By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Even among diehard Sherlockians, the nine-book ‘canon’ of Conan Doyle-authored Sherlock Holmes books has surprisingly few out-and-out classics that all can agree on. The first two novels, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, show Doyle still finding his feet with the two central characters, and the mysteries themselves are in some respects short stories stretched out to novel (or perhaps only novella) length.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Zero Hour’ is a 1949 short story by the American author Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), included in his 1953 collection The Illustrated Man. In the story, which is set in a future America, a young girl is befriended by an alien who needs her help to invade Earth and kill the adults.
You can read ‘Zero Hour’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of Bradbury’s story below. The story takes around fifteen minutes to read.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), or H. D. as she chose to publish, was labelled ‘the perfect imagist’ by various critics and reviewers. Born in the United States, H. D. made her literary name in London, where she was at the centre of the short-lived imagist movement during the First World War.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-53) was a fascinating man and poet, and his poetry remains much-loved and widely read around the world. But which are his very best poems? In this post, we’ve endeavoured to choose Dylan Thomas’s ten finest poems which we think everyone should read.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘They Shut Me up in Prose’, whilst not one of Emily Dickinson’s best-known poems – it certainly isn’t up there with ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’, ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’, or ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’ – is nevertheless sometimes anthologised, and occasionally quoted for its suggestive opening line.