Close Readings

Novel Approaches: ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ by Henry James

Love and Death: 'Surge' by Jay Bernard and 'In Nearby Bushes' by Kei Miller

Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘The Hearing Trumpet’ by Leonora Carrington

Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Ethics of Ambiguity' by Simone de Beauvoir

Novel Approaches: ‘The Last Chronicle of Barset’ by Anthony Trollope

Love and Death: ‘Poems of 1912-13’ by Thomas Hardy

Fiction and the Fantastic: Stories by Jorge Luis Borges

Fiction and the Fantastic: Stories by Jorge Luis Borges

Conversations in Philosophy: 'Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions' by Jean-Paul Sartre

Novel Approaches: 'Our Mutual Friend' by Charles Dickens

Love and Death: Family Elegies by Wordsworth, Lowell, Riley and Carson

Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley

Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Thing' by Martin Heidegger

Novel Approaches: ‘The Mill on the Floss’ by George Eliot

Love and Death: War Elegies by Whitman, Owen, Douglas and more

Fiction and the Fantastic: Mikhail Bulgakov and James Hogg

Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Will to Believe' by William James

Novel Approaches: 'Aurora Leigh' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Love and Death: 'In Memoriam' by Tennyson

Fiction and the Fantastic: Tales by Jan Potocki and Isak Dinesen

Fiction and the Fantastic: Gothic Tales by Jan Potocki and Isak Dinesen

Conversations in Philosophy: 'Schopenhauer as Educator' by Friedrich Nietzsche

Novel Approaches: ‘North and South’ by Elizabeth Gaskell

Love and Death: Self-Elegies by Plath, Larkin, Hardy and more

Fiction and the Fantastic: Stories by Franz Kafka

Conversations in Philosophy: 'My Station and Its Duties' by F.H. Bradley

Novel Approaches: 'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray

Love and Death: Elegies for Poets by Berryman, Lowell and Bishop

Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll

Conversations in Philosophy: 'Autobiography' by John Stuart Mill

Novel Approaches: ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë

Love and Death: ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ by Thomas Gray

Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino

Conversations in Philosophy: 'Circles' and other essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Novel Approaches: 'Crotchet Castle' by Thomas Love Peacock

Love and Death: Elegies for children by Ben Jonson, Anne Bradstreet, Geoffrey Hill and Elizabeth Bishop

Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ by Jonathan Swift

Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Essence of Christianity' by Ludwig Feuerbach

Novel Approaches: ‘Mansfield Park’ by Jane Austen

Love and Death: Milton's 'Lycidas'

Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘The Thousand and One Nights’

Conversations in Philosophy: 'Fear and Trembling' by Søren Kierkegaard

Introducing ‘Novel Approaches’

Introducing ‘Love and Death’

Introducing ‘Fiction and the Fantastic’

Introducing 'Conversations in Philosophy'

Political Poems: ‘Little Gidding’ by T.S. Eliot

Among the Ancients II: Marcus Aurelius

Medieval LOLs: Gwerful Mechain’s ‘Ode to the Vagina’

Coming next year on Close Readings