Search

Does my first memory of Robert Louis Stevenson's work come from reading one of his stories or poems, or from hearing something of his read aloud? I am not sure [...]

Penelope Fitzgerald was born in 1916 into a distinguished family of Church of England clergy, thinkers, writers, and editors characterized by what her biographer, Hermione Lee, calls 'alarming honesty, caustic [...]

On Jersey Breaks by Robert Pinsky. Among the premier poets of our period, it's hard to think of anyone who has embraced the role of civic poet so wholeheartedly and [...]

Parallel to his life's work as a lyric poet, William Butler Yeats was active on several tracks. Though he was born into the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy, he organized opposition to [...]

The feast of the hungry Every window in the big house blazed, brilliant with beeswax candles, Murano chandeliers, torches in sconces. Wayfarers across the snow, their feet near to freezing, [...]

Jenny Uglow Mr. Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 598 pages, $45 Sometimes it seems to me that the lives of the Victorians show more [...]

Eamonn Wall From Oven Lane to Sun Prairie: In Search of Irish America. Arlen House, 214 pages, $30 'Irish American' is a designation of dubious repute, evoking green beer on [...]

Peter Taylor, edited by Ann Beattie Complete Stories. The Library of America, 1,650 pages, $75 'Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is [...]

Fathers & sons Colm Toibin Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce. Scribner, 272 pages, $26 In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of [...]

-

Hendrik Meijer Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century. University of Chicago Press, 448 pages, $35 Probably die name Grand Rapids carries little resonance for readers [...]

It seemed unlikely on the face of it that two big books of letters, each of which could serve as a doorstop, would be so absorbing. But I recently found [...]

Huo feels like a sleepy South Seas port off the pages of Somerset Maugham. The town climbs a slope leading up to the volcano, Mauna Kea, and looks out over [...]

Down in the Delta Richard Grant Dispatches from Pluto: Ixist and Found in the Mississippi Delta. Simon & Schuster, 320 pages, $16 The Mississippi Delta has bad press. Journalists stay [...]

'My gifts are small,' Max Beerbohm wrote a prospective biographer in 1921 from his home at Villino Chiaro in Rapallo. 'I've used them very well and discreedy, never straining them; [...]

James M. McPherson Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief. Penguin, 301 pages, $32.95 S. C. Gwynne Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson. Scribner, 672 [...]

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954-2012) was such a presence in the Irish literary world and so attuned to his moment in the life of the nation that it is hard to come [...]

-

When we think of William Morris today, probably the first thing that comes to mind is the wallpaper to which he lends his name. And why not? 'Strawberry Thief,' 'African [...]

Saving England Michael Bloch James Lees-Milne: The Life. John Murray, 416 pages, $39.95 We tend to view the English country house through the Merchant & Ivory lens. But from the [...]

Mezzogiorno Full summer. The umbrella pines show burnt umber underneath and cicadas scratch out a dry music. The bells in the valley suspend unmoved, their tongues hanging out. Paving stones [...]

Denis Donoghue Irish Essays. Cambridge University Press, 261 pages, $26.99. D enis Donoghue is, for my money, the best kind of critic. One might apply to him the term 'practical [...]

Richard Rankin Russell Poetry & Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney & Northern Ireland. University of Notre Dame Press, 389 pages, $45 T he flowering of poetry from Northern Ireland in [...]

Overnight It is gloomy, especially in the rain, the waterways with mist rising off them, memories of past visits here and earlier loves--ghost smudges barely glimpsed, dripping alleys, steps dissolving [...]

A. S. Byatt The Children's Book. Alfred A. Knopf, 675 pages, $26.95 O ne of the glories of English fiction in the past few decades or so has been a [...]

'Millais' Tate Britain, London. September 26, 2007-January 13, 2008 Tate Britain has mounted some splendid exhibitions during the past couple of years, including the Holbein exhibition in autumn 2006, the [...]

TABLE from the Turkish of Edip Cansever A man filled with the gladness of living Put his keys on the table, Put flowers in a copper bowl there. He put [...]