Discover Queen Victoria’s mourning gown at Kensington Palace. Explore how her lifelong grief shaped Victorian mourning rituals—black crepe, jet jewelry, and public displays of loss—turning private sorrow into a powerful cultural and political tradition.

Tea-leaf reading, or tasseography, blends ritual, history, and material culture. From 19th-century fortune cups to modern mindfulness, this practice transforms an ordinary cup of tea into a mirror of possibility

Modern romance has rewritten Jane Austen, trading social critique for fantasy. Learn how Austen’s sharp insights on power, gender, and survival were lost in the myth of “happily ever after.”

Explore how Jane Austen's novels reveal the hidden politics of masculinity and marriage. Far from fairy tales, her stories expose the economic and social pressures shaping gender and courtship in Regency England.

A powerful personal essay on queer masculinity, anger, and healing. Erick DuPree explores male wounds, the hero’s journey, and why masculinity isn’t toxic by nature—but in need of community, kinship, and care. Reclaiming manhood starts with letting ourselves be angry.

A personal essay exploring fatherlessness, gender norms, and queer identity—unpacking what it means to be “man enough” in a world that punishes softness and fetishizes masculinity.

Explore the Byronic hero of Gothic fiction—tortured, magnetic, and dangerously masculine. This essay unpacks how stoicism, pain, and emotional repression became eroticized traits, revealing the dark roots of masculine fantasy, dominance, and the myth of redemptive love.

Discover the radical side of Jane Austen in Helena Kelly’s provocative book. Jane Austen, the Secret Radical reveals how Austen’s novels critique war, slavery, patriarchy, and power—hidden beneath the surface of romance. A must-read for fans of feminist and political literary analysis.

Victorian monsters—vampires, werewolves, and mummies—mirrored anxieties about sex, science, empire, and identity, showing how fear and fascination shaped both culture and imagination.

Harold Bloom’s Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles is a powerful final meditation on poetry’s ability to confront death and despair. Through Shakespeare, Milton, and Stevens, Bloom argues that great literature empowers the reader’s mind to resist mortality with imagination and meaning.

A bold, personal review of The Leatherman’s Handbook: Golden Anniversary Edition by Larry Townsend. This foundational leather and BDSM classic remains vital for queer history, kink ethics, and radical consent. A must-read for leatherfolk and the kink-curious alike.

Explore the queer undertones in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and his passionate bond with Nathaniel Hawthorne. This essay unpacks homoerotic longing, emotional repression, and how Melville’s fiction encodes same-sex desire in the language of obsession and the sublime.

As summer fades and autumn arrives, the growing darkness invites reflection, stillness, and renewal. From myths of light to the gifts found in shadow, fall reminds us that darkness, too, carries treasures of healing, grace, and hope."

Swole is more than just a book for men, and certainly more than a book about the gym. It’s for anyone who’s ever felt out of place in their own skin, or questioned the messages the world sends about how a body should look.

Explore the dark psychology of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights through the lens of masculinity, sadism, and BDSM. This essay unpacks why cruelty is mistaken for love—and how the Gothic bad boy became an enduring, dangerous erotic fantasy.

Marjorie Garber’s Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession explores how the concept of “character” evolved from moral essence to cultural performance. Drawing from literature, psychology, and politics, Garber reveals why our obsession with character tells us more than it solves.

Shakespeare and Modern Culture is not a conventional work of literary criticism. It is a sweeping cultural study that repositions Shakespeare not as a monument to be revered, but as a force still shaping how we think and live. For readers willing to engage deeply, it offers dazzling insights into why Shakespeare remains uncannily contemporary.

Victorian culture embraced “other sciences” like phrenology, alienism, and spiritualism alongside mourning rituals. These practices mirrored anxieties about race, empire, gender, and death—revealing how science, the occult, and grief shaped the shadows of progress.

Explore the emotional journey of choosing self-preservation over societal expectations of forgiveness in this poignant reflection on a father's death and a queer individual's fight for healing and self-worth.

A powerful exploration of the male psyche through four core archetypes—King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. This personal review of Moore and Gillette’s classic offers insight into mature masculinity, emotional integration, and inner balance. A must-read for men on a journey of self-discovery.