by eleanorh | Jul 6, 2020 | Uncategorized
Lockdown reading takes many forms, from the rediscovery of the attractions of Jane Austen’s socially enclosed worlds, to the recognition of the predictive power of texts like Camus’s La Peste, or Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. As a specialist in Renaissance...
by eleanorh | Jun 30, 2020 | Uncategorized
As a collector of anything to do with writing and examples of printing, I was trying to update the catalogue of my collection and came across this little book, which I wondered may be of some interest. It measures 14cm h by 9½cm w and consists of 93 pages. ...
by eleanorh | Jun 29, 2020 | Uncategorized
As France entered strictly regulated ‘confinement’ in mid-March I was finishing a book chapter about spaces of reading (and writing) on the purpose-built fast passenger clipper the Torrens. With her unusually long poop deck she carried only about 50 first...
by eleanorh | Jun 22, 2020 | Uncategorized
As I write, England is just starting to emerge from lockdown. Weeks of closure of places of employment, shops and schools. Weeks at home; weeks of boredom, distress and worry. I know I’m not the only one who has found it hard. In times like these, what I read changes....
by eleanorh | Jun 15, 2020 | Uncategorized
As noted in previous blogs in the series, sales of Albert Camus’ pestilence classic La Peste are at an all-time high as readers try and make sense of their new, disorienting lockdown experience by turning to stories of enforced pandemic quarantine in past times. My...
by eleanorh | Jun 9, 2020 | Uncategorized
Here is this week’s pile of books. No doubt they will last longer than a week – as Susan Elderkin noted in her blog, it is not easy to read in a pandemic. When I was completing my doctoral research around full-time work, I used to have a daydream of being sent to...
