74 Ways Characters Die in Shakespeare’s Plays Shown in a Handy Infographic: From Snakebites to Lack of Sleep

in Literature, Theatre | October 27th, 2025

In the grad­u­ate depart­ment where I once taught fresh­men and sopho­mores the rudi­ments of col­lege Eng­lish, it became com­mon prac­tice to include Shakespeare’s Titus Andron­i­cus on many an Intro to Lit syl­labus, along with a view­ing of Julie Taymor’s flam­boy­ant film adap­ta­tion. The ear­ly work is thought to be Shakespeare’s first tragedy, cob­bled togeth­er from pop­u­lar Roman his­to­ries and Eliz­a­bethan revenge plays. And it is a tru­ly bizarre play, swing­ing wild­ly in tone from clas­si­cal tragedy, to satir­i­cal dark humor, to com­ic farce, and back to tragedy again. Crit­ic Harold Bloom called Titus “an exploita­tive par­o­dy” of the very pop­u­lar revenge tragedies of the time—its mur­ders, maim­ings, rapes, and muti­la­tions pile up, scene upon scene, and leave char­ac­ters and readers/audiences reel­ing in grief and dis­be­lief from the shock­ing body count.

Part of the fun of teach­ing Titus is in watch­ing stu­dents’ jaws drop as they real­ize just how bloody-mind­ed the Bard is. While Taymor’s adap­ta­tion takes many mod­ern lib­er­ties in cos­tum­ing, music, and set design, its hor­ror-show depic­tion of Titus’ unre­lent­ing may­hem is faith­ful to the text. Lat­er, more mature plays rein in the exces­sive black com­e­dy and shock fac­tor, but the bod­ies still stack up. As accus­tomed as we are to think­ing of con­tem­po­rary enter­tain­ments like Game of Thrones as espe­cial­ly gra­tu­itous, the whole of Shakespeare’s cor­pus, writes Alice Vin­cent at The Tele­graph, is “more gory” than even HBO’s squirm-wor­thy fan­ta­sy epic, fea­tur­ing a total of 74 deaths in 37 plays to Game of Thrones’ 61 in 50 episodes.

All of those var­i­ous demis­es came togeth­er in a 2016 com­pendi­um staged at The Globe (in Lon­don) called The Com­plete Deaths. It includ­ed every­thing “from ear­ly rapi­er thrusts to the more elab­o­rate viper-breast appli­ca­tion adopt­ed by Cleopa­tra.” The only death direc­tor Tim Crouch exclud­ed is “that of a fly that meets a sticky end in Titus Andron­i­cus.” In the info­graph­ic above, see all of the caus­es of those deaths, includ­ing Antony and Cleopa­tra’s snakebite and Titus Andron­i­cus’ piece-de-resis­tance, “baked in a pie.”

Part of the rea­son so many of my for­mer under­grad­u­ate stu­dents found Shakespeare’s bru­tal­i­ty shock­ing and unex­pect­ed has to do with the way his work was tamed by lat­er 17th and 18th cen­tu­ry crit­ics, who “didn’t approve of the on-stage gore.” The Tele­graph quotes direc­tor of the Shake­speare Insti­tute Michael Dob­son, who points out that Eliz­a­bethan dra­ma was espe­cial­ly grue­some; “the Eng­lish dra­ma was noto­ri­ous for on-stage deaths,” and all of Shakespeare’s con­tem­po­raries, includ­ing Christo­pher Mar­lowe and Ben Jon­son, wrote vio­lent scenes that can still turn our stom­achs.

More recent pro­duc­tions like a bloody stag­ing of Titus at The Globe have restored the gore in Shakespeare’s work, and The Com­plete Deaths left audi­ences with lit­tle doubt that Shakespeare’s cul­ture was as per­me­at­ed with rep­re­sen­ta­tions of vio­lence as our own—and it was as much, if not more so, plagued by the real thing.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

Hear What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like in the Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

3,000 Illus­tra­tions of Shakespeare’s Com­plete Works from Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Pre­sent­ed in a Dig­i­tal Archive

Watch Very First Film Adap­ta­tions of Shakespeare’s Plays: King John, The Tem­pest, Richard III & More (1899–1936)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Aldous Huxley to George Orwell: My Hellish Vision of the Future is Better Than Yours (1949)

in Books, Literature, Sci Fi | October 27th, 2025

In 1949, George Orwell received a curi­ous let­ter from his for­mer high school French teacher.

Orwell had just pub­lished his ground­break­ing book Nine­teen Eighty-Four, which received glow­ing reviews from just about every cor­ner of the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. His French teacher, as it hap­pens, was none oth­er than Aldous Hux­ley, who taught at Eton for a spell before writ­ing Brave New World (1931), the oth­er great 20th-cen­tu­ry dystopi­an nov­el.

Hux­ley starts off the let­ter prais­ing the book, describ­ing it as “pro­found­ly impor­tant.” He con­tin­ues, “The phi­los­o­phy of the rul­ing minor­i­ty in Nine­teen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been car­ried to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion by going beyond sex and deny­ing it.”

Then Hux­ley switch­es gears and crit­i­cizes the book, writ­ing, “Whether in actu­al fact the pol­i­cy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indef­i­nite­ly seems doubt­ful. My own belief is that the rul­ing oli­garchy will find less ardu­ous and waste­ful ways of gov­ern­ing and of sat­is­fy­ing its lust for pow­er, and these ways will resem­ble those which I described in Brave New World.” (Lis­ten to him read a dra­ma­tized ver­sion of the book here.)

Basi­cal­ly, while prais­ing Nine­teen Eighty-Four, Hux­ley argues that his ver­sion of the future was more like­ly to come to pass.

In Hux­ley’s seem­ing­ly dystopi­an World State, the elite amuse the mass­es into sub­mis­sion with a mind-numb­ing drug called Soma and an end­less buf­fet of casu­al sex. Orwell’s Ocea­nia, on the oth­er hand, keeps the mass­es in check with fear thanks to an end­less war and a hyper-com­pe­tent sur­veil­lance state. At first blush, they might seem like they are dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed but, in fact, an Orwellian world and a Hux­leyan one are sim­ply two dif­fer­ent modes of oppres­sion.

