The story or myth of ‘Pandora’s box’ is slightly unusual among Greco-Roman myths in having its origins – at least its written origins – not in the work of Homer or later myth-collectors like the great Roman poet Ovid, but in the Greek didactic poet Hesiod, who tells the story […]
Although he is best-known as the author of such adventure tales as Treasure Island and Kidnapped, and horror stories like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson was also one of the greatest writers of children’s verse during the Victorian period. His 1885 collection A Child’s Garden of Verses […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a minor classic of Anglo-Saxon poetry ‘The Dream of the Rood’ is one of the gems of Anglo-Saxon poetry. ‘Rood’ is an Old English word for ‘Cross’, and poem tells of a pious man’s encounter with a talking […]