette Maddox, poet and New Orleans’s most “most literarily accomplished barfly.” | Poetry
 
What does not reading do to your writing? Lincoln Michel dives deep on “TV brain prose.” | Counter Craft
 
“Eventually, the academic establishment may have to reckon with the very nature of how it courts and accepts the largesse of benefactors.” Higher education’s chaos in the wake of Epstein. | Wired

MAKE 2026 THE YEAR OF MORRISON
toni morrison
Indulge in six stunning repackages of Toni Morrison’s novels, featuring introductions from modern literary geniuses, perfect for any longtime fan or new reader alike.