While we haven’t quite arrived at either dystopi­an vision, the pow­er of both books is that they tap into our fears of the state. While Hux­ley might make you look askance at The Bach­e­lor or Face­book, Orwell makes you recoil in hor­ror at the gov­ern­ment throw­ing around phras­es like “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion” and “sur­gi­cal drone strikes.”

You can read Huxley’s full let­ter below.

Wright­wood. Cal.

21 Octo­ber, 1949

Dear Mr. Orwell,

It was very kind of you to tell your pub­lish­ers to send me a copy of your book. It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much read­ing and con­sult­ing of ref­er­ences; and since poor sight makes it nec­es­sary for me to ration my read­ing, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nine­teen Eighty-Four.

Agree­ing with all that the crit­ics have writ­ten of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how pro­found­ly impor­tant the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals — the ulti­mate rev­o­lu­tion? The first hints of a phi­los­o­phy of the ulti­mate rev­o­lu­tion — the rev­o­lu­tion which lies beyond pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics, and which aims at total sub­ver­sion of the indi­vid­u­al’s psy­chol­o­gy and phys­i­ol­o­gy — are to be found in the Mar­quis de Sade, who regard­ed him­self as the con­tin­u­a­tor, the con­sum­ma­tor, of Robe­spierre and Babeuf. The phi­los­o­phy of the rul­ing minor­i­ty in Nine­teen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been car­ried to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion by going beyond sex and deny­ing it. Whether in actu­al fact the pol­i­cy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indef­i­nite­ly seems doubt­ful. My own belief is that the rul­ing oli­garchy will find less ardu­ous and waste­ful ways of gov­ern­ing and of sat­is­fy­ing its lust for pow­er, and these ways will resem­ble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occa­sion recent­ly to look into the his­to­ry of ani­mal mag­net­ism and hyp­no­tism, and have been great­ly struck by the way in which, for a hun­dred and fifty years, the world has refused to take seri­ous cog­nizance of the dis­cov­er­ies of Mes­mer, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.

Part­ly because of the pre­vail­ing mate­ri­al­ism and part­ly because of pre­vail­ing respectabil­i­ty, nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry philoso­phers and men of sci­ence were not will­ing to inves­ti­gate the odd­er facts of psy­chol­o­gy for prac­ti­cal men, such as politi­cians, sol­diers and police­men, to apply in the field of gov­ern­ment. Thanks to the vol­un­tary igno­rance of our fathers, the advent of the ulti­mate rev­o­lu­tion was delayed for five or six gen­er­a­tions. Anoth­er lucky acci­dent was Freud’s inabil­i­ty to hyp­no­tize suc­cess­ful­ly and his con­se­quent dis­par­age­ment of hyp­no­tism. This delayed the gen­er­al appli­ca­tion of hyp­no­tism to psy­chi­a­try for at least forty years. But now psy­cho-analy­sis is being com­bined with hyp­no­sis; and hyp­no­sis has been made easy and indef­i­nite­ly exten­si­ble through the use of bar­bi­tu­rates, which induce a hyp­noid and sug­gestible state in even the most recal­ci­trant sub­jects.

With­in the next gen­er­a­tion I believe that the world’s rulers will dis­cov­er that infant con­di­tion­ing and nar­co-hyp­no­sis are more effi­cient, as instru­ments of gov­ern­ment, than clubs and pris­ons, and that the lust for pow­er can be just as com­plete­ly sat­is­fied by sug­gest­ing peo­ple into lov­ing their servi­tude as by flog­ging and kick­ing them into obe­di­ence. In oth­er words, I feel that the night­mare of Nine­teen Eighty-Four is des­tined to mod­u­late into the night­mare of a world hav­ing more resem­blance to that which I imag­ined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased effi­cien­cy. Mean­while, of course, there may be a large scale bio­log­i­cal and atom­ic war — in which case we shall have night­mares of oth­er and scarce­ly imag­in­able kinds.

Thank you once again for the book.

Yours sin­cere­ly,

Aldous Hux­ley

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Aldous Hux­ley Nar­rate His Dystopi­an Mas­ter­piece, Brave New World

Aldous Hux­ley Tells Mike Wal­lace What Will Destroy Democ­ra­cy: Over­pop­u­la­tion, Drugs & Insid­i­ous Tech­nol­o­gy (1958)

George Orwell Iden­ti­fies the Main Ene­my of the Free Press: It’s the “Intel­lec­tu­al Cow­ardice” of the Press Itself

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions.

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You Can Now See the Parthenon Without Scaffolding for the First Time in 200 Years

in Architecture, History | October 24th, 2025

If you’ve made the jour­ney to Athens, you prob­a­bly took the time to vis­it its most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tion, the Acrop­o­lis. On that mon­u­ment-rich hill, you more than like­ly paid spe­cial atten­tion to the Parthenon, the ancient tem­ple ded­i­cat­ed to the city’s name­sake, the god­dess Athena Parthenos. But no mat­ter how much time you spent amid the ruins of the Parthenon, if that vis­it hap­pens to have tak­en place in the past 200 years, you may now ques­tion whether you’ve tru­ly seen it at all. That’s because only recent­ly has scaf­fold­ing been removed that has par­tial­ly obscured its west­ern façade for the past two decades, result­ing in the pur­er visu­al state seen in the clips col­lect­ed above.

The press atten­tion drawn by this event prompt­ed Greece’s Min­is­ter of Cul­ture Lin­da Men­doni to declare this the first time the Parthenon’s exte­ri­or has been com­plete­ly free of scaf­fold­ing in about two cen­turies. Hav­ing been orig­i­nal­ly built in the fifth cen­tu­ry BC, and come through most of that span much the worse for wear, it requires inten­sive and near-con­stant main­te­nance.

Its inun­da­tion by vis­i­tors sure­ly does­n’t help: an esti­mat­ed 4.5 mil­lion peo­ple went to the Acrop­o­lis in 2024, the kind of fig­ure that makes you believe in the diag­noses of glob­al “over­tourism” thrown around these days. The Greek gov­ern­men­t’s coun­ter­mea­sures include a dai­ly vis­i­tor cap of 20,000, imple­ment­ed in 2023, and a require­ment to reserve a timed entry slot.

