By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Robin Hood is first mentioned in print in the late fourteenth-century poem Piers Plowman, which is commonly attributed to William Langland, a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Children’s Literature
The Word ‘Hobbit’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The word ‘hobbit’ was supposedly invented by J. R. R. Tolkien. This fact both is and is not true. To explain why this is the case (or isn’t the case) we must do a bit of delving into the world of witchcraft …
Ten Words We Got from Literature
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Often you hear, fifth-hand, someone say, ‘Shakespeare gave us the word puking’ or ‘Milton coined the word dreary’. The problem with this is, of course, that we cannot be sure that those writers actually invented these words – they may merely have written the texts containing the earliest surviving record of the words in question.
C. S. Lewis and the Inklings
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
One of the most celebrated pubs for writers is the Eagle and Child in Oxford. This public house on St Giles’, known informally as the ‘Bird and Baby’, was the place where the Inklings met during the mid-twentieth century. The ‘Inklings’ were a group of writers living in Oxford who would meet on a weekly basis to read and discuss each other’s work.
Peter Pan in Neverland
In which book did Peter Pan first appear, and what was the target readership of the book? Peter Pan, the play for children? Think again. The boy who wouldn’t grow up first appeared, ironically, in a book for adults, a little-known 1902 novel called The Little White Bird.