Literature

M.L. Ryder describes the use of skins for writing material from about 2000 B.C. in Egypt down to recent times.

Joanna Richardson portrays the marriage of Alfred Tennyson and Emily Sellwood, which set the world a ‘radiant example of domestic happiness’.

J.H.M. Salmon describes how Voltaire was haunted by the massacre of Huguenots in August 1572, and used his version of the complicated event in his lifelong campaign against prejudice and superstition.

Alan Haynes profiles a satirist, playwright and man of letters; Aretino led a prodigal and adventurous life in late Renaissance Italy.

William Noblett profiles Newbery; Goldsmith’s friend and financial aide was the first English publisher to make a lucrative business out of producing books designed for children.

Alexander Winston describes how, in the middle of personal troubles, Milton became an eloquent defender of Cromwell’s system of government.

Harold Kurtz analyses Spanish predominance in the sixteenth-century West Indies.

If the world were ruled by a single Christian monarch, peace and justice would prevail: such was Dante’s vision in the early fourteenth century, writes Robert F. Murphy.

Robert A. Draffan describes how contemporary reviewers of Jane Austen took a moralistic view of her heroines’ adventures.

No marriage has been documented so assiduously as that of Thomas and Jane Carlyle. Ronald Pearsall describes how a famous Victorian historian was the first who attempted to unveil its secrets.