See the list of alleged communists Orwell gave to the British government

In 1949, Orwell provided a list of communist sympathizers to a British anti-communist propaganda unit, naming figures like actor Charlie Chaplin and writer John Steinbeck. When it was made public in 2003, some called Orwell a government informant, though others blamed his tuberculosis, which would take his life a year later, while others blamed his romantic interest in the woman who asked him for the names.

Hughes testified before Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations

In 1953, the writer was interrogated by the Subcommittee’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, about communism and its impact on his work. Cohn quoted lines from poems like “Goodbye, Christ” and “Ballads of Lenin,” but Hughes denied that he was a communist, explaining that poetry should not be taken literally. “That is a poem,” he told Cohn. “One can not state one believes every word of a poem.”

Sartre eventually denounced communism

The French philosopher was a long-time ardent supporter of communism and the USSR. He finally spoke out against the movement with the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, saying that the move was "made possible by 12 years of terror and imbecility."

The FBI investigated John Steinbeck, believing he might be a communist.

Woody Guthrie was briefly a member of the Communist Party USA, but he was kicked out for 'lack of discipline.'

Camus was once a communist, but eventually disavowed the ideology

The writer belonged to the French Communist Party and the Algerian Communist Party in the mid-1930s, but he was eventually expelled for refusing to downplay objections to French colonialism. By the time he published "The Rebel," he was vocally anti-communist, believing it was a utopian ideology that often relied on violence.

Camus and Sartre had a public falling out over communism

The two were close friends, sometimes collaborating throughout the 1940s, but the release of Camus' 1951 book, "The Rebel," led to a schism over differing views on communism.

Poet Robert Lowell encouraged O'Connor to turn away from commercial appeal

When O'Connor secured a publisher for "Wise Blood," her publisher envisioned it as a broad, commercial comedy, something Lowell—the accomplished poet whom she met after graduate school at Yaddo, an artist colony in upstate New York—suggested she avoid, encouraging her to lean into her more esoteric and darker interests. This interview with O'Connor biographer Brad Gooch elaborates on that advice.

The FBI tracked Woody Guthrie's politics for years, amassing an enormous file that was only discovered many years after his death.

T.S. Eliot rejected George Orwell's 'Animal Farm,' suggesting that the despotic pigs might be the best leaders for the farm.

The term ‘McCarthyism’ was coined by a political cartoonist

In February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy infamously proclaimed that he had a list of communist State Department employees. The next month, cartoonist Herbert Block published a cartoon in the Washington Post featuring a reluctant elephant (the mascot of the Republican Party) being pushed to stand on a wobbly tower labeled “McCarthyism.”

Hughes lived in the Soviet Union in the 1930s

Hughes grew interested in the Soviet Union and radical politics in the early 1930s after the Communist Party of the United States defended the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers wrongly accused and convicted of raping two white women. In 1932, he lived there while working on a film that ultimately fizzled out, and returned home. In 1937, he planned to lead a tour of the country, as advertised below, but canceled it when a newspaper offered him a position reporting from the Spanish Civil War.

The Pulitzer Prize has had its fair share of controversies

From fabricated articles to fiction that inspired FBI surveillance, these are five of the most controversial moments in Pulitzer Prize history. Among them is the Pulitzer board's decision not to give novelist Sinclair Lewis the 1921 award for fiction. This snub led the author of "Main Street" to become the first Pulitzer recipient to reject the prize in 1926.

Debunking the myth of Dickinson's antisocial seclusion

It's true that the poet largely kept to herself in her late-30s, spending nearly all her time at her father's house, and when she did venture out into the world, she'd wear white, facts that led American history to label her a strange, antisocial recluse. But, as this essay shows, that image is not entirely true, evident in the many relationships she maintained through her letters.

The FBI kept tabs on Camus and Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre worked as an American correspondent for Combat, the newspaper edited by Albert Camus. While he was in the States, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI kept tabs on him, concerned that Combat was publishing unfavorable portrayals of the US.

Eleanor Roosevelt sheltered student activists at the White House after they were subpoenaed by HUAC

In 1939, when Congress subpoenaed leaders of the American Youth Congress on suspicion of communist ties, Eleanor Roosevelt attended the hearings herself and then invited all 10 students to stay at the White House, as they had nowhere to sleep.

Ginsberg's 'Howl' portrayed people outside the American mainstream

The poem’s portraits of people on society's fringes—including vivid descriptions of drug use, psychiatric wards, and homosexuality—led to its seizure by US Customs agents and the arrest of its publisher Ferlinghetti. The American Civil Liberties Union defended both in a landmark trial that ruled the book was not obscene.

Scholars allege the CIA funded the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop

The graduate program—which instructed legendary writers like Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, and John Berryman—received funding from several CIA fronts. Some academics suggest this was in the service of promoting a realist American literature as a counterpoint to Soviet fiction.

Mabel Dodge Luhan facilitated art from Georgia O'Keeffe and others

Mabel Dodge Luhan was a writer, but she's better known art patron. She organized the 1913 "Armory Show" in New York that introduced European modernism to the US and invited artists (including Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather, and Robinson Jeffers) to Taos, New Mexico, to cultivate a "Paris West."

