Literature

The Literary and Philosophical Society was once ubiquitous, allowing minds to meet and views to collide. Their disappearance has left more questions than answers.

‘The most important lesson history has taught me? Destroy your drafts and personal papers, because one day a graduate student will comb through them looking for incriminating titbits.’

On 10 July 1873, decadent duo Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud’s poetic frenzy ended with a gunshot.

Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs by David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu has plenty of copy but is it right?

The earthquake that hit Lisbon in 1755 toppled buildings and shook the foundations of the Enlightenment. Was God punishing humanity, or was the disaster man-made?

Could a text thought to be by Shakespeare’s father actually be his sister’s writing?

On 8 June 1949, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. His final novel, its themes had been present throughout his literary career.

Bluestockings: The First Women’s Movement by Susannah Gibson makes a case for 18th-century proto-feminism. Do the Bluestockings fit?

As told by one medieval chronicler, Britain’s past and future had been prophesied by Merlin, who foresaw its rise, fall and conquest. Did the magician have warnings for the present?

The Anglo-Saxons knew that life – and land – is precarious, which makes its gifts precious.