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Book of the Week: Crime and Punishment
David Stuart Davies looks at what is widely considered to be Dostoevsky’s finest novel ‘Though Crime and Punishment is sometimes cited as the first psychological thriller, its scope reaches far beyond Raskolnikov’s inner turmoil. From dark taverns, dilapidated apartments and claustrophobic police stations, the underbelly of 19th-century St Petersburg is brought to life by Dostoevsky’s… Read More
Book of the Week: A Room of One’s Own / The Voyage Out
David Stuart Davies looks at Virginia Woolf’s first novel, plus her essay that is considered as a key work of feminist literary criticism Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) holds a very special position in the pantheon of English Literature. She was perhaps the most prominent feminist writer of the 20th Century. Her work, ideas and… Read More
‘Eveline’s Visitant’
‘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
Celebrating Pride
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’
‘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
Book of the Week: The Mayor of Casterbridge
‘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
Sumer is icumen in – finally.
Sally Minogue reflects on evocations of Summer by some Wordsworth authors. ‘Sumer is icumen in –/ Lhude sing! cuccu.’ Not by one of Wordsworth’s authors, but by one of that large and motley crew, Anon., this early 13th century lyric is still widely recognized because it was set to music and is still sung today…. Read More
Elizabeth Gaskell and ‘Lois the Witch’
The name Elizabeth Gaskell probably conjures up associations with her more well known social realist novels such as Mary Barton (1848), North and South (1855) and Cranford (1853). Yet, during much of her writing career she remained fascinated with the supernatural and produced numerous ghost stories. In her biographical work The Life of Charlotte Brontë… Read More
Great Expectations: reduced imaginations
Sally Minogue and Stephen Carver give a final overview of the BBC One adaptation of Dickens’s novel. The first episode of Steven Knight’s adaptation of Great Expectations was a pleasant surprise to both Stephen Carver and me. Stephen will speak in the later part of this blog; but for both of us, I think, this… Read More