By Dr Oliver Tearle 1. Nobody knows for sure why limericks are named limericks. There have been numerous theories put forward for why the five-line verse known as the ‘limerick’ is so named, but none of them is conclusive. The name ‘limerick’ was first applied to the five-line form in […]
A short introduction to the poem ‘Thaw’ by Edward Thomas (1878-1917), written by Dr Oliver Tearle ‘Thaw’ is one of the shortest poems Edward Thomas wrote, and he was a master of the short poem. In a brief flurry of poetic creativity between late 1914 and his death in 1917, […]
A short introduction to the poem ‘Adlestrop’ by Edward Thomas – written by Dr Oliver Tearle The latest in our series of short analyses of short poems takes Edward Thomas’s ‘Adlestrop’ as its subject. Before we get to the analysis, then, here is the wonderful sixteen-line poem, which was once […]
A short introduction to the Shakespeare play Hamlet, in the form of five interesting facts 1. In the first printed copy, the play’s most famous line was somewhat different. Most editions of Hamlet which we read nowadays are slightly different from each other: there is no definitive text of Hamlet. This is because we […]
A short introduction to the landmark poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T. S. Eliot 1. One poetry bookseller rejected the poem on the grounds that it was ‘absolutely insane’. Harold Monro, influential publisher and owner of the Poetry Bookshop in London, was offered the chance to […]