The 21st anniversary of Roald Dahl’s death

You and I can wipe our smooth faces with a flannel and we quickly look more or less all right again, but the hairy man cannot do that. We can also, if we are careful, eat our meals without spreading food all over our faces. But not so the hairy man. Watch carefully next time you see a hairy man eating his lunch and you will notice that even if he opens his mouth very wide, it is impossible for him to get a spoonful of beef-stew or ice-cream and chocolate sauce into it without leaving some of it on the hairs. Mr Twit didn’t even bother to open his mouth wide when he ate. As a result (and because he never washed) there were always hundreds of bits of old breakfasts and lunches and suppers sticking to the hairs around his face. They weren’t big bits, mind you, because he used to wipe those off with the back of his hand or on his sleeve while he was eating.

From The Twits, Roald Dahl (13th September 1916 – 23rd November 1990) – British/Norwegian RAF pilot, novelist and screenwriter. 

Roald Dahl was born in Cardiff to Norwegian parents, Harald and Sofie. In 1920, both his father and his sister died. Though she had the option of returning to Norway to live with her family, Dahl’s mother decided to remain in Wales because Harald had wished to have their children educated in British schools, which he considered the world’s best.

His first children’s book was The Gremlins, about mischievous little creatures that were part of RAF folklore. All the RAF pilots blamed the gremlins for all the problems with the planes. This was published in 1943 and Dahl went on to create some of the best-loved children’s stories of the 20th century, such as The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, The Magic Finger, George’s Marvellous Medicine, Matilda, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Twits. He also had a successful parallel career as the writer of macabre adult short stories, which were just as dark and mischievous as his stories for children.

Roald Dahl died of a blood disease on 23rd November 1990, at the age of 74 in Oxford and was buried in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. According to his granddaughter Sophie, after whom Sophie in The BFG was named, the family gave him a “sort of Viking funeral”. He was buried with his snooker cues, some “very good burgundy”, chocolates, HB pencils and a power saw. In his honour, the Roald Dahl Children’s Gallery was opened in November 1996, at the Buckinghamshire County Museum.

The anniversary of his birthday is celebrated as “Roald Dahl Day” in Africa, the UK, and Latin America.

In 2002, one of Cardiff Bay’s modern landmarks, the Oval Basin plaza, was re-named “Roald Dahl Plass”. “Plass” means “place” or “square” in Norwegian, referring to his Norwegian roots.

In 2003, the UK survey entitled The Big Read carried out by the BBC in order to find the “nation’s best loved novel” of all time. Four of Dahl’s books were named in the Top 100 – with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory placing at #35 – and only works by Charles Dickens and Terry Pratchett featured more.

In 2008 The Times placed Dahl 16th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. He has also been referred to as “one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century”. His work remains as popular as ever, with each new generation discovering his magical, naughty and timeless stories.

Iris Murdoch

“We are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness is the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. But we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around. Most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge. We are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value.”

From ‘The Sea, The Sea’, Iris Murdoch DBE (15th July 1919 – 8th February 1999) – Irish-born British author and philosopher. She is known for novels which portray characters with warped and often dreamlike perceptions of reality and which contain explorations of politics, morality, sexual relationships, philosophy, and the power of the unconscious. One of the other most common themes of her work is the fantasy of freedom – often sexual – versus conventional responsibility. She won the Booker Prize in 1978 for ‘The Sea, the Sea’, a novel about the power of love affairs and loss, featuring a man overcome by jealousy when he is reunited with an old lover after several decades apart.

Jean Iris Murdoch was born to Wills and Irene in Dublin. Her father came from a sheep-farming family and her mother was a singer. When Iris was very young the family moved to London, where her father then worked in the civil service. She was educated in private progressive schools, first at the Froebel Demonstration School, and then as a boarder at the Badminton School in Bristol. She read classics, ancient history, and philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford, and philosophy as a postgraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1948, she became a fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford.

