Coming Up This Week
This week VL takes on a lofty air as we dive into words, both the use of them in a technical way and the use of them by Masters of … Continue reading
“Daffodils” by William Wordsworth
One of the reasons I like this poem, which you can read here , is because it’s lighthearted. So much poetry is dark and deep, so it’s a lovely surprise … Continue reading
Historical Fiction Week on VL
Historical fiction is the closest thing we have to a time machine. When done right, it can transport you to another time and place as if a history book came … Continue reading
New Grub Street by George Gissing
Scholarly, anxious Edwin Reardon had achieved a precarious career as the writer of serious fiction. On the strength of critical acclaim for his fourth novel, he has married the refined … Continue reading
Group Post:Reading Resolutions
This time of year, many people make resolutions. You know the regular ones-go on a diet or to the gym, eat healthier, learn a new language, tackle whatever big project … Continue reading
Nine St Andrew’s Night Novels
St Andrew’s Night is the lesser-known Scottish cultural festival. The big one is, of course, Burns’ Night, on 25 January, and is usually a feast, with poetry and music. St … Continue reading
What We Read on Our Summer Vacation
As you know, the Foxes were on summer break for the month of August, but even though we were doing other activities, being Book Foxes, of course we didn’t leave … Continue reading
Coming Up This Week
Though the Foxes have been back from summer break for a little while, they are having trouble shaking off that summer pace, when heat makes everything move slower. In some … Continue reading
The Gilded Chalet by Padraig Rooney
Padraig Rooney’s chatty wander through Swiss history and geography in The Gilded Chalet runs through a lifetime of reading, raking together all the interesting facts he’s collected about Switzerland and literature, … Continue reading
Women proposing marriage to men in fiction – a Vulpes Libris Random
It had never occurred to me before to make these connections, but this year, just before and just after 29th February, I came across two instances in fiction of women … Continue reading
John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses
I worked for my PhD in the later 1980s in an intellectual environment in which New Historicism was only just becoming a thing. Fifteen years later, when I moved back … Continue reading
Musings upon the Short Stories of Saki
Having always enjoyed the short stories of Saki, I was hard pressed to select just one to review. As most people know, Saki is the pen name of Hector Hugh … Continue reading
A Humument. A treated Victorian novel, by Tom Phillips RA
A coda to this year’s Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy was a final room wholly devoted to the project of almost 50 years (and counting) by Tom Phillips RA, … Continue reading
Victorian Fairy Tales – edited by Michael Newton
Fairy tales have been under a presumed threat of extinction for at least a couple of centuries. Each successive generation mourns the modern pressures and loss of innocence that they … Continue reading
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