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Garbage in The Great Gatsby

 While The Great Gatsby is rightly seen as condemning Jazz Age wastefulness, the importance of actual waste in the novel is often overlooked. One of the early titles of Scott...

Garbage in The Great Gatsby

 While The Great Gatsby is rightly seen as condemning Jazz Age wastefulness, the importance of actual waste in the novel is often overlooked. One of the early titles of Scott...

Kafka’s Repressed Homosexuality

Much has been made of Kafka’s reputation as a womaniser, but a new book by Saul Friedländer argues that there was another more tortured side to his sexuality – a...

Kafka’s Repressed Homosexuality

Much has been made of Kafka’s reputation as a womaniser, but a new book by Saul Friedländer argues that there was another more tortured side to his sexuality – a...

Keats – novelist manqué?

It’s always fun to wonder what might have become of talented artists who died young. John Keats, the Romantic poet, died of tuberculosis only six years after he began composing...

Keats – novelist manqué?

It’s always fun to wonder what might have become of talented artists who died young. John Keats, the Romantic poet, died of tuberculosis only six years after he began composing...

Robert Browning on his critics

Browning hated literary criticism. He dropped out of the newly founded London University after only two terms, and was infamous for excoriating critics who relied on dictionaries and encyclopedias to...

Robert Browning on his critics

Browning hated literary criticism. He dropped out of the newly founded London University after only two terms, and was infamous for excoriating critics who relied on dictionaries and encyclopedias to...

Gleanings: gems from the literary pages

In a new book on Conrad, Robert Hampson revisits the famous scene in which Marlow lies to Kurtz’s fiancée at the end of Heart of Darkness. It is usally thought the...

Gleanings: gems from the literary pages

In a new book on Conrad, Robert Hampson revisits the famous scene in which Marlow lies to Kurtz’s fiancée at the end of Heart of Darkness. It is usally thought the...

Putting real people into novels

"Most of the great English novels of the 20th century come crammed with supercharged versions of real people," claims D.J. Taylor inThe Guardian. Prompted by the appearance of a thinly...

Putting real people into novels

"Most of the great English novels of the 20th century come crammed with supercharged versions of real people," claims D.J. Taylor inThe Guardian. Prompted by the appearance of a thinly...