Anne Jamison

The essays in The History of the Future often chronicle the various ways these places and their founders, planners, architects, or investors imagined the future alongside the ways the future did and did not cooperate. Even where wrong (and they almost always were), their vision still shapes the fruits of their labors in ways they never would have wished.

Our Emily Dickinsons covers a truly impressive mix of writers, their eras, their literary and personal histories. Not all of this material is likely to appeal to all readers—but similarly, what does appeal at any given time may be surprising.

Despite my fevered readings and re-readings, I had never for one moment considered the economics of Wuthering Heights at all, despite half the novel being devoted to Heathcliff’s vengeance by property acquisition.