In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores perhaps the most enigmatic inscription in a book of poems
‘To the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets’: so begins perhaps the most puzzling poetic dedication in all of English literature. Here it is, in full:
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning of a famous proverb – and its origins in a work of literature
‘Procrastination is the thief of time’. It’s perhaps one of the best-known proverbs in the English language, and as with most proverbs, the temptation is to ascribe it to that prolific author, ‘Anon.’ But as with another favourite axiom, ‘better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’, ‘procrastination is the thief of time’ appears to have a very decisive origin in the work of a particular writer.
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the origins of a famous phrase associated with Oscar Wilde
Which writer gave us the expression ‘the love that dare not speak its name’? Oscar Wilde? He gave us many other famous quotations, of course; but although ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ has a link with Wilde, he was not the one who coined that phrase.
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys Asimov’s second Robot novel which eerily prefigures our world
On the planet of Solaria, people don’t ‘see’ each other: ‘seeing’ is viewed as abnormal, even dirty, because it means coming into contact with other people’s breath, germs, and sweaty bodies. Instead, Solarians ‘view’ each other via screens, being in different buildings – or even different rooms in the same building – when they converse with each other. Inhabitants of Solaria quite literally cannot bear to be in the same room as each other, even their own spouses or children.
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning of T. S. Eliot’s ‘this is the way the world ends’
‘This is the way the world ends’, T. S. Eliot tells us at the end of his 1925 poem, ‘The Hollow Men’: ‘not with a bang but a whimper.’ The quotation has become famous and is known even to those who never read T. S. Eliot’s poetry, or have never encountered ‘The Hollow Men’.