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Metropolitan Museum grants access to high-res images
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put hundreds of high-resolution, copyright- free images from its collections online! Oh what a tzimmes I'm in! Looking at stuff like this is such a drug for me. I've...
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The Comtesse de Segur's enchanting fairy tale illustrations
With so many libraries and other sources scanning gorgeous old books and putting them online, one can come across myriad treasures in the digital domain. Below are the fruits of one delving session:...
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Enrique Granados: what he did for love
Growing up with a love of classical guitar music (and feeble attempts to play same) I was intrigued by a tidbit I recently discovered about Enrique Granados (1867–1916), a Spanish composer who features...
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Dodie Smith: Beyond '101 Dalmations'
Dodie Smith is the author of the wonderful children's book The Hundred and One Dalmatians as well as the wonderful adult, cult novel I Capture the Castle (also made into a wonderful film). Mental Floss...
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Sensational 19th-century images of women under duress
I loved this Flavorwirefeature on lavish period illustrations for books by Émile Zola, Eugene Sue, and Victor Hugo. Hugo is one of the authors featured in Gilded Youth: Three Lives in France's Belle...
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"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day..."
Bobbie Gentry was born Roberta Lee Streeter on July 27, 1944 in Chickasaw County, Mississippi.It's been almost 50 years since Bobbie Gentry's debut single “Ode to Billie Joe” toppled the Beatles’ “All...
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Dogs + kids = happiness
If you're a dog lover, do treat yourself to this gallery of canines prepared by Maria Popova of Brain Pickings. It's excerpted from 1,000 Dog Portraits From the People Who Love Them, and the story...
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Remembering D-Day: Pathé & Daily Telegraph newsreels
We invite you to explore our "Spotlight" feature of curated books, DVDs, and music relating to this monumental event in U.S. and world history.Below you can view vintage British Pathé newsreel...
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Summer reading: mysteries
Summer reading lists are proliferating in various media, reminding us that it's the season to carve out time for alluring new titles as well as classics you've been waiting to get around to. Here are...
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"Peculiar, private, and taboo subjects": spoken word interview with Sylvia Plath
We're all so saturated with photos of authors, which have become virtually ubiquitous since the advent of Google images. But what about recordings of their voices? I was mesmerized by this substantial...
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Fun with music: horsing around with Vivaldi, wigging out with Bach, and...
All the while bowing passages from the "Summer" concerto of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi, this quartet of classical musicians pull off one of the funniest and most exhilarating stunts I've ever seen....
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Atticus Finch Is Father's Day champ; Joyce's Bloomsday
Gregory Peck in the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird.Harper Lee's principled and compassionate hero Atticus Finch topped both Mental Floss's "Best Parents in Literature" list and the Christian...
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Christopher Clark charts the convoluted path to WWI
This July 5, 1914 illustration from La Domenica Del Corriere depicts the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. It's the well-known event that triggered a chain...
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Midsummer Night / Summer solstice / Juneteenth
Tonight is Midsummer Eve, when all the fairy folk flit about and play pranks. It's also the summer solstice weekend. In what fashion will you mark it, mayhap with bonfire or feast? The longest day of...
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Chrissie Hynde &"Stockholm": a "female veteran"
Did y'all see Sasha Frere-Jones' perspicacious profile of Chrissie Hynde and her new album Stockholm in the latest New Yorker? The driving force behind The Pretenders, the ever-edgy singer-songwriter...
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Poetry slam: laureates—Charles Wright, Rita Dove, Billy Collins, et al.
New U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Wright (Michelle Cuevas, UVA Magazine)I was intrigued to see that the new poet laureate, Charles Wright, hails from my alma mater The University of Virginia (as does...
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Preston Sturges’s “11 rules for box-office appeal”
Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert in The Palm Beach Story. "Sturges's 1942 classic is like drinking a chilled glass of champagne, down in one. ....The zip and zap and zing are things of wonder."—The...
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"Varieties of Trench Life": WWI British Captain A. A. Dickson ("Dickie")...
That moment he got me: a terrific "Bung-g-g" on the jaw, and down in the ditch by the track I spun, face and neck streaming blood. Field dressing was pulled out in a moment, but it was no place to...
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Thomas Jefferson's push for religious freedom
Statue of Jefferson reading from the Declaration of Independence, University of VirginiaJehovah. Allah. Brahma. Ra. Atma. Zeus. God. These are the names of deities etched on a tablet held by an angel...
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Meet Harry Patch, "The Last Fighting Tommy"
"This articulate, modest and outspoken man not only remains one of the last living links with a traumatic event that has become part of the national consciousness, but is an unassailable witness of...
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