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Category: Book

Back to School with Anne of Avonlea

Denise Hanrahan-Wells looks at Anne of Avonlea, the sequel to Anne of Green Gables. ‘Oh, will I ever learn to stop and reflect a little before doing reckless things? Mrs Lynde always told me I would do something dreadful someday, and now I’ve done it.’ Fans of the eponymous orphan Anne Shirley will have probably… Read More

D.H. Lawrence’s ‘The Rainbow’

Like the later Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Rainbow was initially banned for obscenity on its publication in 1915, but for only a mere eleven years. Mia Rocquemore revisits this complex novel. D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow contains all the features of a Victorian story that so appeal to the critical eye of modern literature undergraduates: there… Read More

Listening for the leaden circles dissolving in the air

Stefania Ciocia finds new harmonies in The Hours and Mrs Dalloway “In a play, if more than one person speaks at the same time, it’s just noise. No one can understand a word. But with music, with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at once, and it’s not noise – it’s a perfect… Read More

Orwell and Women

As new biographies revisit George Orwell’s standing and attitudes, Sally Minogue considers Orwell and Women George Orwell’s reputation both as man and as writer has been placed under re-examination of late. New biographies of both him and of his first wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy have re-evaluated his standing, and I have just finished listening to this… Read More

The Count of Monte Cristo: A classic adventure tale

“On the 24th of February, 1815, the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples.” The Count of Monte Cristo begins and ends with voyages. The opening line heralds the arrival of the hero, the young sailor Edmond Dantès, in his native Marseilles after a voyage across… Read More

A Princess in the Attic

Denise Hanrahan-Wells looks at Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic Children’s Story I first came across A Little Princess through the 1973 BBC adaptation and was immediately captivated by it. I am not sure exactly what drew me in but having recently returned to the original novel I realise I was a similar age to the gently… Read More

Book of the Week: Notes from Underground

David Stuart Davies writes on our collection of the short fiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Here we have a volume, sometimes translated as Memoirs from Underground (1864) which is a comprehensive collection of the short fiction by the great Russian writer Fydor Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881). Its importance derives from the fact that more than the… Read More

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