If you’d like to see the whol­ly un-scaf­fold­ed Parthenon in per­son, you’d best reserve your own slot as soon as pos­si­ble: more con­ser­va­tion work is sched­uled to begin in Novem­ber, albeit with tem­po­rary infra­struc­ture designed to be “lighter and aes­thet­i­cal­ly much clos­er to the log­ic of the mon­u­ment,” as Men­doni has explained. But if you miss that win­dow, don’t wor­ry, since that oper­a­tion should only last until ear­ly next sum­mer, and upon its com­ple­tion, “the Parthenon will be com­plete­ly freed of this scaf­fold­ing too, and peo­ple will be able to see it tru­ly free.” Not that they’ll be able to see it for free: even now, a gen­er­al-admis­sion Acrop­o­lis reser­va­tion costs €30 (about $35 USD) dur­ing the sum­mer­time peak sea­son. Athena was the god­dess of wis­dom, war­fare, and hand­i­craft, not wealth, but it clear­ly lies with­in her pow­ers to com­mand a decent price.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Ancient Greeks Built Their Mag­nif­i­cent Tem­ples: The Art of Ancient Engi­neer­ing

A 3D Mod­el Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Inte­ri­or Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

How the Parthenon Mar­bles End­ed Up In The British Muse­um

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Stand­ing Today

Artist is Cre­at­ing a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Mon­u­ment to Democ­ra­cy & Intel­lec­tu­al Free­dom

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 Theories on What Caused the Poet’s Demise

in History, Literature | October 24th, 2025

One of my very first acts as a new New York­er many years ago was to make the jour­ney across three bor­oughs to Wood­lawn Ceme­tery in the Bronx. My pur­pose: a pil­grim­age to Her­man Melville’s grave. I came not to wor­ship a hero, exact­ly, but—as Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Angela O’Donnell writes—“to see a friend.” Pro­fes­sor O’Donnell goes on: “It might seem pre­sump­tu­ous to regard a cel­e­brat­ed 19th-cen­tu­ry nov­el­ist so famil­iar­ly, but read­ing a great writer across the decades is a means of con­duct­ing con­ver­sa­tion with him and, inevitably, leads to inti­ma­cy.” I ful­ly share the sen­ti­ment.

I promised Melville I would vis­it reg­u­lar­ly but, alas, the plea­sures and tra­vails of life in the big city kept me away, and I nev­er returned. No such pet­ty dis­trac­tion kept away a friend-across-the-ages of anoth­er 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can author.

“For decades,” writes the Bal­ti­more Sun, “Edgar Allan Poe’s birth­day was marked by a mys­te­ri­ous vis­i­tor to his gravesite in Bal­ti­more. Begin­ning in the 1930s, the ‘Poe Toast­er’ placed three ros­es at the grave every Jan. 19 and opened a bot­tle of cognac, only to dis­ap­pear into the night.” The iden­ti­ty of the orig­i­nal “Poe Toast­er”—who may have been suc­ceed­ed by his son—remains a tan­ta­liz­ing mys­tery. As does the mys­tery of how Edgar Allan Poe died.

Most of you have prob­a­bly heard some ver­sion of the sto­ry. On Octo­ber 3, 1849, a com­pos­i­tor for the Bal­ti­more Sun, Joseph Walk­er, found Poe lying in a gut­ter. The poet had depart­ed Rich­mond, VA on Sep­tem­ber 27, bound for Philadel­phia “where he was to edit a vol­ume of poet­ry for Mrs. St. Leon Loud,” the Poe Muse­um tells us. Instead, he end­ed up in Bal­ti­more, “semi­con­scious and dressed in cheap, ill-fit­ting clothes so unlike Poe’s usu­al mode of dress that many believe that Poe’s own cloth­ing had been stolen.” He nev­er became lucid enough to explain where he had been or what hap­pened to him: “The father of the detec­tive sto­ry has left us with a real-life mys­tery which Poe schol­ars, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, and oth­ers have been try­ing to solve for over 150 years.”

Most peo­ple assume that Poe drank him­self to death. The rumor was part­ly spread by Poe’s friend, edi­tor Joseph Snod­grass, whom the poet had asked for in his semi-lucid state. Snod­grass was “a staunch tem­per­ance advo­cate” and had rea­son to recruit the writer posthu­mous­ly into his cam­paign against drink, despite the fact that Poe had been sober for six months pri­or to his death and had refused alco­hol on his deathbed. Poe’s attend­ing physi­cian, John Moran, dis­missed the binge drink­ing the­o­ry, but that did not help clear up the mys­tery. Moran’s “accounts vary so wide­ly,” writes Biography.com, “that they are not gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered reli­able.”

So what hap­pened? Doc­tors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land Med­ical Cen­ter the­o­rize that Poe may have con­tract­ed rabies from one of his own pets—likely a cat. This diag­no­sis accounts for the delir­i­um and oth­er report­ed symp­toms, though “no one can say con­clu­sive­ly,” admits the Center’s Dr. Michael Ben­itez, “since there was no autop­sy after his death.” As with any mys­tery, the frus­trat­ing lack of evi­dence has sparked end­less spec­u­la­tion. The Poe Muse­um offers the fol­low­ing list of pos­si­ble cause of death, with dates and sources, includ­ing the rabies and alco­hol (both over­im­bib­ing and with­draw­al) the­o­ries:

