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‘Strange reports had gone forth about me; and there were those who whispered that I had given my soul to the Evil One…’ ‘Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a contemporary of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and yet is nowhere nearly as well known. If her name does spark any recognition, it is usually in connection… Read More

In Pride month, Sally Minogue reminds us of a time when writers couldn’t easily be out and proud. A couple of weeks ago I was wandering through the cool paths of the Cimitero Acattolico – the Protestant Cemetery – in Rome, with fellow-blogger and friend Stefania Ciocia as my companion and guide. It was our… Read More

‘Money, money, money, and what money can make of life’ Our Mutual Friend, first published in 1864, was Charles Dickens’ last completed novel. This late work gives one of the author’s richest and most comprehensive accounts of modern society, as well as perhaps his bleakest. It is true to say that this is one of… Read More

‘Life is an oasis which is submerged in the swirling waves of sorrows and agonies’. Thomas Hardy’s novels of rural life in his fictional county of Wessex (standing in for Hardy’s own county of Dorset) are filled with dark moralising and pessimistic philosophy, epitomized by the author’s assertion in the final lines of The Mayor… Read More