For a while, Iris worked as assistant principal in the British treasury and from 1944 to 1946, she worked with the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Centre. She also spent a short amount of a time as a member of the Communist Party.

In the early 1950s, she published several philosophical studies, including one of Jean Paul Sartre, a philosopher to whom she has been compared. In 1954, she published her first novel, ’Under the Net’, about a man who sees the world as a fake and hostile place, causing all of his personal relationships to break down. The net in this novel is the net of language. In 2005, ‘Under the Net’ was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present. She went on to write many more acclaimed and celebrated novels over the next 40 years, including ‘The Sandcastle’, ‘The Bell’, ‘The Black Prince’, ‘A Fairly Honourable Defeat’ and ‘The Green Knight’. Her novels are full of similarities to, and reflections of, the writers she loved, including Shakespeare, Sartre, Proust and Tolstoy.

 In 1956, Murdoch married John Bayley, a distinguished literary critic, novelist and English professor, and they lived a happy life in a picturesque house by the river in Oxfordshire. In 1995, Iris believed she was suffering from writer’s block but she would soon discover that she was showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. For a while, she was able to continue writing but her condition quickly worsened and in February 1999, she died at her home in Oxford with John at her bedside. They had no children together.

Shortly after her death, John released a book about his life with Iris, called ‘Elegy for Iris’, in which he talked about their “successful and enjoyable marriage in which two singular souls found a happiness as luminous as any we have heard of in the annals of marriage”, and recalls with a fond sadness the years spent living with Iris’ illness and the childlike state she was reduced to:

”Rivers and pictures were our holiday ideals. . . ‘In her shabby old one-piece swimsuit . . . she was an awkward and anxious figure, her socks trailing round her ankles. She was obstinate about not taking these off, and I gave up the struggle. A pleasure barge chugged slowly past, an elegant girl in a bikini sunning herself on the deck, a young man in white shorts at the steering wheel. . .  We must have presented a comic spectacle — an elderly man struggling to remove the garments from an old lady, still with white skin and incongruously fair hair. . . “

 John’s book was used as the basis for the 2001 film about his wife staring Kate Winslet and Judi Dench, called, simply, ‘Iris’.

Happy birthday, Beatrix Potter!

Beatrix Potter was born on 28th July, 1866 in Kensington, London. World-famous for her charming tales of animal friends and families, her books are as popular as ever and are a huge part of England’s literary landscape even today. Her stories are loved by adults and children alike and for many people, her name is almost synonymous with childhood. Though she was fascinated by science – especially mycology, archaeology and entemology - she was also a student of folk tales, mythology, fairy tales and fantasy.

“Whenever Potter went on holiday to the Lake District or Scotland, she sent letters to young friends illustrating them with quick sketches. Many of these letters were written to the children of her former governess Anne Carter Moore, and particularly to her oldest son Noel who was often ill. In September 1893, Potter was on holiday at Eastwood in Dunkeld, Scotland. She had run out of things to say to Noel and so she told him a story about “four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter.” It became one of the most famous children’s letters ever written and the basis of Potter’s future career as a writer-artist-storyteller.”

Here is what then became the famous introduction to one of her best-known and popular books, ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’:

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were– Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.

They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree.

‘Now my dears,’ said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, ‘you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.’

‘Now run along, and don’t get into mischief. I am going out.’

Then old Mrs. Rabbit took a basket and her umbrella, and went through the wood to the baker’s. She bought a loaf of brown bread and five currant buns.

Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail, who were good little bunnies, went down the lane to gather blackberries:

But Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor’s garden, and squeezed under the gate!

Beatrix went on to write many more books like this, all featuring wonderful little stories of animals in smart jackets and hats having adventures. Her books include:

• The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902)
• The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903)
• The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904)
• The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904)
• The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (1905)
• The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (1906)
• The Tale of Tom Kitten (1907)
• The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (1908)
• The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or, The Roly-Poly Pudding (1908)

You can borrow Beatrix Potter stories from your local library. Click here to search for them in the library catalogue.