  • Beat­ing (1857) The Unit­ed States Mag­a­zine Vol.II (1857): 268.
  • Epilep­sy (1875) Scrib­n­er’s Month­ly Vo1. 10 (1875): 691.
  • Dip­so­ma­nia (1921) Robert­son, John W. Edgar A. Poe A Study. Brough, 1921: 134, 379.
  • Heart (1926) Allan, Her­vey. Israfel. Dou­ble­day, 1926: Chapt. XXVII, 670.
  • Tox­ic Dis­or­der (1970) Stu­dia Philo1ogica Vol. 16 (1970): 41–42.
  • Hypo­glycemia (1979) Artes Lit­er­a­tus (1979) Vol. 5: 7–19.
  • Dia­betes (1977) Sin­clair, David. Edgar Allan Poe. Roman & Litt1efield, 1977: 151–152.
  • Alco­hol Dehy­dro­ge­nase (1984) Arno Karlen. Napo1eon’s Glands. Lit­tle Brown, 1984: 92.
  • Por­phryia (1989) JAMA Feb. 10, 1989: 863–864.
  • Deleri­um Tremens (1992) Mey­ers, Jef­frey. Edgar A1lan Poe. Charles Scrib­n­er, 1992: 255.
  • Rabies (1996) Mary­land Med­ical Jour­nal Sept. 1996: 765–769.
  • Heart (1997) Sci­en­tif­ic Sleuthing Review Sum­mer 1997: 1–4.
  • Mur­der (1998) Walsh, John E., Mid­night Drea­ry. Rut­gers Univ. Press, 1998: 119–120.
  • Epilep­sy (1999) Archives of Neu­rol­o­gy June 1999: 646, 740.
  • Car­bon Monox­ide Poi­son­ing (1999) Albert Don­nay

The Smith­son­ian adds to this list the pos­si­ble caus­es of brain tumor, heavy met­al poi­son­ing, and the flu. They also briefly describe the most pop­u­lar the­o­ry: that Poe died as a result of a prac­tice called “coop­ing.”

A site called The Med­ical Bag expands on the coop­ing the­o­ry, a favorite of “the vast major­i­ty of Poe biogra­phies.” The term refers to “a prac­tice in the Unit­ed States dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry by which inno­cent peo­ple were coerced into vot­ing, often sev­er­al times, for a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date in an elec­tion.” Often­times, these peo­ple were snatched unawares off the streets, “kept in a room, called the coop” and “giv­en alco­hol or drugs in order for them to fol­low orders. If they refused to coop­er­ate, they would be beat­en or even killed.” One dark­ly com­ic detail: vic­tims were often forced to change clothes and were even “forced to wear wigs, fake beards, and mus­tach­es as dis­guis­es so vot­ing offi­cials at polling sta­tions wouldn’t rec­og­nize them.”

This the­o­ry is high­ly plau­si­ble. Poe was, after all, found “on the street on Elec­tion Day,” and “the place where he was found, Ryan’s Fourth Ward Polls, was both a bar and a place for vot­ing.” Add to this the noto­ri­ous­ly vio­lent and cor­rupt nature of Bal­ti­more elec­tions at the time, and you have a sce­nario in which the author may very well have been kid­napped, drugged, and beat­en to death in a vot­er fraud scheme. Ulti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, we will like­ly nev­er know for cer­tain what killed Edgar Allan Poe. Per­haps the “Poe Toast­er” was attempt­ing all those years to get the sto­ry from the source as he com­muned with his dead 19th cen­tu­ry friend year after year. But if that mys­te­ri­ous stranger knows the truth, he ain’t talk­ing either.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buck­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful & More

7 Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Sto­ries and Poems

Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven: Watch an Award-Win­ning Short Film That Mod­ern­izes Poe’s Clas­sic Tale

Clas­sic Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s Sto­ries by Gus­tave Doré, Édouard Manet, Har­ry Clarke, Aubrey Beard­s­ley & Arthur Rack­ham

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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How Did The World Get So Ugly?: Then Versus Now

in Design, History | October 23rd, 2025

More than a few of us might be inter­est­ed in the oppor­tu­ni­ty to spend a day in Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don. But very few of us indeed who’ve ever read, say, a Charles Dick­ens nov­el would ever elect to live there. “Lon­don’s lit­tle lanes are charm­ing now,” says Shee­han Quirke, the host of the video above, while stand­ing in one of them, “but 150 years ago in places like this, you’d have had whole fam­i­lies crammed into these tiny rooms with­out run­ning water. There would have been open cesspits spilling down the streets, and the stench of sewage boil­ing in the mid­day sun would have been unbear­able.” The stink­ing city, already the biggest in the world and grow­ing every day, “was­n’t only hor­ri­ble to live in, but gen­uine­ly dan­ger­ous.”

Much of the tremen­dous amount of waste pro­duced by Lon­don­ers went straight into the Riv­er Thames, which even­tu­al­ly grew so foul that the engi­neer Joseph Bazal­gette took on the job of design­ing not just a sew­er sys­tem, but also an embank­ment to “replace what was essen­tial­ly a stink­ing swamp filled with rub­bish and human waste and eels.” Though emi­nent­ly, even mirac­u­lous­ly func­tion­al, Bazal­get­te’s design was­n’t util­i­tar­i­an.

After its com­ple­tion in 1870, the embank­ment was lined with elab­o­rate­ly dec­o­rat­ed lamps (some of the first pieces of elec­tric light­ing in the world) that still catch the eye of passers­by today, well into the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. “We don’t asso­ciate dec­o­ra­tion with cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy, and that’s a major dif­fer­ence between us and the Vic­to­ri­ans,” who “saw no con­tra­dic­tion between star­tling moder­ni­ty and time-hon­ored tra­di­tion.”

Quirke became renowned as The Cul­tur­al Tutor a few years ago on the social media plat­form then called Twit­ter. His threads have cul­ti­vat­ed the under­stand­ing of count­less many read­ers about a host of sub­jects to do with his­to­ry, art, archi­tec­ture, music, and design, with an eye toward the ways in which past civ­i­liza­tions may have done them bet­ter than ours does. The Vic­to­ri­ans, for instance, may have lacked mod­ern ameni­ties that none of us could live with­out, but they designed even their sewage pump­ing sta­tions “with the same orna­men­tal exu­ber­ance as any church or palace.” Per­haps they thought their san­i­ta­tion work­ers deserved beau­ti­ful sur­round­ings; they cer­tain­ly had “a sense of pride, a belief that what they’d done here was worth­while, that it meant some­thing.” Cur­rent infra­struc­ture, large-scale and small, is tech­no­log­i­cal­ly supe­ri­or, yet almost none of it is worth regard­ing, to put it mild­ly. Whether our own civ­i­liza­tion could return to beau­ty is the ques­tion at the heart of Quirke’s enter­prise — and one his grow­ing group of fol­low­ers has begun to ask them­selves every time they step out­side.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