Hear 2 literature professors unpack the legacy of 'Animal Farm'

The University of Oxford's David Dwan—a professor of English literature and intellectual history—is an Orwell scholar who has written about the author's politics, especially as they relate to "Animal Farm." In this conversation with Dr. Nathan Waddell, from the University of Birmingham, UK, Dwan explores how framing the novella as a beast fable both made it more accessible and allowed it to be overly simplified.

Camus died in a car crash, which some believe was orchestrated by the KGB

Albert Camus died in 1960, at the age of 46, after his publisher's car crashed into a tree. Italian author Giovanni Catelli, however, alleges that what appeared to be an accident was actually an assassination by the Soviet spy agency as a way to silence the French writer's anti-Soviet beliefs.

How the CIA used 'Animal Farm' as Cold War propaganda

After Orwell's death in 1950, undercover agents bought the book's film rights from his widow and got to work creating a family-friendly version of the story that would reinforce its anti-Soviet themes and downplay its criticisms of capitalism and sympathetic portrayal of Snowball, the Trotsky analog.

Rockwell left the Saturday Evening Post and began creating more politically charged work

Rockwell left the magazine in 1963 and joined Look magazine, where he began depicting a more complex America than he had at the Post. His work at Look dealt with racial segregation and violence, and often made unambiguous statements about real events.

Why Orwell called Dalí a 'disgusting human being'

Writer George Orwell took offense at the disturbing actions described in Dalí's salacious autobiography "The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí." In a 1944 essay, Orwell described the cruelty and moral degradation of Dalí—while also admitting the artist's undeniable talent.

A prominent writer analyzes Thoreau's apparent contradictions

Some call Thoreau a monkish hermit living in the woods, while others say he's a privileged layabout who was playacting a simple life. In this essay, Rebecca Solnit argues that both of those assessments are caricatures that reduce a complex man who reckoned with complex ideas.

The Dylan/Whitman connection

Even before his 2016 Nobel Prize, critics often wrote about Bob Dylan with a seriousness typically reserved for literary figures. In this critical analysis, Jones Hogsed continues the tradition, analyzing Dylan's vision of America alongside Walt Whitman's.

Joan Didion's 1967 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' laid the hippie counterculture bare

Didion wrote a detailed account of living alongside hippies in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury area in the 1960s. Beyond their style and politics, Didion uncovered chaos, with one particularly shocking interview of a 5-year-old on LSD. Her stories challenged the movement's message of freedom and utopia in California.

How Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman grappled with the American Civil War

Whitman, whose brother was injured while fighting for the Union, was often overt in his pro-Union poems. Dickinson, whose brother paid to have someone enlist under his name, was more subtle, though equally as affected, as this comparative analysis makes clear.

George Orwell's original preface to 'Animal Farm' criticized the publishers who had rejected the book for political reasons.

Watch a conservative icon interview Allen Ginsberg, a figurehead of the Beat Generation.

Communism grew in appeal during the Great Depression

With at least a quarter of the country out of work, some Americans disenchanted with capitalism began looking at alternatives. Watch this five-minute video to learn about communism's growing allure during the Great Depression.

Why both the left and the right use 'Animal Farm' as an allegory

Figures from both ends of the political spectrum have claimed Orwell's novella as their own, sometimes ignoring inconvenient aspects of the plot or details of Orwell's biography. This analysis of those political reactions explores why the text is so malleable.

Martha Graham refused to perform at the 1936 Berlin Olympics because she believed doing so would be a tacit endorsement of the Nazis

Norman Rockwell was sometimes confused with another Rockwell, who was a notorious Nazi

George Lincoln Rockwell was the founder of the American Nazi Party and had no relation to Norman Rockwell, the beloved American painter. But that didn't stop people from confusing the two or suggesting that they were family members. It was something that Norman Rockwell's granddaughter said had greatly disturbed the painter.

Norman Rockwell's 'Freedom of Speech' has become an internet meme

The famous painting, which portrays a man in work clothes speaking up in a crowd of men in suits, has become a companion image for internet users posting unpopular or controversial opinions. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Whitman founded an antislavery newspaper in Brooklyn

In 1948, Whitman founded a “free soil” newspaper called the Brooklyn Freeman, which explicitly argued against slavery. That activism led to problems for the paper, including an attack on its headquarters after the release of its first issue.

Diego Rivera hid a tiny image of Vladimir Lenin in Rockefeller Center

Nelson Rockefeller commissioned painter Diego Rivera to paint a mural for the entrance of the Rockefeller Center. Allegedly in response to criticism that he had “sold out,” Rivera slipped in a painting of Vladimir Lenin.

Many critics dismissed Norman Rockwell as overly sentimental

The painter’s portraits of American life were often dismissed as commercially minded, banal, or kitschy, especially when compared with the more abstract art of the time. Rockwell, however, was undeterred, commenting that he wanted to produce work that would make viewers “want to sigh and smile at the same time.”

Rockwell worked with psychoanalyst Erik Erikson

In 1953, the painter and his family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to be closer to the Austen Riggs Center, where his wife was undergoing treatment for alcoholism and depression. Rockwell began treatment, too, working with Erikson—famous for coining the term “identity crisis”—on his anxieties about his art.