Literature

Literary Heroine

One of Croatia’s most-read authors, Marija Jurić Zagorka spent her life in defiance of convention.

Are you Experienced?

Not a queen or a saint, witch or idealised lady-love, the Wife of Bath is a much-married working woman and an enthusiastic traveller.

Clean Sheets

The smooth whiteness of paper belies the mess and hard labour that went into its production.

Filling the Gaps

Notes in the margins of early modern books can be very revealing about their readers’ lives and interests. 

Love on the Wire

The advent of telecommunications gave rise to a new literary genre through which female telegraphers and writers found social freedoms.

The Underground Library

As the Nazis enclosed Warsaw’s Jewish quarter in a ghetto, a librarian set up a secret children’s library. 

Echo Chamber

Dinner parties in the ‘Revolutionary Age’ with the publisher Joseph Johnson.