Welcome back to my Neo-Victorian Voices series , focused on books set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first. Today, I’m...

I’ve previously reviewed Gustave Flaubert’s 1869 novel, A Sentimental Education , for this blog, but this month I’m back with a post about a...

My debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress (2020), is about Lydia Robinson, the married woman who had an affair with Branwell Bronte, the Bronte sis...

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading The Marquise de Sade , by Rachilde (first published in French in 1887).  I’ve read books...

Wilde complained to me one day that someone in a well-known novel had stolen an idea of his. I pleaded in defence of the culprit that Wilde...

Ah!  Vanitas Vanitatum!  which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?—come, children, let u...

I first saw David Hare’s 1998 The Judas Kiss in 2012 at Hampstead Theatre in London. Four years on, the production, directed by Neil Armfi...

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the most famous comedic plays in English and one that has enjoyed popularity since...

Post-November it feels appropriate to write about one of the greatest successes to come out of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in ...

After 25 letters in my Victorian Alphabet, I’m cheating a little bit here, as Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson, or An Oxford Love Story was...

Last February, I shared some inspiration for literary lines to use whatever your romantic situation on Valentine’s Day. And this year, I’m...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) is a staple nineteenth-century text for students of literature in the English-spe...