A review of Samuel Richardson’s troubling, landmark novel and its lockdown links.
The Well of Loneliness
A review of Radclyffe Hall’s landmark 1928 novel about lesbianism, love, and loneliness.
Dear George Eliot, From a Modern Feminist
On lady novelists, human sympathy, drama, and (sort of) smashing the patriarchy.
On Sappho
On Sappho’s splendid, sensual, but frustratingly sparse remaining poetic fragments.
Girl, Woman, Other
A review of Bernardine Evaristo’s stunning recent Booker Prize-winning novel.
Macbeth at the Royal Exchange
On Christopher Haydon’s 2019 production of Macbeth at Manchester’s Royal Exchange theatre.
Henry IV Parts I & II at the Globe
Some thoughts on our mid-term trip to Shakespeare’s Globe to see Henry IV Parts I & II.
“an Empress of a world … a world of ideas”
‘‘I would fain be as you are, an Empress of a world, and I shall never be at quiet until I be one … for every human creature can create an immaterial world fully inhabited by immaterial creatures … he may make a world of ideas, a world of atoms, a world of lights …’’…
“The best moments in reading…”
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it…
Why #januhairy isn’t all that smooth
Originally posted on Cambridge Girl Talk:
Jess Molyneux It was as if the stars had aligned earlier this month, when I first heard about #januhairy: a combination of my two favourite things, feminism and wordplay, it was yet another way for us women to stick it to the patriarchy. I was initially impressed with the…
On reading in heaven, fairyland, and paradise
Thinking about my Christmas reading, a happening period for literature, and the beauty in epic.
A Farewell by Charlotte Mew
Thinking through Charlotte Mew’s moving reflection on love departing.
Jess Writes 