Maya Angelou

The Harlem Writer’s Guild was meeting at John’s house, and my palms were sweating and my tongue was thick.  The loosely formed organization, without dues or membership cards, had one strict rule: any invited guest could sit in for three meetings, but thereafter, the visitor had to read from his or her work in progress.  My time had come.

Sara Wright and Sylvester Leeks stood in a corner talking softly.  John Clarke was staring at titles in the bookcase.  Mary Delaney and Millie Jordan were giving their coats to Grace and exchanging greetings.  The other writers were already seated around the  living room in a semicircle.

John Keats

 

When I have fears that I may cease to be
    Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery, 
    Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
    Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
    Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
    That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
    Of unreflecting love;–then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

‘When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be’, John Keats (31st October 1795 – 23rd February 1821) – English Romantic poet. Though not overly-respected during his short life, his reputation steadily grew so much that by the end of the Victorian era, he had become (and has remained) one of the most beloved, admired and appreciated poets of all time. His work, especially the famous odes, is noted for its sensual language and imagery of nature, and those poems written towards the end of his life are sewn together with a great sense of sadness and loss as he came to terms with both the death of many close family members and his own impending death. Some of his most famous works include: “Ode on Melancholy”, “Ode to a Nightingale”, “To Autumn”, “Endymion”, “Lamia”, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, “Isabella” and “On the Sea”.

John Keats was born on the 31st October 1795 in Moorgate, London, the first child of Frances Jennings and Thomas Keats. He had three siblings: George, Thomas and Frances Mary “Fanny”.  After leaving school in Enfield, he went on to become an apprentice to Dr. Hammond, a surgeon in Edmonton. After the death of his father in a riding accident, and his mother died of tuberculosis, John and his brothers moved to Hampstead. Though he was an avid student of medicine and natural history, he quickly turned his attention to literature, especially writers like Chaucer and Shakespeare, and began to get poems published in magazines, and finally published a collection of his own in 1817. That same year Keats met Percy Shelley, and they became and remained friends until Keats’ death. Such was Shelley’s admiration for Keats that when Shelley’s body was washed ashore after drowning, he was found to be carrying a volume of Keats’ poetry in his pocket.

In 1818, after the publication of “Endymion: A Poetic Romance”, Keats took a tour around England and Ireland; though unaware of the seriousness of his condition, he was now suffering from the early symptoms of tuberculosis, the disease which had already claimed the life of his mother and would soon take his brother Thomas. Keats shortened his trip in order to care for Thomas, who died in December of that year.

Drafts of poems and the details in letters suggest that Keats met ’his’ Frances (Fanny) Brawne between September and November 1818.  She is known for being both his muse and the recipient of many (now famous) letters and poems from Keats, such as this one from 1819: “I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving — I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. [...] I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder’d at it — I shudder no more — I could be martyr’d for my Religion — Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you.” Even today, these letters are adored and studied by millions of people across the world; they are poetry of a different kind and are a testament to the high regard and affection felt by the modern world for the young poet. Tragically, Fanny and Keats were never able to have any form of a real relationship (“I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks;” he wrote to her,“…your loveliness, and the hour of my death.”) and she outlived him by around 40 years. Upon his request, all of her letters to Keats were destroyed after his death.

In early 1820, Keats’ tuberculosis worsened so much that he suffered two lung haemorrhages. Hopeful that warmer weather would help to heal him, he took the advice of his doctors and moved to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. Keats wrote his final revisions of “Bright Star” aboard the ship which took him there. Upon arrival in Italy, friends tried many accepted methods, such as ‘bleeding’ and starving, to improve his condition but none were successful and Keats slowly grew weaker. His final words were recorded by Severn: “I—lift me up—I am dying—I shall die easy; don’t be frightened—be firm, and thank God it has come.”

