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  1. June 2025 – 200th Birthday of Annie French Hector (Mrs Alexander) (1825-1902) - by Ariadna Strempel Pons I like to live with my characters, to get thoroughly acquainted with them; and I am always sorry to part with the companions who have brought me many a pleasant hour of oblivion — oblivion from the carking cares that crowd outside my study door. – Annie French Hector It’s not every day that we are able to interview our favourite authors, especially when most of them were alive centuries ago. This is why I believe we should thank Helen C. Black for interviewing thirty women authors in 1893 and publishing them in a book called… Continue Reading
  2. May 2025 – 100th Birthday of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway - by Vera Yakupova Published on the 14th of May 1925, while merely describing a 24 hour period, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is turning 100 years. When we remember the novel in the present, what do 100 years mean, as the characters’ memories and experiences reach us today? The New Yorker described a resurgent interest in the novel during the recent COVID-19 pandemic with the title “Why Anxious Readers Under Quarantine Turn To ‘Mrs. Dalloway’”. As Kindley notes, the novel offers a meditation on the intersection of personal trauma and rigid social structures—an experience that echoed strongly during global lockdowns and… Continue Reading
  3. February 2025 – Robert Louis Stevenson meets William Ernest Henley - by Laurie Atkinson Yesterday, Leslie Stephen, who was down here to lecture, called on me and took me up to see a poor fellow, a bit of a poet who writes for him, and who has been eighteen months in our Infirmary and may be, for all I know, eighteen months more. It was very sad to see him there, in a little room with two beds, and a couple of sick children in the other bed; [...] the gas flared and crackled, the fire burned in a dull economical way; Stephen and I sat on a couple of chairs… Continue Reading
  4. December 2024 – George MacDonald’s (1824-1905) 200th Birthday - December 2024— Growing Younger with George MacDonald (1824-1905) by Amanda B. Vernon     This month marks the 200th birthday of the Scottish writer, theologian and literary scholar George MacDonald (1824-1905). All birthdays bring with them the (welcome or unwelcome) opportunity to reflect on the idea of growing older. In the case of MacDonald, though, it seems more fitting to reflect on the idea of growing younger. Amongst the many roles MacDonald performed during his career (including that of Congregationalist minister, novelist, literary scholar, and editor), he is perhaps best known as a children’s writer. His children’s fantasy novels like… Continue Reading

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