November 2018
Home Improvement: Jane Austen and E.M Forster
Written 100 years apart, Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and E.M. Forster’s Howards End are both novels about the state of England, uneasy class relations, social conformity and social rebellion. In this course, we will explore the rich social comedy of both texts, their exploration of the English country house as symbol and the authors’ presentations of a range of heroines from the quiet endurance of Austen’s Fanny Price to the bold rebellion of Mary Crawford and Forster’s Helen Schlegel. Date: Tuesdays 4th September…
Find out more »The House of Fiction: Henry James and Edith Wharton
In The Portrait of a Lady and The House of Mirth, two of America’s greatest novelists, create two of the most enduringly attractive and tragic heroines in modern literature: Isabel Archer and Lily Bart. Both are independent, both are beautiful and both know that they must marry one of their many suitors. Yet there are no happy endings here and the consequences of their decisions test them to breaking point. In this course we will explore the novel’s exploration of female sexuality, the…
Find out more »Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys's powerful, haunting masterpiece was inspired by her fascination with the first Mrs Rochester, the mad wife in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. If you are a fan of Bronte's novel, then this course is an absolute must. If you have never read Jane Eyre, then I am sure you will want to after completing the course!
Find out more »December 2018
Christmas by the fireside
A perennial favourite with readers, A Christmas Carol is my ghost story of choice for this year’s festive Bite. Bites is an excellent opportunity to learn new ways of approaching a book in a single session – great if you’re pushed for time or want to tickle your taste buds before deciding to join me on one of my standard 6 week courses. What could be better than the prospect of spending two hours absorbed in discussion about books? Book…
Find out more »Christmas by the fireside
A perennial favourite with readers, A Christmas Carol is my ghost story of choice for this year’s festive Bite. Bites is an excellent opportunity to learn new ways of approaching a book in a single session – great if you’re pushed for time or want to tickle your taste buds before deciding to join me on one of my standard 6 week courses. What could be better than the prospect of spending two hours absorbed in discussion about books? Book…
Find out more »January 2019
Virginia Woolf
In Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf’s experiments with narrative technique and multiple perspectives take the novel into uncharted waters, exploring individual consciousness, interweaving lives and unspoken memories and desires in ways that are at once challengingly innovative and refreshingly direct. Yet these are not mere technical experiments: both novels are moving explorations of family relationships and conflicts, of the shattering effects of the First World War and the very nature of artistic creation. Date: Thursdays 10th Jan – 14th Feb…
Find out more »Virginia Woolf
In Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf’s experiments with narrative technique and multiple perspectives take the novel into uncharted waters, exploring individual consciousness, interweaving lives and unspoken memories and desires in ways that are at once challengingly innovative and refreshingly direct. Yet these are not mere technical experiments: both novels are moving explorations of family relationships and conflicts, of the shattering effects of the First World War and the very nature of artistic creation. Date: Thursdays 10th Jan – 14th Feb…
Find out more »‘Tell it slant’: Introduction to the poetry of Emily Dickinson
15 January 2019,10:00 am - 29 January 2019,12:15 pm Book here
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