No one could match Tess, to Thomas Hardy’s dismay
Hardy’s 38-year marriage to Emma Gifford was notoriously acrimonious; but even his much younger second wife, Florence, never seemed to measure up to his fictional heroines
What can we learn of George Eliot through her heroines?
Eliot guarded her privacy closely, but her novels explore themes of sacrifice and restraint, and her heroines are studies in the impossibility of having it all
Who needed who most? The complex bond between Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby
Claudia FitzHerbert explores the complex bond between two remarkable writers in the interwar years
Mismatched from the start: One Day I Shall Astonish the World, by Nina Stibbe, reviewed
First the bad news: Nina Stibbe’s new novel does not feature Lizzie Vogel, the engaging narrator of the trilogy that…
There’s much of Astrid Lindgren in the carrot-haired rebel Pippi Longstocking
Pippi Longstocking is a nine-year-old girl who lives alone with a monkey and horse in a cottage called Villa Villekulla…
Middlemarch: the novel that reads you
The genesis of The Road to Middlemarch was a fine article in the New Yorker about Rebecca Mead’s unsuccessful search…
Why did Penelope Fitzgerald start writing so late?
‘Experiences aren’t given us to be “got over”, otherwise they would hardly be experiences.’ The opening sentence of the first…
