Marge Piercy's novel Woman on the Edge of Time presents a chilling view of the modern mental health system, by documenting the thoughts and experiences of a woman committed to a mental institution against her will. Was the author basing her portrayal on real-life experience? Had she been involve...

I was listening to a talk about W.E.B. Du Bois and the speaker said W.E.B. Du Bois had once noted that it was "Harvard's honor" for him to be their student. However, I was not able to find evidence of Bois every saying this. Has anyone came across this quote? I would be interested to know if th...

In Keats's Ode on Melancholy, he writes neither twist Wolf's bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Why is Wolf's bane described as "tight-rooted"?

In "Ode on Melancholy", Keats uses the images of three poisons in the first stanza: Wolf's bane, nightshade, and yew-berries. Are these poisons simply meant to connote death/suicide, or might they have a deeper purpose?

During the dinner at the king's palace, Rumata has a conversation with Father Gur, the poet. Rumata offers him a copy of the poets work, in exchange for a promise to write something new: “Very well put, Father Gur. By the way, is it still possible to find your book?” “I don’t know… And...

In the beginning of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's novel Hard to Be a God, the protagonist, Anton, goes down a country road, disobeying a "wrong way" sign, and finds a skeleton of a fascist chained to his machine gun - a remnant of The Great Patriotic War. “Toshka, what was there, beyond the ...