The Dead Toreador, by Édouard Manet, c. 1864. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

The Dead Toreador, by Édouard Manet, c. 1864. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Death

Volume VI, Number 4 | fall 2013

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"The Antiquary's Last Will and Testament" from The English Dance of Death, by Thomas Rowlandson, 1814.

Preamble

Memento Mori

By Lewis H. Lapham

Learning how to die, as Michel de Montaigne once rightly said, is the unlearning of how to be a slave.

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Fond Farewells

By Bess Lovejoy

Jessica Mitford’s An American Way of Death took down an industry few people knew about, but that everyone would one day need.

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Map

Departures

A million ways to die.

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Miscellany

Slaves in ancient China during the Zhou dynasty were sometimes buried alive with their recently departed masters in order that they might continue to serve them in the afterlife.

1849 | Cape Cod

Natural Law

Henry David Thoreau meditates upon a shipwreck. More

1836 | London

In the Name of Love

In one long yellow string I wound, three times her little throat around.More

1849 | Filey

Gone Like Dreams

Charlotte Brontë grieves for her brother and sisters.More

Charts & Graphs

Last Words

The final statements of historical figures.

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Photograph of American editor Brent Cunningham.

Fresco of Franciscan friar and traveler Giovanni da Pian del Carpine.

Black and white photograph of Russian author Leo Tolstoy.

Black and white photograph of John Crowley sitting on a porch.

Black and white image of Greek biographer and writer Plutarch.

Black and white image of German dramatist Heinrich von Kleist.

Color image of English novelist Charlotte Brontë with book in hand.

Portrait of Chinese Daoist Zhuangzi.

Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.

—John Osborne, 1956

Painted portrait of Scottish philosopher David Hume.

Color photograph of American physician Jack Kevorkian.

David Hume & Jack Kevorkian

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