Keats died on the 23rd February 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. Keats requested that his gravestone should be unmarked and engraved simply, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water”. In a sad turn of fate, his friend Shelley died just a little over a year after writing a poem about his grief for Keats, called “Adonais”. Shelley was buried in the same cemetery, very close to Keats’ grave.

I weep for Adonais–he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: “With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!”

Stephen King

The locker room was filled with shouts, echoes, and the subterranean sound of showers splashing on tile. The girls had been playing volleyball in Period One, and their morning sweat was light and eager.

Girls stretched and writhed under the hot water, squalling, flicking water, squirting white bars of soap from hand to hand. Carrie stood among them stolidly, a frog among swans. She was a chunky girl with pimples on her neck and back and buttocks, her wet hair completely without color. It rested against her face with dispirited sogginess and she simply stood, head slightly bent, letting the water splat against her flesh and roll off. She looked the part of the sacrificial goat, the constant butt, believer in left-handed monkey wrenches, perpetual foul-up, and she was. She wished forlornly and constantly that Ewen High had individual — and thus private — showers, like the high schools at Westover or Lewiston. They stared. They always stared.

Showers turning off one by one, girls stepping out, removing pastel bathing caps, toweling, spraying deodorant, checking the clock over the door. Bras were hooked, underpants stepped into. Steam hung in the air; the place might have been an Egyptian bathhouse except for the constant rumble of the Jacuzzi whirlpool in the corner. Calls and catcalls rebounded with all the snap and flicker of billiard balls after a hard break.

From ‘Carrie’, Stephen King (21st September 1947 – ) – American horror, sci-fi and fantasy writer. Stephen is perhaps the most recognisable, respected and known writer in the modern horror genre. In many cases, he has almost surpassed literature itself and helped to shape popular culture, both as a stand-alone writer and as the source of some of the genre’s most famous film references, including: ‘The Shining’, ‘Cujo’, ‘The Green Mile’, ‘Carrie’, ‘Dolores Claiborne’, ‘Misery’, ‘The Stand’ and, of course, ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’.

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. He attended the grammar school in Durham and then Lisbon Falls High School. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper and he was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. Stephen still lives in Maine today, and many of his books are set in the location; the fictional Castle Rock, Maine is the setting of a number of his novels, novellas, and short stories. It is a “typical small New England town with several dark secrets”.

In 1971 he married Tabitha (to whom he is still married), after they met in a Maine library. During the first few years of his marriage, Stephen sold short stories to magazines and teaching occasional English classes. In 1973, his first novel – ‘Carrie’ – was accepted for publication. It was published in early 1974, at which point Stephen and his family moved to Colorado for a year, during which time he wrote ‘The Shining’.

In the late 1970s-early 1980s, King published a handful of short novels – such as ‘Rage’ and ‘The Long Walk’ – under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It’s claimed that the idea behind this was largely an experiment to see if he could replicate his own success under a different name, as he feared that success as Stephen King was just a fortunate stroke of luck. Richard Bachman was exposed as being Stephen’s pseudonym after a man working in a Washington bookshop noticed similarities between the two’s works and later located publisher’s records at the Library of Congress naming Stephen as the author of one of Bachman’s novels. Shortly after this, Stephen released a note through the press announcing Bachman’s “death” — supposedly from “cancer of the pseudonym”. He dedicated his 1989 book The Dark Half, about a pseudonym turning on a writer, to “the deceased Richard Bachman”.

In 1987, shortly after publication of ‘The Tommyknockers’, Stephen’s family and friends staged an intervention, showing him evidence of his addictions taken from his bins, including beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Valium and marijuana. He sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.

Stephen and Tabitha King provide scholarships for local high school students and contribute to many other local and national charities and, among his many other awards and commendations, Stephen was named the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, as below:

Stephen King’s writing is securely rooted in the great American tradition that glorifies spirit-of-place and the abiding power of narrative. He crafts stylish, mind-bending page-turners that contain profound moral truths–some beautiful, some harrowing–about our inner lives. This award commemorates Mr. King’s well-earned place of distinction in the wide world of readers and book lovers of all ages.

