William Shakespeare

Several stories in Good Bones delight in giving something to say for themselves to literary characters generally understood to be beyond sympathy (the stepmother, the ugly sister, Gertrude in Shakespeare 's Hamlet). Others employ...

A Beginner tells the story of Emma Jocelyn, a young woman who writes a novel called Miching Mallecho. (The title, drawn from Hamlet, elicits the following exchange between Emma and her aunt in...

Without ever owning the complete works of Théophile Gautier , Alphonse Daudet , Shakespeare , Byron , or Swinburne , she read bits and pieces of them all, and they helped to shape her style...

Most of the section called Poems, as well as some other pieces, describe flowers or other features of the natural world. Nature and poetry (which is celebrated in the opening Invocation to Song)...

Set during the Crimean War, the novel recounts the tragic love affair between the young nurse Thierna and Captain Cyril Etherington. The events of the narrative recall those of MTL 's own...

Meanwhile Orlando establishes a relationship of friendship and equality with Viola Cash, a young woman who embodies intelligence, practicality, and activity as well as beauty. She supports improved education for women, and is not afraid...

RP takes the journey as the most central of all poetic images. The first part of her book is a guide to reading poetry, divided under headings of which many include the words journey,...

The language, entirely spare and unadorned, links the play on the one hand to contemporary television reports and on the other to the ancient mode of tragedy. Ian with his eyes put out unaffectedly recalls...

Ragged Banners also addresses questions of genre. The text includes an index which lists on the one hand names of notable literary figures (including Ethel M. Dell , T. S. Eliot , and Shakespeare ...

The title-page quotes are from Nicholas Rowe 's Jane Shore and an unidentified old play. The actual woman behind the story was Rebecca Berry, later Elton . The coat of arms of her...

CG calls Quid Pro Quoa bustling play of the Farquhar , or George Colman school. Her prologue makes the point that the rapidity of modern life, symbolised by the railway, leaves no time...

This novel, like the others in the trilogy, is set in the fictionalised Norwich: Morningquest. SG opened it with a quotation from Emilia in Shakespeare 's Othello, claiming the right and duty to...

The preface opens by quoting Johnson 's view of Shakespeare as the poet of nature who moved away from the universal reliance of dramatists on romantic love as the only motive for action. What a...

The title-page quotes Shakespeare on the marriage of true minds. This novel explores various motives for marriage and traces the experience of a group of married couples. It begins with the five Miss Phipson sisters...

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...