Richard Feyn­man on Beau­ty

Why Dutch & Japan­ese Cities Are Insane­ly Well Designed (and Amer­i­can Cities Are Ter­ri­bly Designed)

Dis­cov­er The Gram­mar of Orna­ment, One of the Great Col­or Books & Design Mas­ter­pieces of the 19th Cen­tu­ry

Dieter Rams Lists the 10 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Good Design — Backed by Music by Bri­an Eno

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Make Some­thing Beau­ti­ful and Don’t Wor­ry About the Mon­ey

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Explore 1,100 Works of Art by Georgia O’Keeffe: They’re Digitized and Free to View Online

in Art | October 23rd, 2025

Lake George Reflec­tion (cir­ca 1921) via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

What comes to mind when you think of Geor­gia O’Keeffe?

Bleached skulls in the desert?

Aer­i­al views of clouds, almost car­toon­ish in their puffi­ness?

Volup­tuous flow­ers (freight­ed with an erot­ic charge the artist may not have intend­ed)?

Prob­a­bly not Polaroid prints of a dark haired pet chow sprawled on flag­stones…

Or water­col­or sketch­es of demure­ly pret­ty ladies…

Or a mas­sive cast iron abstrac­tion…

If your knowl­edge of America’s most cel­e­brat­ed female artist is con­fined to the gift shop’s great­est hits, you might enjoy a leisure­ly prowl through the 1100+ works in the Geor­gia O’Keeffe Museum’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion.

A main objec­tive of this col­lec­tion is to pro­vide a more com­plete under­stand­ing of the life and work of the icon­ic artist, who died in 1986 at the age of 98.

Her evo­lu­tion is evi­dent when you search by mate­ri­als or date.

You can also view works by oth­er artists in the col­lec­tion, includ­ing two very sig­nif­i­cant men in her life, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Alfred Stieglitz and ceram­i­cist Juan Hamil­ton.

Each item’s list­ing is enhanced with infor­ma­tion on inscrip­tions and exhi­bi­tions, as well as links to oth­er works pro­duced in the same year.

Vis­it the Geor­gia O’Keeffe Museum’s online col­lec­tion here. And watch a doc­u­men­tary intro­duc­tion to O’Ke­effe, nar­rat­ed by Gene Hack­man, below:

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the Paint­ing That Changed Geor­gia O’Keeffe’s Career: Ram’s Head, White Hol­ly­hock-Hills

The Real Geor­gia O’Keeffe: The Artist Reveals Her­self in Vin­tage Doc­u­men­tary Clips

Geor­gia O’Keeffe: A Life in Art, a Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Painter Nar­rat­ed by Gene Hack­man

How Geor­gia O’Keeffe Became Geor­gia O’Keeffe: An Ani­mat­ed Video Tells the Sto­ry

Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Keeffe

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.

 

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The 135 Movies You Must See to Understand Cinema

in Film, History | October 22nd, 2025

If you wish to become a cinephile wor­thy of the title, you must first pledge nev­er to refuse to watch a film for any of the fol­low­ing rea­sons. First, that it is in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage and sub­ti­tled; sec­ond, that it is too old; third, that it is too slow; fourth, that it is too long; and fifth, that it has no “sto­ry.” These cat­e­gories of refusal are what Lewis Bond, co-cre­ator of the YouTube chan­nel The House of Tab­u­la, calls “the five car­di­nal sins of cin­e­ma,” and no one who com­mits them can ever attain an under­stand­ing of the art form, its nature, its his­to­ry, and its poten­tial. Once you’ve made your vow, you’ll be ready to watch through the 135 chrono­log­i­cal­ly ordered motion pic­tures that con­sti­tute The House of Tab­u­la’s “Ulti­mate Film Stud­ies Watch­list,” ful­ly explained in the video above.

While the movies first emerged in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, and plen­ty con­tin­ue to be made here in the twen­ty-first, they stand unop­posed as the defin­ing pop­u­lar art form of the twen­ti­eth. And it is from the span of that cen­tu­ry that all the films on this list are drawn, from Georges Méliès’ Le Voy­age dans la Lune and D. W. Grif­fith’s The Birth of a Nation to all the way to Quentin Taran­ti­no’s Pulp Fic­tion and the Wachowskis’ The Matrix.

What hap­pened to cin­e­ma between those peri­ods was, in a sense, a process of tech­no­log­i­cal and artis­tic evo­lu­tion, but as Bond’s com­men­tary under­scores, old­er films aren’t super­seded by new­er ones — or at least, old­er films of val­ue aren’t. Indeed, the ambi­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty of these decades, or even cen­tu­ry-old movies, puts many a cur­rent release to shame.

By no means is the list dom­i­nat­ed by obscu­ri­ties. Gone with the Wind, Fan­ta­sia, Sin­gin’ in the Rain, Psy­cho, Jaws, Alien: even the least cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly inclined among us have seen a few of these movies, or at least they feel like they have. Maybe they’ve nev­er got around to watch­ing Cit­i­zen Kane, but they’ll have a sense that it belongs on any syl­labus meant to cul­ti­vate an under­stand­ing of film as an art form. The pres­ence of Star Wars may come as more of a sur­prise, but no less than Cit­i­zen Kane, it illus­trates the ben­e­fit of watch­ing your way through cin­e­ma his­to­ry: if you do, you’ll expe­ri­ence just how much of a break they rep­re­sent­ed with all that came before. Ordi­nary movie­go­ers may feel like they’ve seen it all before, but cinephiles — espe­cial­ly those who’ve made the jour­ney through The House of Tab­u­la’s watch­list — know how vast an area of cin­e­mat­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty remains unex­plored.

