Lewis Carroll (1832-98) is celebrated around the world as one of the great purveyors of ‘literary nonsense’: his books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) have entertained countless readers since they were published nearly 150 years ago. For many, the name ‘Lewis Carroll’ is synonymous with children’s literature. But […]
fantasy
Happy World Book Day! Some Interesting Facts
In honour of World Book Day, which is being celebrated today in the UK, we thought we’d delve into the interesting stories and trivia hiding behind some of the most popular and successful books ever written. So, here goes… The biggest-selling book written in English is Charles Dickens’s A Tale of […]
Guest Blog: Revamped – How the Twenty-First Century Vampire Is Redefining Masculinity
By Tracy L. Bealer, Colorado State University Power, good looks, and a preoccupation with penetration. These qualities unexpectedly describe both privileged masculinity and vampires. With their preternatural strength, lethal attractiveness, and penetrative fangs, the figure of the vampire has long been understood, by Nina Auerbach and others, as a literary […]
The Word ‘Hobbit’
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 … Tolkien’s book was published in 1937, but […]