TODAY: In 1846, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning elope. 

• Christine Estima on breathing fictional life into Milena Jesenská, Kafka’s first translator (and so much more). | Lit Hub Biography
• Should you be reading more books about books? Susan Coll recommends titles by John Tottenham, Emily Henry, R.F. Kuang, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• Tom Piazza recounts his inspiring encounters with folk-country icon John Prine. | Lit Hub Music
• Darcie Dennigan explains the benefits of unrouting your routines by writing in cemeteries. | Lit Hub Craft
• Elizabeth Gilbert’s All the Way to the River, Sarah Moss’ Ripeness, and Stephen Greenblatt’s Dark Renaissance all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
• “Right under our noses, Homo sapiens is transitioning into a new type of species that might be called Homo techno.” On the integration, past and future, of humans and machines. | Lit Hub Technology
• “Take it up with Jesus, nationalists.” Why Christian nationalism isn’t actually so Christian. | Lit Hub Politics
• “My wife was, at one time, a very beautiful woman. But over time, her beauty faded, and with it went her desire for me.” Read from Makenna Goodman’s new novel, Helen of Nowhere. | Lit Hub Fiction
• On Empire of the Petal Throne and its creator M.A.R. Barker, a neo-Nazi once hailed as “the forgotten Tolkien.” | The Baffler
• How Elizabeth Inchbald’s play Lovers’ Vows exposes the social boundaries of Regency England through its appearance in Mansfield Park. | JSTOR Daily
• “We work from the belly of the beast.” On art, protest, and migration. | Public Books
• Molly Templeton considers the “death of criticism” discourse: “We are not just stressed about criticism. We are stressed about the papers that printed the criticism ceasing to exist, the local news outlets not having the funds to cover their communities, the jobs all drying up.” | Reactor 
• Sarah Khatry and April Zhu, former nonfiction editors at Guernica, recall their March 2024 resignations following the publication of Joanna Chen’s essay “From the Edges of a Broken World.” | n+1
• After 26 years, a Henry David Thoreau impersonator is leaving Walden Pond. | The New York Times

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