Belles Lettres
Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand
Triumphs, trials, tales — from the heights of London society to the depths of Reading Gaol and the luminous prose of De Profundis.
Volume 1 · Issue 1 · January 2026
Lag Boheme Quarterly
A literary and art magazine at the crossroads of Western letters and Yoruba artistic tradition
Yoruba Art
Solomon Knots, Interlace Patterns & the Corpus of Yoruba Art
Tracing the Solomon knot and interlace pattern from Ife bronzes through Benin plaques to contemporary Nigeria — an artistic history of the Yoruba People.
Issue 1
In this issue
Essays
Marx Through Lenin
A history of socialism — men are not born Marxists. From the Communist Manifesto to the October Revolution.
Literary Excerpts
“I Shall Not Serve”
The Christmas Dinner passage from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — an “unfortunate priest-ridden race.”
Yoruba Art
The Ife Bronze & Terracotta Heads
What Frobenius saw — the extraordinary naturalistic sculptures that challenged European assumptions about African art.
Belles Lettres
William Hazlitt’s Familiar Style
The finest prose writer of his age — Hazlitt’s radical journalism, literary criticism, and the art of the familiar essay.
Belles Lettres
Must We Burn Sade?
Simone de Beauvoir and the paradox of the Divine Marquis — depravity, conscience, and the ironies of a revolutionary moderate.
“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries” Thomas Mann
Belles Lettres
View all Belles Lettres →Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand
Triumphs, trials, tales — from the heights of London society to the depths of Reading Gaol and the luminous prose of De Profundis.
William Hazlitt’s Familiar Style
The finest prose writer of his age — Hazlitt’s radical journalism, literary criticism, and the art of the familiar essay.
Victor Serge: Writing for the Desk Drawer No More
The revolutionary writer who survived Stalinism and exile — his courage, his prose, his legacy.
Must We Burn Sade?
Simone de Beauvoir and the paradox of the Divine Marquis — depravity, conscience, and the ironies of a revolutionary moderate.
Essays
View all Essays →Marx Through Lenin
A history of socialism — men are not born Marxists. From the Communist Manifesto to the October Revolution.
Fine Sculptures
The greatest of all the arts — Michelangelo, Bernini, Verrocchio, and Donatello on the liberation of form from stone.
Ancient Masters
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and the Roman-Hellenistic world — a journey through the sculpture collections of antiquity.
Yoruba Art
View all Yoruba Art →
Solomon Knots, Interlace Patterns & the Corpus of Yoruba Art
Tracing the Solomon knot and interlace pattern from Ife bronzes through Benin plaques to contemporary Nigeria — an artistic history of the Yoruba People.
The Ife Bronze & Terracotta Heads
What Frobenius saw — the extraordinary naturalistic sculptures that challenged European assumptions about African art.
Yoruba Ivories
Owo Art — lidded cups, masks, carvings. The virtuosity of Owo’s ivory carvers and the courtly regalia of the Olowo.
Yoruba Textiles
Origins and evidence — Ijebu Aso Olona, Aso Ofi, Adire, beaded crowns and robes of Yorubaland.
Trees Best for the Streets
“Oriental sycamore — very hardy; will adapt itself to city conditions; grows fairly fast and is highly resistant to insects and disease.” A charming guide to urban arboriculture, from Studies of Trees.
Modern Masters
View all Modern Masters →
James Tissot
The Victorian painter between Paris and London — society portraits, Japanese influences, and a life shaped by love and loss.
Literary Excerpts
View all Literary Excerpts →“I Shall Not Serve”
The Christmas Dinner passage from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — an “unfortunate priest-ridden race.”
Strong Opinions — Nabokov’s Best Bits
The sharpest observations from the master of English prose — on art, literature, and the responsibilities of the writer.
Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays
The best Hazlitt excerpts on the Bard — literary criticism at its finest, from Hamlet to Lear.
Victor Serge’s Finest Lines and Passages
The most luminous prose from the revolutionary writer — passages of courage, exile, and the human spirit.
Music & Culture
View all Music & Culture →
The Best Album Covers
When jazz met graphic design — from Monk’s Underground to Bitches Brew, the album covers that became art in their own right.
I Still Love Mingus
A love letter to Charles Mingus — bassist, pianist, composer, bandleader, and one of the great geniuses of American music.
Critical Points
The moments that separate the great from the merely good — a listening guide to transcendent passages in jazz, soul, and beyond.
Café La Bohème
On film, design, and the bohemian impulse — from Bertolucci’s Dreamers to Buñuel’s bourgeoisie.