Before Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, there was Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘Herland’

The American writer imagined an all-woman society centred on motherhood.

Michael Robertson, Aeon

· Oct 05, 2018 · 05:30 pm

‘Little Women’ at 150: How I got over my literary grudge against Amy March

A novelist explores her love-hate relationship with the March sisters, who sprang to life in the pages of ‘Little Women’ 150 years ago.

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

· Sep 30, 2018 · 07:00 am

The first English novel was about talking cats and its author had to keep it hidden for 10 years

William Baldwin wrote the satirical novel ‘Beware The Cat’ in 1553 but was afraid of the wrath of Queen Mary I, who had banned several press freedoms.

Frances Babbage, The Conversation

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Rachel Stenner, The Conversation

· Sep 28, 2018 · 05:30 pm

The characters in Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ made connections with each other much like we do on Facebook

Researchers analysed the connections between the hundreds of characters in Homer’s classic and compared them to Facebook networks, with surprising results.

Murilo Da Silva Baptista, The Conversation

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Pedro Jeferson Miranda, The Conversation

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Sandro Ely de Souza Pinto, The Conversation

· Sep 07, 2018 · 05:30 pm

Over 150 years later, Maupassant’s fiction is remembered for the questions it asked of morality

What was it that Guy de Maupassant, born on this day, August 5, found in the poor that he couldn’t find in respectable people?

M Saad

· Aug 05, 2018 · 05:30 pm

How ‘Wuthering Heights’ became associated with a long-standing myth of incest in the Bronte family

As early as 1883, writers claimed that Emily Bronte’s novel indicated an incestuous relationship with her brother, Branwell.

Amber Pouliot, The Conversation

· Jul 31, 2018 · 07:30 pm

Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ isn’t just a poem about man and god. It was the first ‘scientific epic’

The 10,000-line epic poem, published in 1667, was heavily influenced by Galileo and the scientific revolution of the time.

Ed Simon

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Ed Simon, Aeon

· Apr 05, 2018 · 05:30 pm

‘Kaikeyi to Dasharath’: How Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s radical poetry reworked the narrative

A translation by Ahona Panda of the Bengali poet and playwright’s most anthologised poem.

Michael Madhusudan Dutt

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Ahona Panda

· Mar 18, 2018 · 08:30 am

Daphne Du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’ at 80: Why we will always return to Manderley

Once, it was dismissed as a mere 'love story’. But the masterpiece has transfixed generations since then.

Laura Varnam, The Conversation

· Mar 04, 2018 · 06:30 pm

Fifty years later, Shrilal Shukla’s ‘Raag Darbari’ is being reborn as modern Indian literature

The world is upside-down, provincialism has replaced cosmopolitanism, and exoticism is dead in today’s fiction. Just like in ‘Raag Darbari’.

Ulka Anjaria

· Mar 03, 2018 · 10:30 am

Turning 200: The ‘Scottish Jane Austen’ was much more satirical about marriage than the real one

Susan Ferrier offered scathing insights into high society. An excerpt from her first novel ‘Marriage’, published in 1818.

Susan Ferrier

· Jan 04, 2018 · 06:30 pm

This Ramanand Sagar short story shows he was not only a film director (and the maker of ‘Ramayana’)

December 29, 2017 marked the 100th birth anniversary of the Lahore-born movie mogul and fiction-writer.

Ramanand Sagar

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Raza Naeem

· Dec 30, 2017 · 10:30 am