Literature

Early in the 1650s, writes Alan Haynes, this intrepid noblewoman took the ‘extraordinary’ step of publishing her own poems.

J.H.M. Salmon profiles an important - but largely forgotten - historian of the ancien régime, whose main theme was expansion in Asia and in the New World.

During the 1730s, writes Michael Paffard, the modest and unassuming Duck achieved considerable fame.

David Hopkinson introduces a liberal-minded Victorian poet, seriously concerned with the effects of education.

The Renaissance in Italy, writes Alan Haynes, was enhanced by the arrival of scholars from Byzantium towards the end of the fourteenth century.

On the centenary of his birth, Martin Evans looks at the evolving legacy of the Algerian-born French writer Albert Camus

Proust's epic first appeared on November 14th, 1913.

Stuart Andrews profiles a scientist, controversialist, and pillar of the British enlightenment; Joseph Priestley found his spiritual home in the United States.

Gerald Morgan introduces Byron’s friend and executor; a radical Whig and head of the East India Company during the Afghan troubles of 1835-43.

The author of the History of My Own Time was both a keen churchman and a compulsive writer. Mary Delorme describes how Burnet's style, whether graphic, humorous or pompous, was usually as free and expansive as the historian himself.