Justice for Mrs. Bennet?
Dolly Alderton is wrong
Culture
The Common Reader.
Nerdy literature newsletter. Helping you make the most of your reading.
Recent essays
30 of 95Shruti Rajagopalan: The Political Economy of Gulliver’s Travels
Last week, the day after the 300th anniversary of the publication of Gulliver’s Travels, I sat down with my colleague Shruti Rajagopalan to discuss Swift’s great novel.
Galen Strawson responds to my essay about Locke’s *Essay*
Locke in his portraits often seems sad, and it’s genial to think that he plays in his philosophy.
Who speaks the first line of Pride and Prejudice?
As you have no doubt seen, in the trailer for the forthcoming Netflix adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, by Dolly Alderton, the famous opening line is spoken by Mrs Bennet.
Let me have war, say I.
Coriolanus and the stirring world
AI consciousness and fictional characters
some speculations
A brief reply to Ed West about reading
And a suggestion for Daunt Books Publishing
Nothing is Boring in America
Chocolate gravy, Civil War, Piggly Wiggly. My newfound love of the Mid-South.
Such as she was, such as she would become.
Richmond, Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown
Larkin’s Anthology. An Extract from Dana Gioia’s New Catalogue.
“This book is a disgrace.”
James Marriott and the Death of Civilization
The New Dark Ages PLUS Shakespeare
John Locke: the Playful Philosopher
My new essay for Liberty Fund
Sublimation in Middlemarch
Eros need not be expressed sexually.
AI will be much better than you at doing taxes or whatever, but there’s no point in having it read Tolstoy for you
Comments from a recent interview
A Slumber did my Spirit Seal, by William Wordsworth
Poetry by Heart, V
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Repost for paperback release
Rather Better Pasturage for Their Cows
I read Sense and Sensibility again
Before the ripened field the reapers stand
Some autumn poetry
Tolkien in Poets’ Corner
JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis used to regularly share a pub table in Oxford to discuss their work.
My plea to English students.
Read the canon.
There is no such thing as a ‘text’, and if there were it would degrade literature to be treated as one.
Here’s the Barbara Everett quote about “texts” which I could not find when I wrote my recent piece about literary criticism. From her review of Carpenter’s Auden biography in the LRB. My thanks to Sean Keilen for sending it to me. (Sean has a new book about Sh…
My new essay about Samuel Johnson
I am unashamed to call him a great man, to say that he is my hero. I can never write of him without strong feeling.
Can phones explain PISA?
Among the people who blame phones for the “reading crisis” and the associated decline in educational outcomes, the PISA results are, in my view, somewhat misunderstood.
AI and the future of the humanities
what are the implications of misalignment?
What is literary criticism if it is not close reading? Art, Magic, and Common Sense.
The trouble with literary criticism—whether it is done by school children or professors or freewheeling writers—is that it cannot be defined.
Will the end of reading be the end of democracy too?
The New Dark Ages, by James Marriott
Finding Emily
Oh my god I loved this film.
Philip Hensher: How Can You Kill a Book Like That?
The history of the novel in Britain
Some Like It Hot
Carefree mind, all the time, never blue
Maria Edgeworth and Adam Smith
A new book from Jeanna Smialek