Please select your country preference

UK US

BLOG POSTS

Category: Book

Mia Forbes takes up the story of Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit

‘This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination. Charles Dickens’ visit to America in 1842 did not go well, and his disillusionment showed in his next novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. Mia Forbes takes up the story. “The curse of our house”, said the old man, looking kindly… Read More

The Nobel Prize in Literature

As the Committee of the Swedish Academy put the Nobel Prizes for 2021 behind them and begin to consider the nominations for 2022, Sally Minogue looks at some of the past winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Adam Bede

Published in 1859, ‘Adam Bede’ was the first novel by Mary Ann Evans, writing under her pen name George Eliot. David Stuart Davies takes up the story.

Sally Minogue looks at Mrs Dalloway

BBC Radio 4 this week begins a 10-part reading of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Sally Minogue looks at the Modernist context as Woolf conceived and wrote her fourth novel.

David Stuart Davies looks at Lord Jim

‘You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends’. David Stuart Davies looks at Joseph Conrad’s tale of a man’s mission to gain redemption after an act of cowardice.

Sally Minogue looks at North and South

Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘North and South’ is well recognised as a radical novel about social and economic divisions. But might it also cast light on British imperialism? Sally Minogue looks at a rich and many-sided novel.