‘He was my North, my South, my East and West’ is a line from what is probably W. H. Auden’s best-known poem, ‘Funeral Blues’ (as it’s commonly known) or ‘Stop all the clocks’ (as it’s also known, after its opening words). But what is the meaning of this line, and Auden’s poem as a whole?
Literature
July 8, 2021, 9:00am Literary Hub is pleased to announce that NoViolet Bulawayo’s second novel, Glory, will be published by Viking on March 8, 2022. Viking describes the new book from the author of We Need New Names (which was shortlisted for the Booker and was also one of our favorite debuts of the decade)
The story of the Three Wise Men visiting the infant Jesus shortly after his birth in Bethlehem is a well-known feature of the Nativity story. And yet the only account of the visit of the Wise Men or ‘Magi’ is found in the Gospel of Matthew: the other Gospel which treats the birth of Jesus
‘Ode to Death’ is a poem by Charlotte Smith (1749-1806), a fascinating poet who is regarded as one of the first English Romantic poets (before Wordsworth and Coleridge had officially ushered in the movement in Britain). Published in 1797, ‘Ode to Death’ takes the perhaps unlikely position of celebrating death as a blessed release from
TODAY: In 1907, science fiction writer Robert Heinlein is born. “I am painfully aware of every single thing that I need from music, embarrassed by what I ask of it.” Jessica Hopper on rock, rapture, and what artists do that mortals cannot. | Lit Hub Music Julia Baird on honoring the “dull, repetitive, unglamorous
Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, is Jane Austen’s best-known and probably most widely studied novel. But what does the novel mean? What is it really all about? And where did that title, Pride and Prejudice, come from? Before we attempt to answer some of these questions, it might be worth recapping the plot of
July 6, 2021, 1:22pm This week’s issue of The New Yorker features an excerpt of Sally Rooney’s forthcoming novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You. As its title, “Unread Messages,” implies, the excerpts includes its fair share of texts, calls, feed-scrolling, and social media stalking. This isn’t new for Rooney, who nailed the sentimentality and self-editing
‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.’ These lines appear in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in one of Prospero’s most famous speeches (‘Our revels now are ended’). The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s most enchanting and enchanted plays: a fantasy or ‘romance’ featuring
If you can believe it, 2021 is already halfway over. That means you’ve burned your way through all the books from the first half of the year (right?) and are finding yourself hungry for more. Never fear, dear Reader. Lit Hub is here for you. For our second Big Preview of the year, we’ve picked
Hamlet’s ‘What a piece of work is a man’ speech is among the most famous prose speeches from Shakespeare’s play. It has become well-known, and is sometimes used in television and radio adverts; it was also memorably recited by Richard E. Grant’s character Withnail at the end of the British cult film Withnail and I
July 2, 2021, 11:33am We’re not particularly interested in covering JD Vance anymore here at Lit Hub. Granted, he did at one point write a book, but Hillbilly Elegy is looking more and more like that classic first move from the politician’s playbook, the preemptive mythmaking maneuver that gets you close enough, here in America,
‘The Chrysanthemums’ (1937) is probably John Steinbeck’s best-known and most highly regarded short story. But although his novels such as Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, and The Grapes of Wrath are widely read and studied, the plots of Steinbeck’s short stories are not quite so firmly entrenched in the popular consciousness. Let’s take
July 2, 2021, 11:39am In the study at Gad’s Hill, the Kent country house where Charles Dickens lived for many years (and which is now a school), there is something that every dorky child dreams of: a door designed as a fake bookcase, complete with fake books. A similar door was originally made for Dickens’
What is the significance of teeth in religion, mythology, and literature? There should be a link: teeth are obviously, like the tongue, instrumental and essential in oral culture and so we might expect to find a strong link between teeth and the composition of poems and songs. And sure enough, we do. But there are
July 2, 2021, 11:48am Across the pond at Sotheby’s London, a cache of Sylvia Plath’s letters and personal items are going under the hammer. There’s a family bible, some honeymoon period correspondence between Plath and Ted Hughes, a photo album full of pictures from happier times, a set of tarot cards, and a pretty cool
The story of Cain and Abel is the next major story in the Bible, after the Creation account and the story of the Garden of Eden. In short, Cain murders his younger brother Abel and is exiled for his crime. But is the story ‘just’ a moral tale, or might it be an attempt to
July 2, 2021, 11:58am Former president Barack Obama was this year’s closing speaker at the American Library Association Annual conference on Tuesday. In a wide-ranging virtual conversation with Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie G. Bunch III, he discussed misinformation, racial justice, and (shocker) his memoir. In keeping with his audience, he also emphasized the importance
July 2, 2021, 12:40pm I declare after all there is no enjoyment like [A FILM ADAPTATION]! This week, Variety announced that Bowen Yang is set to star in a modern Pride and Prejudice feature adaptation, which takes place on Fire Island. Joel Kim Booster, who wrote the screenplay, stars opposite Yang; Andrew Ahn (Spa Night)