In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys the adventures of the Puritan swordsman, Solomon Kane Some writers have just one great character in them. Conan Doyle created a range of memorable characters, from Professor Challenger to Sir Nigel Loring of the Hundred Years’ War, but […]
On Tuesday, we offered a short summary of the plot of Jekyll and Hyde, so now it’s time for some words of analysis about Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic 1886 novella. However, perhaps ‘analyses’ (plural) would be more accurate, since there never could be one monolithic meaning of a story so […]
On one of Hardy’s best-known poems – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was a prolific poet, with his Complete Poems running to 1,000 pages. Yet he’s not generally known for being a satirical poet. ‘The Ruined Maid’, one of his earliest and best-known poems, is a rare […]