Literature

A landmark in folklore was published on December 20th, 1812.

Member of Parliament, friend of Philip Sidney, local historian, and promoter of American colonization, Richard Carew was one of the important provincial figures of his age, as F.E. Halliday here describes.

Jerome de Groot wades through the swathes of warriors landing on his desk to give us a round-up of the best battle-laden historical fiction for this year.

The romantic ‘braveheart’ image of Scotland’s past lives on. But, as Christopher A. Whatley shows, a more nuanced ‘portrait of the nation’ is emerging, one that explores the political and religious complexities of Jacobitism and its enduring myth-making power.

A classic children's book was born on July 4th, 1862.

Christopher Allmand examines Alain Chartier’s Le Livre des Quatre Dames, a poem written in response to the English victory at Agincourt, and asks what it can tell us about the lives of women during this chapter in the Hundred Years War.

The poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Coventry Patmore both subscribed to a Tory world view, fiercely opposing the reforms of Prime Minister Gladstone. But their correspondence reveals two very different personalities, says Gerald Roberts.

Today Jane Austen is regarded as one of the greats of English literature. But it was not always so. Amanda Vickery describes the changing nature of Austen’s reception in the two centuries since her birth.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a masterpiece of Middle English literature, which narrowly escaped destruction in the 18th century. Nicholas Mee examines the poem to discover both its secret benefactor and the location in which its drama unfolds.

The first performance of The Tempest on record was at court on All Hallows’ Day, on November 1st 1611.

To mark the 400th anniversary of his birth, UNESCO has declared Evliya Çelebi a ‘man of the year’. His Seyahatname, or Book of Travels, is one of the world’s great works of literature. Caroline Finkel celebrates a figure little known in the West.

Chris Corin ressurects the life of a Soviet survivor whose remarkable and significant career deserves to be better known.

Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility was first published in London by Thomas Egerton on October 30th, 1811.