Coleridge
The spirit of beauty
Shelley, walking as a boy through his ‘starlight wood’, looking for ghosts and filled with ‘hopes of high talk with…
A great talent-spotter
There’s no excuse for dullness, especially when writing about a life as eventful as Joseph Johnson’s, the publisher and bookseller…
A true revolutionary
Wordsworth’s reputation has been too long in decline, says Tom Williams. In the space of a decade he transformed English poetry, and his earlier works remain astonishing
From blissful dawn to bleak despair: the end of the revolutionary dream
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey were undergraduates when they met in June 1794, Coleridge at Cambridge university and Southey…
A mirror to the world
The best new books celebrating Shakespeare’s centenary are full of enthusiasm and insight — but none plucks out the heart of his mystery, says Daniel Swift
An incurable Romantic
Frances Wilson’s biography of Thomas De Quincey, the mischievous, elusive ‘Pope of Opium’, makes for addictive reading, says Hermione Eyre
Letters
The C of E should apologise Sir: Peter Hitchens’s article on the allegations against the late Bishop Bell is a…
Wilde about the boy
The prodigious brilliance, blaring public ruin, dismal martyrdom and posthumous glory of Oscar Wilde’s reputation are almost too familiar. The…
