Literary History

When Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables was published in the spring of 1862, it took the world by storm. Within weeks, American audiences began devouring a five-volume translation by renowned classicist Charles E. Wilbour. As the Civil War raged, soldiers on both sides of the lines gobbled up copies and carried them into battle. But here's the thing: Confederate soldiers weren't actually reading the same book as their Northern adversaries, and that was by design.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation was a controversial blockbuster and a D.C. schoolteacher, Angelina Weld Grimké, was a writer unafraid to use her art as form of protest.  This is the story of "Rachel," an acclaimed anti-lynching play written in Washington, D.C.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter, visited Washington, D.C. in 1862, as the Capital was gearing up for war against the Confederacy. If you remember Hawthorne at all from school, you won’t be surprised to find he had a lot to say.

You know who was just too fabulous for Washington. D.C. to handle? Oscar Wilde. He caused quite a stir when he visited in the January of 1882 as part of a lecture tour on the “Philosophy of Aestheticism”.