Literature

TODAY: In 1944, W.G. Sebald is born. “A chorus of voices have warned that a catastrophe such as the one that we are now living through loomed on the horizon”: Mike Davis on the inevitably of a pandemic. | Lit Hub If you’re not already rereading your favorite books all the time, Natalie Jenner recommends
0 Comments
The Middle Ages, especially the period from the Norman Conquest of 1066 in England until the Renaissance in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, has been popular in fiction at least since Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott’s hugely influential historical novel from 1819. Below, we introduce ten of our favourite novels, from over two centuries
0 Comments
TODAY: In 1933  Joseph Stalin orders the NKVD to “preserve but isolate” Osip Mandelstam, after having been informed of the “Stalin Epigram”; Mandelstam is then arrested. A protest by literary figures, including Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak, prompts Stalin to declare that he might “review the case” (he never will).  Because not everyone has extra
0 Comments
May 15, 2020, 2:30pm “I resisted. I would not die. I could not.” Katherine Anne Porter—the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author of Ship of Fools and Pale Horse, Pale Rider—was born 130 years ago today in Indian Creek, Texas, and should, by all expectations, have died less than twenty-eight years later alongside 675,000 of
0 Comments
Hans Christian Andersen’s influence on the fairy tale genre was profound. Although ‘The Snow Queen’, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, ‘The Little Mermaid’, and ‘The Ugly Duckling’ have the ring of timeless fairy stories, they were all original tales written by the Danish storyteller in the mid-nineteenth century. First published in 1843, ‘The Ugly Duckling’ is
0 Comments
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle looks at a common line associated with Helen of Troy Who said, ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?’ Most people know it was Doctor Faustus. Or rather, Christopher Marlowe, who gives Doctor Faustus these words in his play about the magician
0 Comments
There’s a reason why Louisa May Alcott had Amy March burn Jo’s story. Amy could have torn her sister’s pages into pieces, or just thrown them away, but it wouldn’t have been the same. My wife tells me that I shuddered in my cinema seat at the manuscript burning scene when we watched Little Women.
0 Comments
TODAY: In 1890, Katherine Anne Porter is born. We’re on round eight of our personalized quarantine book recommendations, and we’re not even tired (okay, we’re a little tired). | Lit Hub “From today’s standpoint there was no financial incentive for Sesame Street’s founding duo to do what they did.” David Kamp on the radical creators of an iconic
0 Comments
May 15, 2020, 10:42am In the literary world, blurbs are a fraught business. These days they’re an industry standard, and writers and publishers need them to promote their books, but they are, above all else, a favor economy, and lots of people sort of wish they didn’t exist. But no matter your take on the
0 Comments