William Shakespeare

A preface (in the first volume) quotes the words of Samuel Johnson (with apology for applying them to so trifling a matter as novel-writing) about working at his dictionary amid grief and illness, feeling cut...

LTS did not produce any more volumes for several years, during which her work as a freelance research assistant perhaps occupied her fully. Finally, in 1879, she issued a new edition of Clement Mansfield Ingleby

In providing readers with a guide to understanding Shakespeare 's plays, Smith takes a lively approach: at one point she warns her readers that Falstaff, it must be said, is not always fit company for...

The book's epigraph from Shakespeare 's The Tempest (What's past is prologue) provokes the narrator's question, how far back do you want? How far will do?What's past in this book...

Smith's take on Iphis and Ianthe begins with sisters Anthea and Imogen listening to their grandfather's stories from when I was a girl in the women's suffrage movement: a sure induction into matters of gender...

This novel is set in Cornwall, as well as in a contemporary landscape of violent exclusion, lies, suffering. Its protagonist, Sophia, dwells on these things in her mind, while her activist sister, Iris, has...

As each book in this series relates to one of Shakespeare 's plays, this one relates to Pericles, and the artist that it relates to is Tacita Dean, who is famous for her...

The arborist re-reads Oliver Twist alongside their partner's lectures and urges the partner to consider discussing the musical form of the novel (a request accommodated, as the academic threads it in alongside Auld Lang Syne...

The many editions of CS 's sonnets attest to their popularity. In one she mentions having to get back from friends the original manuscripts of poems which she had not bothered to keep. Her sonnets...

CS 's father, William Thomas Smedley , was a chartered accountant and company director, a philanthropist, a free-thinker, and a bibliophile. His magnificent Shakespeare -Bacon book collection, including more than a hundred volumes of...

With her sister, CS began her education at home with her mother as teacher. She read Shakespeare at four years old, and later learned the violin. She and Ida were concert-goers from an early age...

This first dialogue concerned the Baconian controversy. CS 's father was given to harping on his belief that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare . This is the position taken by Smedley's Victorian...

The epigraph is a statement about truth from Shakespeare 's Henry IV Part One. The protagonist of this novel, Sarah Barcant, was born in Smitsrivier, a dusty little South African town dominated by its...

The chapter headings quote a range of canonical or contemporary writers, including Shakespeare , Milton , Pope , Thomson , Goldsmith , William Mason , John Langhorne , Burns , Erasmus Darwin , Edward Young

At this point Gertrude hears a noise in her late husband's room; Ethelind sees a mysterious armed personage resembling him; Winifred sees a tall, white figure; Ormond offers to lie in wait for the ghost...