Cædmon is the earliest English poet whose name is known. A Northumbrian cowherd who cared for the animals at the double monastery of Streonæshalch during the abbacy of St. Hilda, he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to the 8th-century historian Bede. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational Christian poet.
The Anatomy of Melancholy is a book by Robert Burton, first published in 1621, but republished five more times over the next seventeen years with massive alterations and expansions.
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, FBA, was an English critic, literary historian, editor, teacher, and wine connoisseur. He is regarded as a highly influential critic of the late 19th and early 20th century.
The Old English Bible translations are the partial translations of the Bible prepared in medieval England into the Old English language. The translations are from Latin texts, not the original languages.
Lanark, subtitled A Life in Four Books, is the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian surrealist depictions of his home city of Glasgow.
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–81), alternatively known by the shorter title Lives of the Poets, is a work by Samuel Johnson comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during the eighteenth century. These were arranged, approximately, by date of death.
Philip Dennis Hobsbaum was a British teacher, poet and critic.
James Kelman is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright and essayist. His fiction and short stories feature accounts of internal mental processes of usually, but not exclusively, working class narrators and their labyrinthine struggles with authority or social interactions, mostly set in his home city of Glasgow. Frequently employing stream of consciousness experimentation, Kelman's stories typically feature "an atmosphere of gnarling paranoia, imprisoned minimalism, the boredom of survival.".
Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer is an epistolary novel by Scottish writer Alasdair Gray, published in 1992. It won the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize the same year.
The term Middle English literature refers to the literature written in the form of the English language known as Middle English, from the late 12th century until the 1470s. During this time the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, became widespread and the printing press regularized the language. Between the 1470s and the middle of the following century there was a transition to early Modern English. In literary terms, the characteristics of the literary works written did not change radically until the effects of the Renaissance and Reformed Christianity became more apparent in the reign of King Henry VIII. There are three main categories of Middle English literature, religious, courtly love, and Arthurian, though much of Geoffrey Chaucer's work stands outside these. Among the many religious works are those in the Katherine Group and the writings of Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle.
Elizabeth Jesse Young was a London-based literary critic and author, who wrote principally on cult writers for a range of British newspapers and magazines. In particular she championed transgressive fiction, for which she received some criticism in the press, not least for her defence of A. M. Homes' The End of Alice, which dealt with themes of paedophilia from what was seen as an uncomfortably neutral perspective.
Janice Galloway FRSL is a Scottish writer of novels, short stories, prose-poetry, non-fiction and libretti. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Landfall is New Zealand's oldest extant literary magazine. The magazine is published biannually by Otago University Press. As of 2020, it consists of a paperback publication of about 200 pages. The website Landfall Review Online also publishes new literary reviews monthly. The magazine features new fiction and poetry, biographical and critical essays, cultural commentary, and reviews of books, art, film, drama, and dance.
Alasdair James Gray was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, Lanark (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards.
The Wen Xuan, usually translated Selections of Refined Literature, is one of the earliest and most important anthologies of Chinese poetry and literature, and is one of the world's oldest literary anthologies to be arranged by topic. It is a selection of what were judged to be the best poetic and prose pieces from the late Warring States period to the early Liang dynasty, excluding the Chinese Classics and philosophical texts. The Wen Xuan preserves most of the greatest fu rhapsody and shi poetry pieces from the Qin and Han dynasties, and for much of pre-modern history was one of the primary sources of literary knowledge for educated Chinese.
Cædmon's Hymn is a short Old English poem attributed to Cædmon, a supposedly illiterate and unmusical cow-herder who was, according to the Northumbrian monk Bede, miraculously empowered to sing in honour of God the Creator. The poem is Cædmon's only known composition.
How to Live, or a life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer is a book by Sarah Bakewell, first published by Chatto & Windus in 2010, and by Other Press on September 20, 2011. It is about the life of the 16th-century French nobleman, wine grower, philosopher, and essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. In it, Bakewell "roughly maps out Montaigne's life against the questions he raises along the way," drawing the answers to these questions from his Essays.
Blickling Psalter, also known as Lothian Psalter, is an 8th-century Insular illuminated manuscript containing a Roman Psalter with two additional sets of Old English glosses.
Poems and Songs of Middle Earth is a studio album of spoken-word poetry by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien and art songs composed by the English musician Donald Swann. On the first half of the album, Tolkien recites seven poems from or related to his fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). The second half is a performance of Swann's song cycle The Road Goes Ever On, which sets selections from Tolkien's verse to music. The vocalist William Elvin sings The Road Goes Ever On to Swann's piano accompaniment. Caedmon Records issued the album on 18 October 1967 in the United States, and then on 28 March 1968 in the United Kingdom. Its release coincided with the publication of The Road Goes Ever On as a book of sheet music with commentary and illustration by Tolkien.
Alasdair Gray (1934–2019) wrote novels, short stories, poetry and drama.
