Eric Arthur Blair (1903-50), who is better-known to the world as George Orwell, was one of the leading English essayists of the first half of the twentieth century, writing about everything from the Spanish Civil War to the ideal pub to how to make a perfect cup of tea. Of […]
‘Breakfast’ is a short story by John Steinbeck (1902-68), the shortest piece to be included in his collection The Long Valley. The story first appeared in The Pacific Weekly in 1936 before being reprinted in The Long Valley two years later. Although it’s often classified as a short story, ‘Breakfast’ […]
The work of the American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019) has perhaps not received as much attention from critics as she deserves, yet it’s been estimated that she was the bestselling poet in the United States at the time of her death. She often wrote nature poetry, focusing on the area […]
‘The Secret Miracle’ (1943) is a short story by a modern master of the form, the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). It tells of a man living in Nazi-occupied Prague who is sentenced to be killed by firing squad. The man, a playwright, prays for a year’s stay of […]
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), born Adeline Virginia Stephen, was one of the most important writers of the first half of the twentieth century. A leading modernist novelist and short-story writer whose novels Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and The Waves are widely regarded as classics, Woolf was also an influential […]