Relat­ed con­tent:

78 Great Direc­tors Who Shaped the His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma: An Intro­duc­tion

The 30 Great­est Films Ever Made: A Video Essay

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

The Evo­lu­tion of Cin­e­ma: Watch Near­ly 140 Years of Film His­to­ry Unfold in 80 Min­utes

Take a 16-Week Crash Course on the His­to­ry of Movies: From the First Mov­ing Pic­tures to the Rise of Mul­ti­plex­es & Net­flix

The 15 Great­est Doc­u­men­taries of All Time: Explore Films by Wern­er Her­zog, Errol Mor­ris & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Alejandro Jodorowsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can Give You Creative Inspiration

in Creativity, Film | October 22nd, 2025

The prac­tice of car­toman­cy, or div­ina­tion with cards, dates back sev­er­al hun­dred years to at least 14th cen­tu­ry Europe, per­haps by way of Turkey. But the spe­cif­ic form we know of, the tarot, like­ly emerged in the 17th cen­tu­ry, and the deck we’re all most famil­iar with—the Rid­er-Waite Tarot—didn’t appear until 1909. Pop­u­lar main­ly with occultists like Aleis­ter Crow­ley and Madame Blavatsky in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, the tarot explod­ed into pop­u­lar cul­ture in the new age 70s with books like Stu­art Kaplan’s Tarot Cards for Fun and For­tune Telling, and by way of cult film­mak­ers like Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky.

Since its rel­a­tive­ly recent pop­u­lar­iza­tion, “fun” and “for­tune telling” have more or less defined most people’s atti­tude to the tarot, whether they approve or dis­ap­prove of either one. But for artists and poets like William But­ler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and sur­re­al­ist direc­tor Jodorowsky—whose film nar­ra­tion is per­haps the most poet­ic in mod­ern cinema—the tarot has always meant some­thing much more mys­te­ri­ous and inspir­ing. “The tarot,” says Jodor­owsky in the short film above, “will teach you how to cre­ate a soul.”

After study­ing the Major and Minor Arcana and the suits, and puz­zling over the sym­bols on each card, Jodor­owsky dis­cov­ered that “all 78 cards could be joined in a man­dala, in just one image.” Learn­ing to see the deck thus, “You must not talk about the future. The future is a con. The tarot is a lan­guage that talks about the present. If you use it to see the future, you become a con­man.” Like oth­er mys­ti­cal poets, Jodorowsky’s study of the tarot did not lead him to the super­nat­ur­al but to the cre­ative act.

And like many a poet before him, Jodor­owsky explored the jour­ney of the Fool in his 1973 film The Holy Moun­tain, a “daz­zling, ram­bling, often inco­her­ent satire,” writes Matt Zoller Seitz, that “unfurls like a hal­lu­cino­genic day­dream.” Jodorowsky’s cin­e­mat­ic dream log­ic comes not only from his work as a “shaman­ic psy­chother­a­pist.” He also cred­its the tarot for his psy­chomag­i­cal real­ism. “For me,” says Jodor­owsky in the video at the top, “the tarot was some­thing more seri­ous. It was a deep psy­cho­log­i­cal search.” The result of that search—Jodorowsky’s sin­gu­lar and total­ly unfor­get­table body of work—speaks to us of the val­ue of such an under­tak­ing, what­ev­er means one uses to get there.

Or as Jodor­owsky says in one of his mys­ti­cal pro­nounce­ments, “If you set your spir­it to some­thing, that phe­nom­e­non will hap­pen.” If that sounds like mag­i­cal think­ing, that’s exact­ly what it is. Jodor­owsky shows us how to read the tarot as he does, for psy­cho­log­i­cal insight and cre­ative inspi­ra­tion, in the video above, addressed to a fan named John Bish­op. Span­ish speak­ers will have no trou­ble under­stand­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, as he quick­ly slides almost ful­ly into his native lan­guage through lack of con­fi­dence in his facil­i­ty with Eng­lish. The video belongs to a series on Jodorowsky’s YouTube chan­nel, most of them ful­ly in Span­ish with­out sub­ti­tles.

Nev­er­the­less, for Eng­lish speak­ers, the sub­ti­tled video at the top offers a sur­pris­ing­ly dense les­son on the Chilean mystic’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the tarot’s sup­posed wis­dom as a sym­bol­ic sys­tem, and a way of telling the present.

Should you wish to know more, you can find it in Jodorowsky’s book The Way of Tarot: The Spir­i­tu­al Teacher in the Cards, and prac­tice on your very own deck of Jodor­owsky-designed tarot cards.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet the For­got­ten Female Artist Behind the World’s Most Pop­u­lar Tarot Deck (1909)

Behold the Sola-Bus­ca Tarot Deck, the Ear­li­est Com­plete Set of Tarot Cards (1490)

Carl Jung on the Pow­er of Tarot Cards: They Pro­vide Door­ways to the Uncon­scious & Per­haps a Way to Pre­dict the Future

The Tarot Card Deck Cre­at­ed by Sal­vador Dalí

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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When a Salvador Dalí Sketch Was Stolen from Rikers Island Prison (2003)

in Art, History | October 21st, 2025


In 2003, a Sal­vador Dalí draw­ing was stolen from Rik­ers Island, one of the most for­mi­da­ble pris­ons in the Unit­ed States. That the inci­dent has nev­er been used as the basis for a major motion pic­ture seems inex­plic­a­ble, at least until you learn the details. A screen­writer would have to adapt it as not a stan­dard heist movie but a com­e­dy of errors, begin­ning with the very con­cep­tion of the crime. It seems that a few Rik­ers guards con­spired sur­rep­ti­tious­ly to replace the art­work, which hung on a lob­by wall, with a fake. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for them, they made a less-than-con­vinc­ing replace­ment, and even if it had been detail-per­fect, how did they expect to sell a unique work whose crim­i­nal prove­nance would be so obvi­ous?