Happy birthday William Wordsworth

Today (7th April) is William Wordsworth’s birthday. Wordsworth was born 241 years ago today in Cockermouth, Cumbria. He achieved a degree from Cambridge University in 1791 and became Poet Laureate in 1843, a position he held until his death seven years later at the age of 80.

Wordsworth’s most acclaimed work is The Prelude, which was published by his widow Mary three months after he passed away. The Prelude was originally intended to be a joint work with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

William Shakespeare

I’ll example you with thievery:
The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth’s a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stol’n
From general excrement: each thing’s a thief:
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power
Have uncheck’d theft.

- From ‘Timon of Athens’, William Shakespeare (baptised 26th April 1564; died 23rd April 1616) – English playwright and poet. His actual birthdate is unknown but it is traditionally celebrated on 23rd April – St George’s Day.

Born into an average family in Stratford-Upon-Avon, he inherited no particular wealth or privilege. It is assumed by many historians and Shakespeare afficionados that Shakespeare attended the free grammar school in Stratford, which at the time was on the same level academically as Eton. There is no definitive proof to support this claim but the playwright’s knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek go someway to support this theory. Aged just 18, he married Anne Hathaway, a woman 8 years his senior, and had three children: Hamnet, Judith and Susanna. (It has been suggested that Hamnet was an influence on the play ‘Hamlet’ but this has never been proven.)

For the 7 years following the birth of his twins in 1585, William Shakespeare disappears from all records, finally turning up again in London some time in 1592. This period, known as the “Lost Years,” has sparked as much controversy about Shakespeare’s life as any period. Rowe notes that young Shakespeare was quite fond of poaching, and may have had to flee Stratford after an incident with Sir Thomas Lucy, whose deer and rabbits he allegedly poached. There is also rumor of Shakespeare working as an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire for a time, though this is circumstantial at best.

Shakespeare was deeply respected, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The writers of the Romantic period in particular almost idolised him, and the Victorians worshipped him with a fervour referred to by George Bernard Shaw as “bardolatry”. Today, he is probably England’s most famous and cherished literary export, with his works performed the world over and turned into countless adaptations and films. His most famous works are known for their depth of theme as well as their storylines: see ‘Othello’, the tragedy of the soldier manipulated by Iago into believing that his wife is having an affair, decorated with the fight between the lightness and darkness of human nature and the depictions of “honest Iago”; ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the much-loved tale of the “star-cross’d lovers” from the House of Montague and the House of Capulet, kept apart by a family feud but ultimately brought together in death; and ‘Hamlet’, the story of the young prince who, while grieving for his father, is driven to murder his uncle after seeing his father’s ghost, and trust no-one. ‘Hamlet’ is sewn together with threads of paranoia, self-doubt, darkness and suspicion, for “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Shakespeare died on 23rd April 1616, survived by his wife and his two daughters. He was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church.

His final message to the world can be found scribed on his gravestone, and includes a warning against disturbing his bones (which was, in accordance with his wishes, studiously avoided during the recent restoration of the church):

Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

Daphne du Maurier

Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me.

- From ‘Rebecca’, Daphne du Maurier (13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) – English author and playwright. Born in London to actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont, Daphne was mixing with famous actors and actresses thanks to her father’s celebrity.

In early 1925, just before her 18th birthday, du Maurier left England to attend finishing school near Paris. This backdrop influenced her heavily, and so, while her peers were writing critically on subjects like war, alienation, Marxism poverty, and experimenting with new techniques (for example, the ‘stream-of-consciousness’), du Maurier produced typically old-fashioned novels with a broad appeal and clear narratives, which appealed to a wide audience. Because of this style, she was often referred to as a ‘romantic novelist’ (a term she despised), though the romantic and fantastical elements of her work are often set against more ‘gothic’ backgrounds, with a great deal of darkness and shadow. Much of her work established the twentieth-century sense of dislocation, where the accepted order of things taken for granted is upset.

