May 14, 2021, 1:07pm Somerset’s Combe Florey House, once the family home of Brideshead Revisited author Evelyn Waugh and his son Auberon, is finally for sale—and it’s pretty spectacular, looking onto parkland and water. The grounds include a twelve-bedroom home with red sandstone facades; a pool and pool house; a tennis court; several outbuildings; and
Literature
Doves are well-known symbols of peace. Although such symbolism is strongly associated with Christianity, the associations between doves and peace go back much further than this: in ancient Mesopotamia, doves were symbols of Inanna-Ishtar, the goddess of love, sexuality, and (perhaps surprisingly) war. Indeed, the ancient Greek word for ‘dove’, peristerá, may be derived from
May 14, 2021, 1:18pm Today marks fifteen years since the death of Stanley Kunitz, tenth Poet Laureate of the United States and fiercely dedicated teacher. Kunitz once spoke of the importance of reading his work aloud: “I write my poems for the ear . . . in fact, my method of writing a poem is
TODAY: In 1856, L. Frank Baum is born. Tayari Jones reconsiders a watershed moment of Black storytelling, Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, nearly 40 years later. | Lit Hub How an obsessive scholar saved Iceland’s literary legacy, while a three-day fire burned down Copenhagen—and virtually every book in it. | Lit Hub History Pride and Property:
‘Cat in the Rain’ is a very short story by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), published in his early 1925 collection In Our Time. Hemingway wrote ‘Cat in the Rain’ for his wife Hadley while they were living in Paris. She wanted to get a cat, but he said they were too poor. ‘Cat in the Rain’
May 14, 2021, 3:02pm Here’s something weird and wonderful from way back when: alt-rock icon, occasional indie movie actress, and Hole frontwoman Courtney Love, at the tender age of eleven, tried out for a role on the on the 1977 Mickey Mouse Club—the second incarnation of Disney’s beloved children’s variety television show. If you’re thinking
May 14, 2021, 10:52am It is a well known and oft-romanticized fact that the Brontë sisters—and the Brontë brother, for that matter—all died young, one after the other, leaving moody, moor-y masterpieces in their wake. Officially, they all suffered from tuberculosis, or complications thereof, and unofficially, they all died of grief for one another, but
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the famous line from Orwell: ‘some animals are more equal than others’ Animal Farm very nearly didn’t make it into print at all. First, not long after Orwell completed the first draft in February 1944, his flat on Mortimer Crescent in London was
May 13, 2021, 1:02pm A good idea to steal: the city of Rome has created a free digital library that spans the entire city, available to users of ATAC, Rome’s public transportation. Passengers waiting at bus stops or subway stations will be able to simply scan a QR code and download e-books, audiobooks and music
May 13, 2021, 11:38am Exciting news: the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Flamboyan Foundation’s Flamboyan Arts Fund have founded the Letras Boricuas Fellowship, which will provide unrestricted grants of $25,000 to thirty Puerto Rican writers over the next two years (fifteen in 2021 and fifteen in 2022). Applications will be open to writers of
The Anglo-American modernist poet T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) was arguably the most influential poet of the twentieth century, and his 1922 poem The Waste Land is regarded variously as the greatest modernist poem, one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century, and a powerful depiction of post-war despair and disillusionment. But trying to figure
May 12, 2021, 4:49pm Last week, Gothamist invited readers to choose their favorite New York book from a list curated by librarians at the New York Public Library. The books on the list were The Catcher in the Rye, Just Kids, The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay, The House of Mirth, Bonfire of the Vanities, Jazz, Motherless Brooklyn, A Little Life, Another
May 12, 2021, 12:21pm Trevor Shikaze has been named the first winner of n+1’s newly established Anthony Veasna So Prize, an annual $5,000 award named in honor of n+1 contributor and brilliant short story writer Anthony Veasna So, who died in 2020. The award is granted to an n+1-published fiction writer who shows a sustained
The story of David and Goliath is one of the most iconic and celebrated tales from the Old Testament. Virtually everyone vaguely acquainted with Bible stories knows that David, as a young boy, slew the giant Goliath. The story is an inspiring example of how the plucky underdog could defeat someone much bigger than him,
May 11, 2021, 11:51am Douglas Adams, beloved author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has taught us a lot of important things: Don’t Panic, for example. Also, the meaning of life is 42. The author died 20 years ago today, but I was delighted to find that he still has much to teach us. In
Lord of the Flies was first published in 1954, although it very nearly wasn’t published at all. Its author, William Golding, was a struggling grammar-school teacher when he wrote it, having been given the germ of the idea by his wife, Ann. The novel’s title is a reference to Beelzebub, a name for the Devil,
May 11, 2021, 11:21am Great wonder grew in hallAt his hue most strange to see,For man and gear and allWere green as green could be. Saddle up, all you Arthurian aficionados, because the coolest-looking literary adaptation of 2021 is nearly upon us. Yes, David Lowrey’s The Green Knight—an adaptation of the 14th-century Middle English chivalric
May 10, 2021, 2:06pm People who love reading love reading. And people who love reading also love reading about how great reading is. Luckily, as you may have noticed, the opportunities for this kind of reading about reading are apparently endless. After all, if you spend a lot of time on the internet, you know