Yet the job was, in some sense, a suc­cess, in that the draw­ing was nev­er actu­al­ly found. Dalí cre­at­ed it in 1965, when he was invit­ed by Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tion Com­mis­sion­er Anna Moscowitz Kross to meet with Rik­ers Island’s inmates. “Kross, the first female com­mis­sion­er of the jail sys­tem, believed in reha­bil­i­tat­ing pris­on­ers with art, includ­ing paint­ing ses­sions and the­ater pro­duc­tions,” writes James Fanel­li, telling the sto­ry in Esquire. As for the artist, “as long as the city’s news­pa­pers would be there to cap­ture his mag­nan­i­mous act, he was game” — but in the event, a 101-degree fever kept him from get­ting on the fer­ry to the prison that day. Instead, he dashed off an image of Christ on the cross (not an unfa­mil­iar sub­ject for him) and sent it in his stead.

“For near­ly two decades, it hung in the pris­on­ers’ mess hall,” writes Fanel­li. “In 1981, after an inmate lobbed a cof­fee cup at the paint­ing, break­ing its glass cas­ing and leav­ing a stain, the Dalí was tak­en down.” It then went from apprais­er to gallery to stor­age to the trash bin, from which it was saved by a guard. By 2003, it had end­ed up in the lob­by of one of the ten jails that con­sti­tute the Rik­ers Island com­plex, hung by the Pep­si machine. That no one paid the work much mind, and more so that it has been appraised at one mil­lion dol­lars, was clear­ly not lost on the employ­ee who mas­ter­mind­ed the heist. Yet though they man­aged to catch his accom­plices, the inves­ti­ga­tors were nev­er able legal­ly to deter­mine who that mas­ter­mind was.

Read­ers of Fanel­li’s sto­ry, or view­ers of the Inside Edi­tion video at the top of the post, may well find them­selves sus­pect­ing a par­tic­u­lar cor­rec­tions offer, who suc­cess­ful­ly main­tained his inno­cence despite being named by all his col­leagues who did get con­vic­tions. Any drama­ti­za­tion of the Rik­ers Island Dalí heist would have to make its own deter­mi­na­tion about whether he or some­one else was real­ly the ring­leader, and it might even have to make a guess as to the ulti­mate fate of the stolen draw­ing itself. One isn’t entire­ly dis­pleased to imag­ine it hang­ing today in a hid­den room in the out­er-bor­ough home of some retired prison guard: made in haste and with scant inspi­ra­tion, dam­aged by cof­fee and poor stor­age con­di­tions, and pos­si­bly ripped apart and put back togeth­er again, but a Dalí nonethe­less.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Great­est Art Heist in His­to­ry: How the Mona Lisa Was Stolen from the Lou­vre (1911)

How Art Gets Stolen: What Hap­pened to Egon Schiele’s Paint­ing Boats Mir­rored in the Water After Its Theft by the Nazis

How Jan van Eyck’s Mas­ter­piece, the Ghent Altar­piece, Became the Most Stolen Work of Art in His­to­ry

When Ger­man Per­for­mance Artist Ulay Stole Hitler’s Favorite Paint­ing & Hung it in the Liv­ing Room of a Turk­ish Immi­grant Fam­i­ly (1976)

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

Mod­ern Art Was Used As a Tor­ture Tech­nique in Prison Cells Dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Thieves Stole Priceless Jewels at the Louvre in 8 Minutes

in Art, Current Affairs | October 21st, 2025

On Sun­day morn­ing, some auda­cious thieves stole price­less jew­els from the Lou­vre Muse­um. The heist took only eight min­utes from start to fin­ish.

At 9:30 a.m., the rob­bers parked a truck with a portable lad­der in front of the Parisian muse­um. They ascend­ed the lad­der, cut through a sec­ond-floor win­dow, entered the muse­um, smashed through dis­play cas­es, and snatched price­less jew­els, includ­ing a roy­al emer­ald neck­lace. By 9:38 a.m., they descend­ed the lad­der and escaped on motor­cy­cles. And, with that, they made off like ban­dits.

Above, the Wall Street Jour­nal video helps you visu­al­ize how the theft unfold­ed, as does this arti­cle in the New York Times.

In the Relat­eds below, you can learn about the great­est theft in Lou­vre history—that is, the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa, which helped turn da Vin­ci’s art­work into the most famous paint­ing in the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent

When Pablo Picas­so and Guil­laume Apol­li­naire Were Accused of Steal­ing the Mona Lisa (1911)

How the Mona Lisa Went From Being Bare­ly Known, to Sud­den­ly the Most Famous Paint­ing in the World (1911)

The Great­est Art Heist in His­to­ry: How the Mona Lisa Was Stolen from the Lou­vre (1911)

 

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The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time, According to 750,000 Readers in the UK (2003)

in Books, Literature | October 20th, 2025

In the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, the read­ers of Europe went mad for epis­to­lary nov­els. France had, to name the most sen­sa­tion­al exam­ples, Mon­tesquieu’s Let­tres per­sanes, Rousseau’s Julie, and Lac­los’ Les Liaisons dan­gereuses; Ger­many, Goethe’s Die Lei­den des jun­gen Werther and Hölder­lin’s Hype­r­i­on. The Eng­lish proved espe­cial­ly insa­tiable when it came to long-form sto­ries com­posed entire­ly out of let­ters: soon after its pub­li­ca­tion in 1740, Samuel Richard­son’s Pamela — by some reck­on­ings, the first real Eng­lish nov­el — grew into an all-encom­pass­ing cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, which Richard­son him­self out­did eight years lat­er with Claris­sa. Alas, when the BBC sur­veyed the pub­lic two and three-quar­ter cen­turies lat­er to deter­mine the most beloved nov­el in the U.K., nei­ther of those books even made the top 100.

With the pos­si­ble excep­tions of Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la (#104) and Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein (#171) — two works of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry hor­ror that make use of a vari­ety of tex­tu­al forms, let­ters includ­ed — the rank­ings pro­duced by “The Big Read” includ­ed prac­ti­cal­ly no epis­to­lary nov­els. (Nor did eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry works of any oth­er kind make the cut.) What hap­pened to the lit­er­ary genre that had once caused such a nation­al craze? For one thing, Jane Austen hap­pened: nov­els like Pride and Prej­u­dice, Emma, and Per­sua­sion revealed just how rich a sto­ry could become when its nar­ra­tion breaks away from the pen of any char­ac­ter in par­tic­u­lar, gain­ing the abil­i­ty to know more about them than they know about them­selves. Not for noth­ing did all three of those books per­form well on The Big Read the bet­ter part of 200 years after they came out; Pride and Prej­u­dice even came in at num­ber two.