Many of her novels and plays were adapted into films, though she was dissatisfied with nearly all of them. As a very private person, she found it extremely difficult to promote anything to do with her work, viewing writing as something personal, like saying prayers.

One of the most difficult things she had to deal with was the death of her husband in 1965. “In order to ease her pain she had at first taken over some of his things for herself. She wore his shirts, sat at his writing desk, used his pen to answer the hundreds of letters of condolence and by this process came to feel closer to him. The evenings were the hardest to endure: ‘the ritual of the hot drink, the lumps of sugar for the two dogs, the saying of prayers – his boyhood habit carried on throughout our married life – the goodnight kiss.’”

Daphne died aged 81 at her home in Cornwall and her ashes were scattered in Kilmarth.

Virginia Woolf

[...] the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.

The figures of these men and women straggled past the flower-bed with a curiously irregular movement not unlike that of the white and blue butterflies who crossed the turf in zig-zag flights from bed to bed. The man was about six inches in front of the woman, strolling carelessly, while she bore on with greater purpose, only turning her head now and then to see that the children were not too far behind. The man kept this distance in front of the woman purposely, though perhaps unconsciously, for he wished to go on with his thoughts.
“Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily,” he thought. “We sat somewhere over there by a lake and I begged her to marry me all through the hot afternoon. How the dragonfly kept circling round us: how clearly I see the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke I saw her shoe and when it moved impatiently I knew without looking up what she was going to say: the whole of her seemed to be in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly; for some reason I thought that if it settled there, on that leaf, the broad one with the red flower in the middle of it, if the dragonfly settled on the leaf she would say “Yes” at once. But the dragonfly went round and round: it never settled anywhere—of course not, happily not, or I shouldn’t be walking here with Eleanor and the children—Tell me, Eleanor. D’you ever think of the past?”

-From ‘Kew Gardens’, Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) – English modernist writer, publisher and essayist. Much of her work is famous for its “stream-of-consciousness” approach and the motivations of the contained characters.

Born in London to Leslie Stephen, a writer and editor, and Julia Pattle, Virginia had a somewhat glorious childghood, with long summer days spent holidaying in St Ives (a location which would later run as a thread throughout much of her work). She was allowed unlimited access to her father’s huge library and, despite a very patchy education, Virginia was determined from a young age to become a writer herself.

In 1895, her world was shattered when her mother died unexpectedly. It was at this point that Virginia experienced her first mental breakdown. Her life would never be the same again. Her half-sister initially assumed responsiblity for running the house and caring for their father, but soon after marrying, she, too, passed away, leaving all responsibility to Virginia. When her father died in 1904, she suffered another massive mental breakdown. Her psychological trauma would never leave her.

Virginia married the “penniless Jew” Leonard Woolf in 1912, and their marriage was one of modern history’s most enduring love affairs. They also worked together, founding the Hogarth Press, responsible for publishing work by Virginia herself and writers such as T.S. Eliot.

Her first novel was published in 1915, and she went on to publish many classic novels and short stories, including ‘Mrs Dalloway’, ‘Orlando’ and ‘To The Lighthouse’. Her work is known for a poetic and melancholy style which elevates the often fairly dull surroundings.

After completing her last manuscript (publshed posthumously), Virginia fell into another unbearable wave of depression; one from which she felt there would be no escape. On the 28th March 1941 she filled her coat pockets with stones, walked into the River Ouse and drowned. Her body was not found until many days later. Her husband cremated her remains and buried them in the gardens of their home, Monk’s House. The last thing Virginia ever wrote was the suicide note to her beloved husband:

“Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ’til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.”

