The Scotsman publishes the obituary of the Hon Marista Leishman, writer and educationalist.
Marista had been born with all the advantages – and disadvantages – of being the daughter of that formidable and austere international giant of a man Lord Reith, the Director General of the BBC, a very tall, bad-tempered character who might glibly be described as a cross between Donald Trump and John Knox and whom Churchill once described as “Old Wuthering Heights”. (Maxwell MacLeod)
Book Riot highlights '50 Must-Read Books You Might Have Missed in 2019', including
L.E.L: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Celebrated Celebrated 'Female Byron' by Lucasta Miller (NF)
“‘None among us dares to say / What none will choose to hear’–L.E.L., “Lines of Life”
Letitita Elizabeth Landon–pen name L.E.L.–dared to say it and made sure she was heard.
Hers was a life lived in a blaze of scandal and worship, one of the most famous women of her time, the Romantic Age in London’s 1820s, her life and writing on the ascendency as Byron’s came to an end.
Lucasta Miller tells the full story and re-creates the literary London of her time. She was born in 1802 and was shaped by the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, a time of conservatism when values were in flux. She began publishing poetry in her teens and came to be known as a daring poet of thwarted romantic love. We see L.E.L. as an emblematic figure who embodied a seismic cultural shift, the missing link between the age of Byron and the creation of Victorianism. Miller writes of Jane Eyre as the direct connection to L.E.L.–its first-person confessional voice, its Gothic extremes, its love triangle, and in its emphasis on sadomasochistic romantic passion.” (Sarah S. Davies)
This bit in
Spectator's 'guide to Dickensian London' is somewhat misleading:
One mile west along the Thames bank and you’re greeted with the familiar face and cheerful chime of Big Ben’s clock. The Palace of Westminster played an important role in Dickens’ life – his role here as a parliamentary reporter kickstarted his writing career – and in his work. The only one of his novels to contain no reference to Westminster is the unfinished Edwin Drood. Westminster Abbey is also Dickens’ final resting place, in Poet’s Corner alongside William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters. (Marianna Hunt)
Charles Dickens is indeed buried there, but William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters are all buried elsewhere and only have memorial plaques in Poets' Corner.
The Hindu reviews Sharbari Zohra Ahmed’s debut novel
Dust Under her Feet.
In Sharbari Zohra Ahmed’s Dust Under her Feet, Yasmine Khan, 26-year-old proprietor of the Bombay Duck, has created a home away from home for a vibrant cast of characters. There is Asma who imagines herself to be a character out of a Brontë novel, Patience, the good time girl, and Radhika who is light on her feet and has darkness in her mind. (Mini Anthikad Chhibber)
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