Category Archives: Culture, Text and History

20th - 21st Centuries, Aesthetics, Philosophy, Theory, American Studies, Culture, Text and History, Gender and Sexuality, Insights

2021 Ellen Craft Essay Prize Awarded to PhD Student Katie Arthur

By Professor Mark Turner, PGR Lead

It is a pleasure to announce to the KCL English community that the Scottish Association for the Study of America (SASA) has awarded the 2021 Ellen Craft Essay Prize to one of our PhD students, Katie Arthur, for her brilliant essay, ‘Arousing Disgust: Visceral Configurations of Obscenity through Literal, Literary, and Governmental Bodies in William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1959)’.

Continue reading 2021 Ellen Craft Essay Prize Awarded to PhD Student Katie Arthur →

20th - 21st Centuries, Book Review, Contemporary, Culture, Text and History, Life writing, Creative writing and Performance, Long Read

“And I said that, I”: Connie Palmen’s novel Your Story, My Story

by Sylvia Solakidi

In this blog, King’s graduate Sylvia Solakidi explores the role of betrayal in the quest for love and knowledge in Connie Palmen’s novel about the contentious romance of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.

Continue reading “And I said that, I”: Connie Palmen’s novel Your Story, My Story →

20th - 21st Centuries, Culture, Text and History, Insights, Life writing, Creative writing and Performance

Alienation on the Strand; Solitude in Street Haunting

WOOLF’S WRITING HAS BEEN A PART OF MY LIFE FOR SO LONG I NO LONGER KNOW IF IT TAUGHT ME TO SEE THE WORLD THIS WAY OR JUST TAUGHT ME TO NOTICE THAT I DO.

– TRACY SEELEY

There is perhaps no greater comfort nor reward granted by reading than resonance. It is an indescribable liberation to have our feelings corroborated; to sift through the works of writers centuries past and happen upon an unassuming strand of words that instantly articulates the inarticulable, that echoes an acute emotion lying dormant within. These discoveries serve as whispers through time, as a consoling hand-squeeze in the ether. In my first year studying on the Strand, Virginia Woolf’s 1930 essay Street Haunting: A London Adventure offered me this solace.

Continue reading Alienation on the Strand; Solitude in Street Haunting →

Culture, Text and History, Early Modern and Shakespeare, Long Read

Penned it wins a sacred grace: John Donne and the Melford Manuscript

by Daniel Starza Smith

It’s been called one of the greatest literary discoveries of a generation: a hugely significant and previously unknown manuscript of John Donne’s poetry which was lost for years and found in a Suffolk country house in 2018 by Sotheby’s expert Gabriel Heaton. After disappearing from public view during all the confusion of 2020, the ‘Melford manuscript’ has now officially found a home at the British Library.

The Melford Hall Manuscript (Egerton MS 3884) © British Library Board

Continue reading Penned it wins a sacred grace: John Donne and the Melford Manuscript →

Culture, Text and History, Interviews, Life writing, Creative writing and Performance, Long Read

Strandlines: lives on the Strand, past, present and creative

By Fran Allfrey, Strandlines assistant editor, English Dept alumna and Teaching Assistant

Strandlines is a life-writing and community history project, which takes the form of a website and linked Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. The project was set up by Professor Clare Brant, with a board of editors made up of colleagues inside and beyond King’s. I joined as Assistant Editor in spring 2019. With the new term just starting, Clare and I thought now was a good time to reflect on where Strandlines has been, and where it may go next! Continue reading Strandlines: lives on the Strand, past, present and creative →