A reading of a Shakespeare sonnet ‘For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any’: so begins Sonnet 10 in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. This sonnet represents a minor turning point in the sequence, since Shakespeare’s admiration of the Fair Youth and his beauty becomes personal, rather than merely being couched in […]
The curious life of Montague Rhodes James Many people regard M. R. James (1862-1936) as the finest writer of ghost stories in the English language. How did he come to write such highly regarded tales? In this post we offer a very short biography of M. R. James, focusing on […]
A charming poem by a curious poet How many people have heard of James Henry? The name Henry James (1843-1916) is rather more familiar – he was the American-born author who moved to England and is best-known for his short stories and novels. But the Irish poet James Henry (1798-1876) […]
Trivia about a pioneering English comic novelist 1. Fielding was largely responsible for the Licensing Act being passed, which would exercise huge control over British theatres for over two centuries. Fielding wasn’t in favour of the Act – which decreed that all plays being performed in public theatres in the UK […]
A critical reading of Percy Shelley’s poem Percy Shelley (1792-1822) was, along with Lord Byron and John Keats, one of the second-generation Romantic poets who followed Wordsworth and Coleridge – and, to an extent, diverged from them, having slightly different ideas of Romanticism. ‘The Flower That Smiles Today’, sometimes titled […]