‘To a Wreath of Snow’ shows Emily Brontë (1818-48), some ten years before the publication of her sole novel Wuthering Heights (1847). Written when she was still a teenager, ‘To a Wreath of Snow’ deserves some words of analysis to illuminate the language and imagery Brontë so deftly uses in […]
First published in 1819, ‘Rip Van Winkle’ is one of the most famous pieces of writing by Washington Irving, whose contribution to American literature was considerable. ‘Rip Van Winkle’ has become a byword for the idea of falling asleep and waking up to find the familiar world around us has […]
How to reduce the whole span of an average human life into just a few lines of verse? Shakespeare managed it, in this famous speech from As You Like It, which begins with the famous declaration that ‘All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely […]