This week’s poem is a fascinating sonnet, ‘Written in the Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex’, written by the little-known female poet who did much to bring the sonnet form back into fashion among English poets and readers. Written in the Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex Pressed by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides,While
Literature
December 7, 2020, 9:30am Roald Dahl’s family and the Roald Dahl Story Company have released a short statement apologizing for the “lasting and understandable hurt” caused by Dahl’s “prejudiced remarks.” Dahl, who died in 1990, was of course a beloved author of children’s books like Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Witches but was also (in)famously
How To Proceed is a bi-monthly conversation about writing, creativity and the world we live in. Author Linn Ullmann talks to some of the world’s most exciting literary voices about their books, their writing process, and how they view the world and current events around them. Our guest in this episode is the award-winning Indian
Rarely have I encountered a character more obviously fated to become a murder victim than in The Undoing, HBO’s new six-part miniseries. This doomed person is Elena Alves, the mother of a scholarship student at an elite Manhattan prep school—the kind of outsider who, in the first episode, brings her newborn baby to a fundraising
The first time it happened, it was during the empty space, what Paul calls the “vacuum crisis.” One winter night about 12 years ago, the then-48-year-old was alone in his apartment, biding the hours between dinner and bedtime with his usual domestic chores, which distracted him from the struggles he’d endured over the past year.
TODAY: In 1826, from his boarding school, Nikolai Gogol writes home to his mother, describing a “radical new change” in his poetic style. Only two pieces he wrote during this period have survived. “I’m not saying Gravity’s Rainbow is itself earnest. Humorless. Stale. I’m not making any comment on the book’s qualities.” Patrick Allington has
In 1963 and 1964, as Louise Fitzhugh was inventing Harriet the Spy’s world, nannies and spies were very much in the public eye. Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music were in the movie theaters. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Ian Fleming’s James Bond books were leading hardcover
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle considers the various symbolic meanings of the moon over the centuries The moon has been a powerful symbol in religion, literature, and art for centuries – indeed, for millennia. But delving into the history of moon-symbolism reveals some surprising things about how poets, philosophers,
TODAY: In 1987, Arnold Lobel, author of the children’s book series Frog and Toad, dies. “For some of the 20th century’s so-called children’s literature gatekeepers, Harriet was a problem child.” On the one and only Harriet the Spy. | Lit Hub “The special education advisor counsels you: ‘You can’t save them,’ she says, “sometimes you just have
This is the final episode of the 2020 Antibody Reading Series, a reading and Q and A hosted by Brian Gresko. The guests this evening are Matthew Daddona, Hafizah Geter, and Xialou Guo. [embedded content] Buy the books featured tonight from your local indie or from Bookshop: Matthew Daddona, House of Sound*Hafizah Geter, Un-American*Xialou Guo,
TODAY: In 1924, F. Sionil José, known for his epic work, The Rosales Saga, five novels encompassing a hundred years of Philippine history, is born. “I have never in my life met anyone with such an acute lexical feel for the specific word needed, for the hidden rhythm of a prose sentence.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on his
December 2, 2020, 3:31pm Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey’s Memorial Drive—a harrowing memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her stepfather—has been optioned by Sony Pictures Television for development as a drama series. Recently heralded by the Washington Post and the New York Times as one
Ancient Greek mythology is full of classic stories which have become part of Western literature and culture; these stories have even given us some well-known words and phrases commonly used in English, and in other languages. Below, we introduce 12 of the greatest and best-known tales from the world of Greek mythology, from curious women
TODAY: In 1844, Emily Brontë writes the poem “A Death-Scene,” which was later published in 1846 in a book collecting poetry by Brontë and her siblings. We asked the best book designers in the business about their favorite covers of the year: they have thoughts. | Lit Hub “I’ve always loved squid—not in the culinary sense,
December 1, 2020, 3:59pm Today, The Financial Times and McKinsey & Company announced the winner of its 2020 Business Book of the Year Award, which recognizes a work that provides the “most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues.” The prize comes with £30,000 prize and each of the five runners-up will receive £10,000. This year,
When a publisher finally picked up my third book, The Heart of California: Exploring the San Joaquin Valley, my friend Anne congratulated me on completing it. She knew the book had taken me over 20 years to write. Then she asked a keen question: along with the sense of accomplishment, did I feel a little
‘The quality of mercy is not strained’: this memorable speech from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is spoken by Portia, who has disguised herself as a male lawyer in order to defend Antonio – the title character of the play – from Shylock, the Jewish moneylender who has demanded a ‘pound of flesh’ from Antonio
November 30, 2020, 3:48pm There’s a new union on the block: Verso Books announced today that its staff has organized to join the Washington-Baltimore News Guild (WBNG), a unit of the NewsGuild and the Communications Workers of America. Management voluntarily recognized the union last week, according to a statement from the publisher. The move was