John Updike’s Pennsylvania Interviews by James Plath

Posted by on Mar 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on John Updike’s Pennsylvania Interviews by James Plath John Updike’s Pennsylvania Interviews edited by James Plath Lehigh University Press, 294 pp., cloth $85 Born in Reading, Berks County, and raised in nearby Shillington and Plowville, author John Updike, like the main character Harry Angstrom in his Rabbit series of novels, often tried to escape Pennsylvania in his literary work, but he always seemed to come back home. This book, with its...
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Ephrata’s Comet Book

Posted by on Jun 6, 2016 in | Comments Off on Ephrata’s Comet Book   In the late winter of 1744 a bright comet with six tails that spread out like a fan was visible in the sky. It was so brilliant at its perihelion – its point closest to the sun – that it could be seen even in the daytime. Known as the Great Comet of 1744, the astronomical object mystified the world and led to speculation about its meaning in both scientific and religious...
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Updike by Adam Begley

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Updike by Adam Begley Updike by Adam Begley HarperCollins, 558 pp., cloth $29.95 “No, no, no, no, no, to paraphrase King Lear,” John Updike told me 12 years ago when I suggested he consider authorizing a biographer. “Please don’t ruin the rest of my life with any talk of a biography, that living death.” Updike’s opposition to literary biography was so fierce it’s no surprise his widow, Martha Updike, refused to...
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Calligraphy Version of Washington Irving’s Poem “The Wife”

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Calligraphy Version of Washington Irving’s Poem “The Wife” Amy Matilda Cassey, the wife of affluent African American abolitionist, businessman, and community leader Joseph Cassey, was active in the Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society, local black literary and debating societies, and reform movements of the day. Her greatest contribution, however, may be an album she compiled that spans nearly a quarter-century. From 1833 to 1856, Cassey filled her...
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