October 2007

In August 1917, Virginia invited Katherine to spend a few days with them at Asheham. At the end of July, Katherine had been staying with Ottoline Morrell at Garsington; she… Read More »Mansfield and Woolf in Kew Gardens!

Mrs Lazarus    I had grieved. I had wept for a night and a dayover my loss, ripped the cloth I was married infrom my breasts, howled, shrieked, clawedat the… Read More »The World's Wife: Carol Ann Duffy

When you had dinner with Gladstone, you were left feeling that he was the most charming person you had ever met. But after dinner with Disraeli, you felt that you… Read More »Charm?

Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being “like this”. Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions—trivial,… Read More »Virginia Woolf: Modern Fiction 1925

Prose Fiction 2: Essay Questions.     Choose an essay question from one of the questions below. The essay should focus upon two texts on the course and should be… Read More »

THERE was not an inch of room for Lottie and Kezia in the buggy. When Pat swung them on top of the luggage they wobbled; the grandmother’s lap was full… Read More »Mansfield: Prelude

“Nurture your mind with great thoughts for you will never go higher than you think .” (Disraeli)

He waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of feet. He was still discomposed by… Read More »Sensory Impressions in James Joyce's The Dead

Although they are only breath, words which I command are immortal (sappho, 600BC)

it is at moments after i have dreamedof the rare entertainment of your eyes,when(being fool to fancy)i have deemed with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;at moments when the… Read More »e e cummings: it is at moments after I have dreamed

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond by E. E. Cummings somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyondany experience,your eyes have their silence:in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,or… Read More »e.e.cummings: somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time future,And time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.What might have been is an… Read More »T.S.Eliot's Burnt Norton and Winnie Verloc in Conrad's The Secret Agent: Correspondences?

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,in… Read More »Sonnet XVII: Pablo Neruda

Lost in the forest…    Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twigand lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,a… Read More »Pablo Neruda: Lost in the Forest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNhCMzA1T30 Keep hearing this as I drive and it already sounds like a ‘classic’ soul anthem. Gabrielle’s voice is a throaty gift and the lyrics soar and seem inevitable..as if… Read More »New Gabrielle and Paul Weller: Why?

Love Sonnet XI Pablo Neruda I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all dayI hunt… Read More »

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone,… Read More »Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher