John Murray Ltd.

AUTHOR'S NOTE The nine troubled years of the reign of Edward the Seventh were no mere pendant to the long Victorian Age. The land's surface glowed with a splendour which suggested serenity, but seismic faults had developed below, and the Edwardian Age is characterized by a rapidly accelerating...

PREFACEThe subject of this book grew out of my doctoral research on Turner and Yorkshire at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. This has been supervised by Professor Michael Kitson, whose advice, encouragement and patience has been invaluable. There is, however, more than a hint of prodigality...

I THE BASIS OF SHAKESPEARIAN COMEDY {The substance of a lecture delivered in 1949 at Stratford-upon-Avon at the invitation of Mr. John Garrett, to whom it is affectionately dedicated.) by nevill coghill i The Comedies of Ben Jonson are clearly no laughing matter if we compare them with those...

Introduction Anniversaries matter. A child's year (and that of a strange number of adults) revolves around the day on which they were born. Canada Day in Ottawa plunges you into an ocean of patriotic revellers in red and white drinking Canadian beer, while remaining scrupulously polite, under a...

Introduction to First Edition Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, Sir Maurice Bowra remarked to me of John Betjeman, who was then writing such verses as " The 'Varsity Students' Rag " and other juvenilia: " Betjeman has a mind of extraordinary originality; there is no one else...

INTRODUCTIONRadclyffe Hall was a legend in her own time and in the years up to and including ours. She was also a lesbian: a fact which became part of that legend. As a writer and a woman, Radclyffe Hall lived on the margins but then entered the mainstream, only to find that after several years of...