Literature

Peter Stansky & William Abrahams describe how, after Tennyson’s death, the problem of finding a new Poet Laureate perturbed successive British governments.

Did the story of a stolen Roman ring provide the basis for one of the 20th century’s most popular works of fiction? Mark Horton and Lynn Forest-Hill tell the story of the archaeological dig which  fuelled the fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkien.

The great poet passed away aged 73 on January 28th, 1939.

At the age of twenty-one, in 1826, Disraeli published his first novel, Vivian Grey. Robert Blake describes the long career that lay before him, in which romantic politics and political romances were brilliantly blended.

In the month after the Napoleonic Wars resumed, writes R.M. Anthony, a middle-aged widow and three of her young daughters made an extensive sight-seeing tour of England and Scotland.

The news of Waterloo shocked American readers, writes Donald D. Horward, and most writers and editors refused to believe Wellington’s famous dispatch of June 19th, 1815.

Wit, diner-out, country clergyman and pugnacious liberal journalist, Sydney Smith, said Lord Melbourne, had ‘done more for the Whigs than all the clergy put together.’ Joanna Richardson revisits his reputation.

H.J. Perkin traces the development of England's long love affair with newspapers.

Admired by Lord Melbourne; and, later, the author of two popular novels, Emily Eden was one of the liveliest of correspondents. By Prudence Hannay.

Michael Glover investigates the early modern sources of the English reputation as the most indefatigable writers of letters in the world.