Today is the Sheridan Le Fanu bicentenary: this key figure in the Irish ghost story was born on 28 August 1814. We thought, then, this would be the perfect time to go all ghostly on you. The following facts about the history of the ghost story in the nineteenth century are largely taken from this book, Bewilderments of Vision: Hallucination and Literature, 1880-1914 (Sussex, paperback edition 2014), which, as well as being a rollickingly interesting book (but of course!), is also written by the curator of Interesting Literature, Oliver Tearle.
Fiction
10 Classic Victorian Novels Everyone Should Read
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Here is our list of the 10 Victorian novels we at Interesting Literature think everyone should read – whether because they’re great novels, because they tell us something important about Victorian society, because they stand as classics of the period, or (in most cases) all three. They’re not arranged in any particular order (that would be too difficult and controversial a task!).
The Term ‘Stream of Consciousness’ and the Forgotten Modernist
‘Stream of consciousness’. You may have heard the term, but where did it come from, and what does it mean? The answers are perhaps surprising, and lead us to a forgotten modernist writer whom Virginia Woolf, among others, praised.
Guest Blog: Random Stuff I’ve Learned by Reading Too Many Novels – Professional Mourners
By Debra Beilke Toloki is the main character in South African writer Zakes Mda’s first novel, Ways of Dying. Toloki comes from a small village, but lives in Johannesburg. He goes to a lot of funerals. This is not because he knows so many people who have died, but because he is a Professional Mourner. … Read more
Guest Blog: Yuri Mamleev’s Shatuny, a Metaphysical Detective Story
By Timofey Reshetov Yuri Mamleev’s literary works are available to the Western reader in numerous translations, his novels and short stories have been printed in French, German, Italian and other European languages. In English however there has only been a single book where several of his earlier short stories and parts of the Shatuny novel … Read more