First there were suggestions that William Shakespeare was assisted by a ghostwriter, now comes a notion – in a new book, “The Man Who Invented Shakespeare”, by German academic Kurt Kreiler – that many Shakespeare works were actually written by the Earl of Oxford, Edward De Vere.
Edward De Vere also lived in the same [...]

Why are the books of Charles Dickens still part of many of today’s school curriculums, almost 140 years after he died?
These are all wonderful reasons to read Dickens. But these are not exactly the reasons why I read Dickens. My search for an answer continued but never with success, until one year the little [...]

13 titles make it onto this year’s Booker Prize long list. The narrowed down “short list” featuring just six titles will be announced in a month or so.

61 essential postmodern reads: but now to answer the question, how exactly do you decide what is a postmodern book?
The thing about postmodernism is it’s impossible to pin down exactly what might make a book postmodern. In looking at the attributes of the essential postmodern reads, we found some were downright contradictory. Postmodern books have [...]

The cover of the latest print edition of Opium Magazine has been printed with special inks, that if left exposed to sunlight, will over the next one thousand years reveal a nine word short story.
The printing process in question is a simple but, as usual with Keats, pretty clever idea. The cover is printed [...]

An article by William Boyd on the influence that – in this case – London Parks have had on novelists… otherwise a great read if you are a fan of the parks in and around London.
How many first kisses take place in parks? How often do the first intimations of a future adultery occur? There [...]

How relevant does George Orwell’s classic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which depicts a bleak dystopian future for humanity, remain 60 years after its publication?
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which opposes increased regulation, used the anniversary to put out a press release arguing that “the crusade for global governance led by environmental activist groups in the name of [...]

The rise of electronic, user generated, publishing has not necessarily led to an increase in poorly produced literature, writes Robert McCrum, who says the 1960s and 1970s, a period regarded by some as the golden age of book publishing, had no shortage of less than memorable writing.
The present age of literary excess does not wield [...]

Great expectations, Charlotte’s web, And when did you last see your father, Tender is the night, and One flew the cuckoo’s nest, are among entries to the “literary tear jerkers” list.
As David Nicholls – himself an author – points out, it is far harder to move a book reader to tears than it is [...]

Pier pressure is forcing festival to double up
The Sydney Writers’ Festival 2008 guide was released today. While anyone living in Sydney is obviously aware of what is certainly a well promoted event locally, I was surprised to read just how much profile it has garnered internationally.
Now ranked one of the top five literary festivals in [...]