Literature

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle goes on his travels to Taormina in Sicily, where D. H. Lawrence lived One tends to associate D. H. Lawrence with his native Nottinghamshire, although Lawrence left his mark on a great number of places. Helen Corke, for instance, even wrote a book with
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Here are some of the finest poems of remembrance, or about remembrance, which can all be found in the wonderful anthology of remembrance poems, The Nation’s Favourite Poems of Remembrance . Remembrance – whether it’s recalling or remembering a past loved one, or commemorating someone who has passed away – has always been a big
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The coronavirus pandemic is dramatically disrupting not only our daily lives but society itself. This show features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the deeper economic, political, and technological consequences of the pandemic. It’s our new daily podcast trying to make longterm sense out of the chaos of today’s global
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What is an epigraph? And what is the difference between an epigraph, an epitaph, and an epigram? We’re here to define the epigraph and differentiate it from its near-homophonous neighbours in the dictionary. So, before we launch into a full introduction to the epigraph and its usefulness for writers, let’s distinguish between epigraph, epitaph, and
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TODAY: In 1882, Norwegian novelist Sigrid Undset, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928, is born. “For such an anti-intellectual, Malaparte is extraordinarily intelligent.” Edmund White on reading Curzio Malaparte, eccentric, writer, liar, fascist. | Lit Hub Great plagues always hit workers the hardest: on Daniel Defoe’s fictional account of the London plague.
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After ‘The Raven’, which is undoubtedly Poe’s most popular poem, ‘Annabel Lee’ is perhaps his next best-known and admired. ‘Annabel Lee’ has been called ‘the simplest and sweetest of [Edgar Allan Poe’s] ballads’ (by Poe’s biographer, George Edward Woodberry), but how ‘simple’ the poem is remains to be seen. Is it a ballad, or narrative
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TODAY: In 1930, Lorraine Hansberry born, the first African-American woman to have a play performed on Broadway, is born. Even in retirement, Philip Roth wrote thousands of pages: Benjamin Taylor on stoicism and scandal in the life of a literary icon. | Lit Hub “It is the job of the poet to bring forth the heart’s
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The ‘nineteenth-century novel’ covers Jane Austen’s Regency fiction, the comic exuberance of Dickens, the social critiques of Elizabeth Gaskell, the realism of George Eliot, the Gothic inventiveness of late Victorian writers, and the birth of detective fiction. Below, we introduce twelve of the greatest nineteenth-century novels, with some curious facts about them. Jane Austen, Pride
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From Greek mythology to modern horror and fantasy, literature is full of fantastic beasts and terrifying monsters. What makes a great fictional monster? Terror, unpredictability, and perhaps an unsettling commingling of the familiar with the unfamiliar? These qualities can all help to create a truly scary monster which haunts our dreams, even though we know
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