Literature

‘O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem’: so begins the 54th sonnet in Shakespeare’s sequence of 154 poems. It’s not the most famous poem in the sequence by any means, and the sentiment it expresses is straightforward – perhaps to the point of being rather slight. But not all sonnets have to tie themselves

TODAY: In 1888, Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa is born. Dispatches from protests across the country: Su Hwang on why the rebellion had to begin in Minneapolis • From Oakland, Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili explores the activism of black motherhood • Pitchaya Sudbanthad on the shift from pandemic to protest, and finding justice in the streets of Brooklyn. | Lit Hub Politics How JK Rowling betrayed the

‘The sovereign beauty which I do admire, / Witness the world how worthy to be praised’: so begins the third sonnet in Edmund Spenser’s 1595 sonnet sequence Amoretti, written to celebrate his own marriage to his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle. As love poems to one’s newlywed bride go, it must have made the young Elizabeth

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

Hope has often been a subject of poetry, as our pick of classic hopeful poems demonstrates. But sometimes the future seems filled less with hope than with fear. What have poets said about fear, about uncertainty for the future, and about being afraid? Below, we introduce ten of our favourite poems about fear and fearfulness.

Hosted by Paul Holdengräber, The Quarantine Tapes chronicles shifting paradigms in the age of social distancing. Each day, Paul calls a guest for a brief discussion about how they are experiencing the global pandemic. Today on episode 57 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by art critic Jerry Saltz. What could it look

‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ is a phrase from one of John Donne’s most famous pieces of writing. Indeed, it’s the same piece of writing that also includes what is probably his other most famous phrase, ‘No Man Is an Island’. Although they’re often thought to come from a poem Donne wrote, and Donne is

June 12, 2020, 12:09pm Back in the Spring of 2018, having already conquered the worlds of music, film, TV, video gaming, and professional wrestling, 4x NBA champion and basketball’s largest greatest renaissance man Shaquille O’Neal—aka “Shaq” aka “The Diesel” aka “Shaq Fu” aka “The Big Daddy” aka “Superman” aka “The Big Agave” aka “The Big Cactus” aka “The

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a forty-year-old book debunking various widely held beliefs Last year, I reviewed a fascinating book, The dictionary of misinformation , written by a professor of English named Tom Burnam and published in 1975. Although it’s now out of print, you can pick up

June 12, 2020, 10:09am I am all for more silliness in literature, so I was absolutely delighted by the announcement that Hilary Mantel’s forthcoming collection of essays, book reviews, and memoir, which will be published in October by 4th Estate Books and the London Review of Books, has the absolutely legendary title Mantel Pieces. With a few

June 11, 2020, 4:08pm Think you’ve made good use of the COVID lockdown? Is your sourdough starter in decent shape? Did you achieve Inbox Zero? Has your home gym kept you fighting fit? Congratulations! Those are all admirable achievements and certainly nothing to be sneezed at. Sadly, your modest efforts don’t mean shit when measured

‘First Love’ is one of the best-known and best-loved poems by John Clare (1793-1864), who is often forgotten when people are recalling the great English Romantic poets. But as this poem demonstrates, Clare’s poetry is a curious blend of the simple or direct and the complex, and a few words of analysis of ‘First Love’

For me, it began in the men’s underwear section. It was there that I first saw them, that carved alabaster lot, a pantheon of idolized physiques. David Beckham, Freddie Ljungberg, Jamie Dornan, and—of course, the archetype—the classical Marky Mark. Long before the Greek antiquities room at the Met in New York, I had Macy’s at

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was one of the most technically accomplished poets of the Victorian age. But as well as the sheer range of forms he mastered, there is the daring subject matter he sometimes wrote about. (He was also a colourful figure, known for his saucy private life as much as for his poetry,

June 10, 2020, 4:03pm The late illustrator Maurice Sendak would have turned 92 today, and I imagine he’d have had the same contagious attraction to childhood wonder that made him such a compelling storyteller. Well before his success with projects like Where the Wild Things Are, the Little Bear books (let’s not sleep on how good that TV

‘Methought I Saw My Late Espousèd Saint’, sometimes known as ‘On His Deceased Wife’, is one of John Milton’s best-known sonnets. It’s a moving account of grief in the face of the loss of a loved one, and Milton – better known for his religious epic poem Paradise Lost – manages to say a great

Yes, friends: for the third year in a row, I have read all of the summer reading roundups on the internet so you don’t have to. And it’s not even (technically) summer yet. If you’re new, here’s how it works: 1. I read all of the Most Anticipated and Best Summer Reading lists that flood

‘The Premature Burial’ is a story by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), written in 1844. The story taps into a fear which many people claim to harbour: taphephobia, or the fear of being buried alive. Before proceeding to our summary and analysis of this curious story, you might want to read ‘The Premature Burial’, which is