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
Literature
At the beginning of our now apparently unending isolation, we put out a call asking that those of you who need something good to read in this trying, frightening time, might send us a few of your favorite books (and other things) so we could recommend a good book for you to read. And turns out quite
One night recently I was talking online with my friend Peter, a GP in Edinburgh where we both live, about how he had found working during the pandemic. Peter loves poetry (he even teaches his medical students by giving them poems) and his thoughts had been running in this direction. In particular, it was metaphors—military
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.
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
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