Martin Geeson
The Trespasser
Brief Encounter meets Tristan und Isolde - on the Isle of Wight, under a vast sky florid with stars. The consequence is tragic indeed for on…
Oscar Wilde: Art and Morality
“Who can help laughing when an ordinary journalist seriously proposes to limit the subject-matter at the disposal of the artist?”“We are dom…
Samson Agonistes
“The Sun to me is darkAnd silent as the Moon,When she deserts the nightHid in her vacant interlunar cave.”Milton composes his last extended …
Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
“Extreme busyness…is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal …
The Story of My Misfortunes (or: Historia Calamitatum)
Autobiographies from remote historical periods can be especially fascinating.Modes of self-presentation vary greatly across the centuries, a…
Hero and Leander
“Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?”The wonder-decade of the English drama was suddenly interrupted in 1592, when serious plague…
Bible (Wycliffe) 21: Ecclesiastes
“... an alemaunde tre schal floure, a locuste schal be maad fat, and capparis schal be distried; for a man schal go in to the hous of his eu…
The Dancing Mania
Numerous theories have been proposed for the causes of dancing mania, and it remains unclear whether it was a real illness or a social pheno…
Zastrozzi, A Romance
“Would Julia of Strobazzo’s heart was reeking on my dagger!”From the asthmatic urgency of its opening abduction scene to the Satanic defianc…