The True Meaning of the Phrase ‘More Honoured in the Breach than the Observance’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines a famous phrase derived from Shakespeare The old line about Hamlet, that it’s ‘too full of quotations’, wittily sums up the play’s influence on not just English literature but on the everyday language we use. Many of us […] The post The True Meaning of the Phrase ‘More Honoured in the Breach than the Observance’ appeared first on Interesting Literature. Continue reading at 'Interesting Literature'

[ Interesting Literature | 2020-05-29 14:00:47 UTC ]

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10 Eighteenth-Century Novels Everyone Should Read

Although it was the nineteenth century when the novel arguably came into its own, with novelists like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontë sisters writing novels that are still widely read and studied today, the eighteenth century was the age in which the novel emerged as a... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2020-05-23 14:00:38 UTC ]
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10 of the Best Poems of Remembrance

Here are some of the finest poems of remembrance, or about remembrance, which can all be found in the wonderful anthology of remembrance poems, The Nation’s Favourite Poems of Remembrance. Remembrance – whether it’s recalling or remembering a past loved one, or commemorating someone who has... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2020-05-20 14:00:46 UTC ]
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BEYOND THE BARD: Exploring the Teaching of Contemporary British Literature in Global Higher Education

Guest Blogger: Prof Katy Shaw, University of Northumbria, Vice-Chair of BACLS – the British Association of Literary Studies – and executive committee member of University English, the national subject association. In recent years there has been a rapid rise in the teaching of English Literature... Continue reading at British Council global

[ British Council global | 2020-05-18 09:30:54 UTC ]
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Jeremy Trafford obituary

Jeremy Trafford, who has died aged 85 after contracting Covid-19, was a publisher, teacher and writer. I met him in the late 1970s, while supply teaching at the London Oratory school, in west London, where he taught English literature in the sixth form. He was a brilliant teacher, who inspired... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2020-05-05 11:07:04 UTC ]
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10 of the Best Narrative Poems in English Literature

When we think of poems, these days most people probably automatically think of lyric poems: usually quite short poems which describe the poet’s (or an imagined speaker’s) thoughts and feelings. But from the epic poems of Homer to the Border Ballads of the Middle Ages to notable contemporary... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2020-04-29 14:00:40 UTC ]
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12 of the Best Books of Literary Criticism Everyone Should Read

Literary criticism (or even ‘literary theory’) goes back as far as ancient Greece, and Aristotle’s Poetics. But the rise of English Literature as a university subject, at the beginning of the twentieth century, led to literary criticism focusing on English literature – everything from... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2020-04-15 14:00:07 UTC ]
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10 of the Best Sestinas in English

The sestina form is thought to have been created by Provencal troubadours – and possibly by one specific troubadour, Arnaut Daniel – in around 1200. However, it didn’t arrive in English literature until the late 1570s, when both Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, poets at the court of Queen... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2020-03-04 15:00:47 UTC ]
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Danse Macabre: Stephen King’s Dance of Death

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews Stephen King’s early non-fiction book about horror In 1999, the prolific author Stephen King had his own dance with death. One afternoon, he was walking on the shoulder of a road near his home in the US state […] The... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2020-02-28 15:00:22 UTC ]
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The Graveyard Talks Back: Arundhati Roy on Fiction in the Time of Fake News

Below is the text of the 2020 Clark Lecture in English Literature instituted by Trinity College, Cambridge. * Thank you for inviting me to deliver this, the Clark Lecture, now in its 152nd year. When I received the invitation, I scrolled down the list of previous speakers, the many “Sirs” and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-12 09:49:50 UTC ]
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On my radar: Emma Jane Unsworth’s cultural highlights

The novelist on William Blake, crying through Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and an insightful poem about teenage masturbationBorn in Bury, Greater Manchester, in 1978, Emma Jane Unsworth studied English literature at the University of Liverpool and received an MA from Manchester University’s... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2020-01-26 10:00:20 UTC ]
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Key Tips for How to Read More This Year

By Oliver Tearle Finding the time to relax with a good book can be difficult, but there are a few practical steps you can take which might help to increase your book-reading productivity in 2020.  We’re sceptical of lists which promise ‘sure-fire ways to guarantee you’ll read more this year’,... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2020-01-11 15:00:55 UTC ]
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The Best Novels of the 1890s

The 1890s saw pioneering works of science fiction, detective fiction, and Gothic horror all published, by some of the greatest English, Scottish, and Irish writers of the age. In the United States, too, novelists addressed social issues, sometimes in comic ways, while social realism continued to... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2019-12-31 15:00:10 UTC ]
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Starry Lite: Isaac Asimov’s Space Ranger

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reads the first novel in Isaac Asimov’s juvenile science fiction series Science fiction set in our own solar system arguably began with Lucian, the classical author whose short satirical piece True History paved the way for... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2019-11-15 15:00:55 UTC ]
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The Best of the Horror Story

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a new anthology of classic horror stories Shortly after receiving my review copies of Darryl Jones’s informative and engaging history of the horror genre, Sleeping with the Lights On, the publishers, Oxford University... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2019-10-25 14:00:45 UTC ]
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Reimagining Folktales, But for the Ear: A Conversation with Mahsuda Snaith, by Carolyne Larrington

Interviews Carolyne Larrington Audible’s new fiction podcast, Hag, launching August 29, features eight reimaginings of traditional British folktales by eight contemporary female writers, with folktales chosen from across the UK. The collection will be... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2019-08-30 14:21:50 UTC ]
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The Best of Early Wyndham

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys some vintage science fiction courtesy of The Best of John Wyndham, 1932-1949 I’ve blogged before about my discovery of John Wyndham’s science fiction in a local charity shop, which had a number of old paperbacks for 99p... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2019-07-05 14:00:22 UTC ]
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Of Tibetans’ Disenchantment, Reclamation, and New Literacy Space: In Conversation with Tenzin Dickie, by Shelly Bhoil

Interviews Shelly Bhoil Tenzin Dickie is a Tibetan writer and translator and editor of The Treasury of Lives, a biographical encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia, and the Himalayan region. Her edited anthology, Old Demons, New Deities: 21 Short Stories from... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2019-06-25 14:25:59 UTC ]
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The Book of Dust, Volume 1

You should not use the word love lightly. Love, about a person, means that every inch of them delights you, even the parts that also cause you pain or terror. It means you care about their flourishing; their way of seeing is dear to you; you want to stroke their hair and serve them cocoa; their... Continue reading at Slate

[ Slate | 2017-10-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Introducing Tristram Shandy

The people have spoken: The first title we’ll be reading for the Slate Academy series A Year in Great books will be The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne. And we’ll let you in on a secret: This was our favorite choice of the four as well. Join us as we explore... Continue reading at Slate

[ Slate | 2016-01-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Call for cut-price classics in schools

Publishers are urged to offer schools access to the great works of English literature at low cost by the Education Secretary. Continue reading at BBC News

[ BBC News | 2015-09-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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