The poet W. S. Merwin passed away on March 15, marking the conclusion to a long and richly productive life. His body of poetry proves difficult to sum up. Over the course of his seven decades of writing, Merwin changed again and again, in style and tone and subject.
Today, we honor Jane Austen's death. As one of the greatest English novelists, her works live on and continue to be some of the most influential literary works in history. They were not, however, always looked at as such. Originally, scholars of English literature did not recognize the value of her work, and it wasn't until the…
