Discover Literary Anniversaries


October 2022 – Walter Pater’s “A Prince of Court Painters”: A Covert Autobiography and Museum Trips

by Anna Budziak “A Prince of Court Painters,” a story about the painter Antoine Watteau, was composed when Pater had already known the taste of fame and the sting of criticism. Although he wished it to be published unsigned, it appeared, in October 1885, in Macmillan’s Magazine, with his name […]

November 2021: Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There: The 150th Anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s Sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

by Angelika Zirker   “… what is the use of a book […] without pictures or conversations?” – this is the question that Alice asks herself at the opening of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, while she is “sitting by her sister on the bank” (“Down the Rabbit-Hole”). No use at […]

July 2021: In Contemplation of Sheep – Celebrating 400 Years of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (1621)

by Sarah Briest As sheep roam the early summer meadows of Tübingen, creating idyllic pastoral tableaux on the slanting green hillsides, it is not incongruous to feel reminded of the setting of early modern pastoral romances. The imagination only has to supply a prince or two, in shepherd’s robes, striding […]