William Butler Yeats

There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend,
And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming,
Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming
And humming Sands, where windy surges wend:
And he called loudly to the stars to bend
From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they
Among themselves laugh on and sing alway:
And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend
Cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story.!
The sea Swept on and cried her old cry still,
Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill.
He fled the persecution of her glory
And, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping,
Cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening.
But naught they heard, for they are always listening,
The dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping.
And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend
Sought once again the shore, and found a shell,
And thought, I will my heavy story tell
Till my own words, re-echoing, shall send
Their sadness through a hollow, pearly heart;
And my own talc again for me shall sing,
And my own whispering words be comforting,
And lo! my ancient burden may depart.
Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim;
But the sad dweller by the sea-ways lone
Changed all he sang to inarticulate moan
Among her wildering whirls, forgetting him.

- ‘The Sad Shepherd’, William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939), Irish Symbolist poet and dramatist.
Born in Dublin, he spent much of his childhood in Sligo. His father was a fairly well-respected painter and although he initially tried to follow in his father’s footsteps, William Yeats quickly discovered he preferred to write poetry.

One of the biggest sources of pain in his life came from his almost unrequited love for an Irish revolutionary named Maud Gonne, a woman he met whilst he was still a painter. They did consummate their relationship but each went on to marry someone else, and she remained a very strong influence on much of Yeats’ work.

Much of his early work was inspired by dreams, astrology, myths and the occult, whereas his work post-1900 was more realistic and ‘modern’, influenced in part by his counterparts Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.

Appointed a senator of the Irish Free State in 1922, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature one year later. This new-found recognition brought him wealth which enabled him to pay off the debts of both himself and his father.

He died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour in 1939. He was buried there in France but, in accordance with his wishes, his body was moved back to Sligo a few years later. His epitaph is taken from ‘Under Ben Bulben’, one of his final poems:

‘Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!’

John Clare

Love lives beyond the tomb,
And earth, which fades like dew!
I love the fond,
The faithful, and the true.

Love lives in sleep:
‘Tis happiness of healthy dreams:
Eve’s dews may weep,
But love delightful seems.

‘Tis seen in flowers,
And in the morning’s pearly dew;
In earth’s green hours,
And in the heaven’s eternal blue.

‘Tis heard in Spring
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
On angel’s wing
Bring love and music to the mind.

And where’s the voice,
So young, so beautiful, and sweet
As Nature’s choice,
Where Spring and lovers meet?

Love lives beyond the tomb,
And earth, which fades like dew!
I love the fond,
The faithful, and the true.

- ‘Love Lives Beyond The Tomb’, John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) – English poet born in Northamptonshire. He is one of England’s most celebrated poets, known for his great love of the beauty of his native countryside. He was not “born to be a writer”; indeed, he was born into an average rural family, sent out to herd sheep at a young age. It wasn’t until he discovered some of James Thomson’s poetry as a young man that he realised he could write himself.

His first love was the daughter of a wealthy farmer and their eventual split broke his heart and led to much of the sense of loss which runs through many of his finest poems.

As his popularity faded, he spent some time in a private asylum owned by a friend. During his time in the asylum, his mental health deteriorated (a likely result of both his alcoholism and the strain of his publishers’ attempts to correct his native Northamptonshire dialect) and at one stage, he even began telling people first that he wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays, and then that he was formerly Shakespeare himself.

He died in 1864, aged 70.

William Blake

Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.

In the age of gold,
Free from winter’s cold,
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.

Once a youthful pair,
Filled with softest care,
Met in garden bright
Where the holy light
Had just removed the curtains of the night.

– From ‘A Little Girl Lost’, William Blake (28th November 1757 – 12th August 1827) – English painter and poet of the Romantic age.

Blake was educated to only a very basic level, although attended a drawing school for a short time. His talent for painting was quickly noticed and he was elevated to the level of engraver’s apprentice at age 14. He married at 25 and his wife helped him to publish Songs of Innocence and Experience. Much of Blake’s work was written in the spirit of his own gentle views of the Christian faith.

After being charged with, and later acquitted of, high treason, he sank into a life of relative obscurity. Exhibitions of his work in the early 1800s failed to attract any real interest and when he died, he was buried in an unmarked grave in Bunhill Fields.