He is credited with coining dozens of new words which are still in common use. He died on his birthday. Some of his writing was first published without his permission. His works, when first published in the seventeenth century, proved hugely successful and influential. This description could easily fit William Shakespeare, but it also fits a relatively unsung hero of literature, Sir Thomas Browne.
Writers
Guest Blog: Yeats the Visionary
By Dr Claire Nally, University of Northumbria William Butler Yeats is best known as a poet (he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923), but he was also novelist, playwright, member of the Irish Literary Revival, manager of the Abbey Theatre, Fenian revolutionary, and Senator in the Irish Free State. He was born in … Read more
Guest Blog: Why Read Dickens?
By Alexander Atkins, and posted last year on his excellent blog for the Dickens bicentenary. The image below was designed by him to mark the occasion
This  200th article on Bookshelf is dedicated to my teacher, mentor, and dear friend, Tom A., who taught me how to understand the human condition and the world through the lens of literature, and cultivated a lifelong love affair with books.