Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June in 1840. (Seventeen years later to the day, composer Edward Elgar would be born.) Let’s raise a glass of something (cider?) to one of the great poets and novelists of English literature. 1. Much of the common perception of Thomas Hardy is incorrect, or, at the very least, … Read more
This post is designed to celebrate the Brontë sisters and their work in another instalment of our Five Fascinating Facts series. If you enjoy this post, you might also want to see how you fare with our 10 Classic Victorian Novels Everyone Should Read. 1. The sisters’ first volume of poems sold just two copies. Poems by … Read more
By Viola van de Sandt Charles Dickens has of course become famous for his intricately woven tales of social injustice and rampant poverty. Yet the author also provided his readership with an enormous host of intriguing, elusive, bizarre and sometimes even grotesque characters, most of whom he gave especially fitting and equally fantastic names. For … Read more
By Suzanne Shumway 1. Mary Lamb (1764-1847), sister of the essayist, poet, and playwright Charles Lamb. In 1796, Charles checked himself into a private asylum and spent six weeks there, never dreaming that a few months later, his sister would fall victim to a madness so severe that she would kill her own mother in … Read more
This is the fourth in our ‘Five Reasons’ series, which could carry the alternative name of ‘Forgotten Victorians’, since every writer we’ve looked at so far has belonged to that period: our previous posts have been on George Meredith, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Ernest Dowson. Now it’s the turn of George du Maurier (1834-96), or … Read more