The top spot was tak­en by J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy: an under­stand­able out­come, giv­en not just its ambi­tion but also its mas­sive and endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty and influ­ence. Still, one does won­der if Peter Jack­son’s block­buster film adap­ta­tions, released in the years lead­ing up to the poll, might have had some­thing to do with it. Sim­i­lar sus­pi­cions adhere to the likes of Cap­tain Corel­li’s Man­dolin (#19), Amer­i­can Psy­cho (#185), The Beach (#103), and Brid­get Jones’s Diary (#75), all of which pro­vid­ed the basis for major motion pic­tures around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um. Umber­to Eco’s The Name of the Rose, one of a scat­ter­ing of trans­lat­ed nov­els to make the list, also got the Hol­ly­wood treat­ment, but it’s worth remem­ber­ing that the book itself sold so well that its Eng­lish trans­la­tor could use his roy­al­ties to build an addi­tion to his Tus­can vil­la called the “Eco Cham­ber.”

Apart from Austen, the oth­er nov­el­ists with mul­ti­ple books on The Big Read­’s top 100 include Stephen King, who also has three; Thomas Hardy, with four; and Charles Dick­ens, with sev­en. Those are, in any case, some of the nov­el­ists for adults. The abid­ing British appre­ci­a­tion for chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture shows in the high rank­ings of Roald Dahl, who secured a great many votes with even less­er works like The Twits and Dan­ny, the Cham­pi­on of the World; J. K. Rowl­ing, who would have ben­e­fit­ed from the height of Har­ry Pot­ter mania in any case; and the pro­lif­ic Dame Jacque­line Wil­son, whose four­teen nov­els on the list place her sec­ond only to Sir Ter­ry Pratch­et­t’s fif­teen. It could be that his com­ic-fan­ta­sy sen­si­bil­i­ty, sat­u­rat­ed with both the out­landish and the mun­dane, res­onat­ed unique­ly with the British psy­che. Or, as Pratch­ett him­self says in the BBC’s Big Read tele­vi­sion broad­cast, “it could just be that I’m quite pop­u­lar.”

In total, more than 750,000 read­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Big Read poll. Find read­ers’ top 100 books below:

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prej­u­dice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Mate­ri­als, Philip Pull­man
4. The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dou­glas Adams
5. Har­ry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire, JK Rowl­ing
6. To Kill a Mock­ing­bird, Harp­er Lee
7. Win­nie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nine­teen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Char­lotte Bron­të
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuther­ing Heights, Emi­ly Bron­të
13. Bird­song, Sebas­t­ian Faulks
14. Rebec­ca, Daphne du Mau­ri­er
15. The Catch­er in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Wil­lows, Ken­neth Gra­hame
17. Great Expec­ta­tions, Charles Dick­ens
18. Lit­tle Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Cap­tain Corel­li’s Man­dolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tol­stoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Mar­garet Mitchell
22. Har­ry Pot­ter And The Philoso­pher’s Stone, JK Rowl­ing
23. Har­ry Pot­ter And The Cham­ber Of Secrets, JK Rowl­ing
24. Har­ry Pot­ter And The Pris­on­er Of Azk­a­ban, JK Rowl­ing
25. The Hob­bit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Mid­dle­march, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irv­ing
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Stein­beck
30. Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land, Lewis Car­roll
31. The Sto­ry Of Tra­cy Beaker, Jacque­line Wil­son
32. One Hun­dred Years Of Soli­tude, Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez
33. The Pil­lars Of The Earth, Ken Fol­lett
34. David Cop­per­field, Charles Dick­ens
35. Char­lie And The Choco­late Fac­to­ry, Roald Dahl
36. Trea­sure Island, Robert Louis Steven­son
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Per­sua­sion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Her­bert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Mont­gomery
42. Water­ship Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gats­by, F Scott Fitzger­ald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexan­dre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revis­it­ed, Eve­lyn Waugh
46. Ani­mal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christ­mas Car­ol, Charles Dick­ens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Good­night Mis­ter Tom, Michelle Mago­ri­an
50. The Shell Seek­ers, Rosamunde Pilch­er
51. The Secret Gar­den, Frances Hodg­son Bur­nett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Stein­beck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karen­i­na, Leo Tol­stoy
55. A Suit­able Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swal­lows And Ama­zons, Arthur Ran­some
58. Black Beau­ty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Pun­ish­ment, Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky
61. Noughts And Cross­es, Mal­o­rie Black­man
62. Mem­oirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Gold­en
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dick­ens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCol­lough
65. Mort, Ter­ry Pratch­ett
66. The Mag­ic Far­away Tree, Enid Bly­ton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Ter­ry Pratch­ett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Ter­ry Pratch­ett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Gold­ing
71. Per­fume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Phil­an­thropists, Robert Tres­sell
73. Night Watch, Ter­ry Pratch­ett
74. Matil­da, Roald Dahl
75. Brid­get Jones’s Diary, Helen Field­ing
76. The Secret His­to­ry, Don­na Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dick­ens
80. Dou­ble Act, Jacque­line Wil­son
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Cap­ture The Cas­tle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gor­meng­hast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arund­hati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacque­line Wil­son
87. Brave New World, Aldous Hux­ley
88. Cold Com­fort Farm, Stel­la Gib­bons
89. Magi­cian, Ray­mond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Ker­ouac
91. The God­fa­ther, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Mag­ic, Ter­ry Pratch­ett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coel­ho
95. Kather­ine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jef­frey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacque­line Wil­son
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Mid­night’s Chil­dren, Salman Rushdie

Relat­ed con­tent:

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

The New York Times Presents the 100 Best Books of the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Select­ed by 503 Nov­el­ists, Poets & Crit­ics

29 Lists of Rec­om­mend­ed Books Cre­at­ed by Well-Known Authors, Artists & Thinkers: Jorge Luis Borges, Pat­ti Smith, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Bowie & More

The 100 Best Nov­els: A Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Cre­ates a List in 1898

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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