English Literature
How ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ plays tricks with the mind
First published in 1798, Coleridge’s masterpiece, about a man obsessed with retelling his story, has obsessed readers ever since, because it never offers up closure
A marriage of radical minds: the creative partnership of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson
Fanny’s influence on her husband’s work was considerable, perhaps especially in the fine late novellas, rich in ironies about imperialism and the exploitation of South Sea islanders
The clue to Shakespeare’s sexuality lies in the sonnets
They are quite unlike any other sonnet sequence of the time and seem to be a kind of personal statement – written by a man with undeniable feelings for another man
‘Jerusalem’ is a rousing anthem – but who knows what the words mean?
‘Jerusalem’ may be our unofficial national anthem, but don’t ask anyone who sings it to tell you what it means, says Philip Hensher
Arnold Bennett’s success made him loathed by other writers
Virginia Woolf admitted to her journal: ‘I haven’t that reality gift.’ Her contemporary Arnold Bennett had it in spades. He…
What have the Anglo-Saxons ever done for us?
It has been a while since I’ve considered the vexed question of Byrhtnoth’s ‘ofermod’. More than 30 years, in fact.…
Moon walks with the Romantic poets
Several years ago, I was interviewing the garden writer and designer Sarah Raven at her home in Sussex when a…
The celebrated poet who’s been erased from English literature
Biographers are a shady lot. For all their claims about immortalising someone in print, as if their ink were a…
Tear-stained ramblings that remained unsent
The deserved success of Shaun Usher’s marvellous anthology Letters of Note has inspired several imitators, and Caroline Atkins’s sparkling collection…
Edward Garnett and his diligent blue pencil
Edward Garnett, radical, pacifist, freethinker, Russophile man of letters, was from the 1890s onwards for many years the pre-eminent fixer…
William Shakespeare: all things to all men
The best new books celebrating Shakespeare’s centenary are full of enthusiasm and insight — but none plucks out the heart of his mystery, says Daniel Swift
The life of Thomas De Quincey: a Gothic horror story
Frances Wilson’s biography of Thomas De Quincey, the mischievous, elusive ‘Pope of Opium’, makes for addictive reading, says Hermione Eyre
Dickens’s dark side: walking at night helped ease his conscience at killing off characters
James McConnachie discovers that some of the greatest English writers — Chaucer, Blake, Dickens, Wordsworth, Dr Johnson — drew inspiration and even comfort from walking around London late at night
All you’ll ever need to know about the history of England in one volume
Here is a stupendous achievement: a narrative history of England which is both thorough and arresting. Very few writers could…
Michael Gove did not kill Of Mice and Men or To Kill A Mockingbird
I suppose I should be grateful that the liberal intelligentsia doesn’t bother to check any of the facts if an…
Memoirs of an academic brawler
It’s a misleading title, because there is nothing unexpected about Professor Carey, in any sense. He doesn’t turn up to…
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…
Anorexia, addiction, child-swapping — the Lake Poets would have alarmed social services
The last time the general reader was inveigled into the domestic intensities of the Wordsworth circle was by Frances Wilson…
