"Shall I tell you what a lady is? A lady is a woman who wears a silk gown, and has a sense of her own importance." Wilkie Collins's investigation of illegitimacy and 'the woman question' inNo Name(1862) compels with a wholly different order of suspense from that ofThe Woman in WhiteorThe Moonstone. For its family secret - the Vanstone daughters' illegitimacy, their consequent disinheritance and fall from social grace - is revealed early on, and as Magdalen Vanstone struggles to reclaim her identity, the plot uncovers many a moral, social and legal skeleton in...
"Shall I tell you what a lady is? A lady is a woman who wears a silk gown, and has a sense of her own importance." Wilkie Collins's investi...
Because Thomas Hardy is so closely associated with the rural Wessex of his novels, stories, and poems, it is easy to forget that he was, in his own words, half a Londoner. Focusing on the formative five years in his early twenties when Hardy lived in the city, but also on his subsequent movement back and forth between Dorset and the capital, Mark Ford shows that the Dorset-London axis is critical to an understanding of his identity as a man and his achievement as a writer.
Thomas Hardy: Half a Londoner presents a detailed account of Hardy's London experiences, from his arrival...
Because Thomas Hardy is so closely associated with the rural Wessex of his novels, stories, and poems, it is easy to forget that he was, in his own...
