BLOG POSTS

You might recall that just before Christmas last year I wrote a post about the BBC’s ‘Ghost Story for Christmas’ in anticipation of Woman of Stone. This was an adaptation of E. Nesbit’s 1887 story ‘Man-size in Marble’ by Mark Gatiss, who has breathed new life into the long-running series. Since then, I have had… Read More

At Wordsworth Editions, we’ve published dozens of iconic writers — but let’s be honest: Jane Austen never goes out of style. Two centuries after her death, she’s still setting hearts aflutter, sparking fierce debates, and teaching us the fine art of the slow burn romance. So what makes Austen the timeless force she is? Why… Read More

Does it make sense to think of writing as belonging to a particular place? Sally Minogue reflects on the influence Yorkshire has had on our national literature. A couple of weeks ago I was staying in Yorkshire, my native county, not, as usual, in the homes of my sister or niece, but in a little… Read More

Sally Minogue examines the ‘wonder-world’ of Herman Melville’s great novel Moby Dick. ‘Call me Ishmael’: is there a more famous opening sentence in fiction? People who have never read Moby Dick, people who have never read the Bible, and don’t know who Ishmael is in either text, may still recognize and even in some way… Read More

Turning our eyes for the moment fully on the novel Great Expectations rather than its adaptation, Sally Minogue looks at the way Charles Dickens explores the power of expectation. What a brilliant title! In two words Charles Dickens both raises our expectations and undermines them. For if we have great expectations, you can be pretty… Read More