John Milton and a page from Holinshed's Chronicles preserving Milton's censorship of a lewd anecdote

John Milton's notes identified in an influential book he once owned

15 May 2024

John Milton’s handwritten annotations have been identified in a copy of Holinshed's Chronicles, a vital source of inspiration for the Paradise Lost poet. ̽»¨Ö±²¥discovery, made by a team including Cambridge's Prof. Jason Scott-Warren, includes a rare example of prudish censorship.

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Engraving of scene from Pride and Prejudice

Memes-field Park? ‘Digital natives’ are flirting with Jane Austen’s vision of the ideal man all over again

27 January 2023

Know about the Darcy hand-flex? Remember that lake scene with Colin Firth? For 200 years, audiences have been swooning over different portrayals of Mr Darcy, Jane Austen’s iconic male hero. Now, he and Austen’s work in general are experiencing yet another rebirth: this time as the ‘meme idols’ of ‘digitally native’ millennials and Generation Z.

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Henry Peacham, 'Silvius', from Minerva Britanna (1612)

Into the woods with Shakespeare

02 October 2017

reimagines the real forests that our greatest playwright evoked in his works.  ̽»¨Ö±²¥final book of renowned scholar, Anne Barton, it explores the changeable and sometimes sinister presence of the forest in literature and culture.

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Shakespeare goes to East Africa

25 March 2016

On the eve of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Dr Edward Wilson-Lee explores the remarkable ways in which the works of England’s greatest poet-playwright are woven into the merging cultures of East Africa. In his debut book, Shakespeare in Swahililand, Wilson-Lee gives a compelling account of an era in which Shakespeare took centre stage.

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Charles I and Henrietta Maria with their children by Anthony Van Dyke (detail)

̽»¨Ö±²¥language and literature of chastity

09 February 2016

In her debut book, Dr Bonnie Lander Johnson (Faculty of English) shows how deeply the Christian virtue of chastity was embedded into the culture of the early Stuart world.  In the struggle between the newly established Church of England and Roman Catholicism, chastity was a powerful construct that was both personal and political.

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