Literature

The Death of Edgar Allan Poe

Charles Baudelaire described Edgar Allan Poe's death, on October 7th, 1849, as 'almost a suicide, a suicide prepared for a long time'.

The Press

Jeremy Black charts its growth in Victorian Britain.

Maxim Gorky and the Russian Revolution

Maxim Gorky was revered over the lifetime of the Soviet Union as the leading artist and intellectual associated with the 1917 Revolution. But did he really approve of Lenin and the Bolshevik experiment? 

Fenimore Cooper's America

Alan Taylor examines how the social concerns and ambitions of the new republic and those of the author of Last of the Mohicans intertwined - and how they gave him the canvas to become the United States' first great novelist.

Dickens and the Construction of Christmas

The best-loved of Britain's novelists penned a tale that struck a potent chord in the popular revival of the season of goodwill. Geoffrey Rowell explains its appeal and its powerful religious and social overtones.