Skip to footer

10 most popular 2013 'Stories of the Week' from Library of America

The Library of America sends a Story of the Week to its e-mail subscribers. The most popular story of 2013 was Hawthorne's 'John Englefield's Thanksgiving,' a story in which an unexpected guest gives a blacksmith a surprising holiday.

Kate Chopin's 'Athenaise' was one of the most popular narratives in the Library of America's Story of the Week feature.
  • By Danny Heitman Contributor

Although it’s not likely to get as much attention as the Oscar race or the Golden Globes, the Library of America has just celebrated an awards event of its own that might attract a little applause from readers.

We’re talking about the LOA’s Top 10 List of the most popular “Stories of the Week” from 2013, its recap of the superstars in its regular online feature for the publisher’s fan base.

Founded in 1979, the Library of America is a nonprofit publisher that produces definitive editions of the works of the nation’s classic writers. Its signature product line – elegant, hand-stitched volumes covered in distinctive, black-and-white dust jackets – has become a fixture of literary class.

In its more than three decades of operation, LOA has published landmark anthologies of literary luminaries as varied as Mark Twain, Ring Lardner, and James Baldwin – in short, the pantheon of American literature.

But in recent years, LOA has been making a special effort to broaden its audience of readers with an aggressive online outreach. That effort includes “Story of the Week,” a free feature in which e-mail subscribers sample a story or essay from an LOA author every seven days.

Recently, LOA released its most popular “Story of the Week” features from the past 12 months, and an eclectic list it is.

Among the honorees are Kate Chopin, whose short story “Athenaise” chronicles a newly married woman who seeks her brother’s help in escaping her unhappy union; Eudora Welty’s “Petrified Man,” a darkly comic tale involving a traveling sideshow; and “Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln,” in which Frederick Douglass recalls the Great Emancipator.

The No. 1 “Story of the Week” for 2013 was “John Inglefield’s Thanksgiving,” a curious holiday narrative by Nathaniel Hawthorne in which an unexpected guest brings a few surprises to the household of a village blacksmith.

Readers can check out a complete list of LOA’s Top 10 “Stories of the Week” here.

Readers can subscribe to “Story of the Week” here.

Danny Heitman, a columnist for The Advocate newspaper in Louisiana, is the author of “A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 10 most popular 2013 'Stories of the Week' from Library of America
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0117/10-most-popular-2013-Stories-of-the-Week-from-Library-of-America
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe