The women that books built
How the bluestockings used wit and learning to subvert a deeply misogynist culture.
ByLiterature
Immerse yourself in the captivating world of literature with our collection of articles, offering literary analysis, book recommendations, author spotlights, and thought-provoking discussions that celebrate the written word.
The man who lived at the end of history
Why the 20th-century intellectual Ernesto de Martino believed that we should prepare for the apocalypse.
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JGA Pocock’s days of rage
How the violent upheavals of Seventies America helped forge the greatest historian of our time.
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The discovery of Stuart Hall’s A Cure for Marriage
On the tenth anniversary of the cultural theorist’s death an unpublished manuscript sheds new light on his thinking.
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An extract from A Cure for Marriage by Stuart Hall
The cultural analysis of a popular romantic story from an issue of Woman magazine.
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Thomas Hardy’s life of desire
Why did the great novelist of female attraction create such misery in his marriages?
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The Policy Ask with Daniel Gorman: “We are in a human rights emergency”
The director of English PEN on the erosion of civil liberties, protecting free speech and calling for a ceasefire.
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On being the writer in the family
Writers exploit and rebel against their parents – but can never escape them.
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Notes on trying
For readers and writers, novels require enormous effort. Why do we persist in seeking meaning in their pages?
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The hypocrisy of Rishi’s Right
Also this week: the power of the Nativity, and why books are like batteries.
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Paul Lynch: “Nothing kills a book quicker than a writer with a message”
The Booker Prize-winning author on political fiction, the refugee crisis and the “unmistakable” timeliness of his dystopian novel Prophet Song.
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The dark prophet of our times
In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky dares to ask the question few will: do people truly desire freedom?
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Books of the year 2023
New Statesman writers and guests choose their favourite reading of the year.
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The Booker Prize is becoming irrelevant
The judging panel hasn’t picked an exciting winner in years because there simply hasn’t been one.
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AS Byatt’s hard truths
The novelist, who died last week aged 87, clung fast to realism during a time of faddish post-structuralists.
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Clemens Meyer’s lessons from history
The author on growing up in the GDR, the rise of the far-right and Germany’s “responsibility” for the conflict in…
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The calm of the sleeper train
Also this week: Samuel Beckett’s advice, and the mysteries of time and loss.
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The secrets of Shakespeare’s “stupid”, “grotesque” portrait
The infamous “pudding-faced” Droeshout portrait is widely agreed to be hideous and embarrassing. Is there more to it than meets…
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Why we chose Benjamin Myers’s Cuddy as the Goldsmiths Prize winner
The time-travelling story about faith, nationhood and the north upends preconceptions of the “historical novel”.
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Benjamin Myers wins the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize for “virtuosic” novel Cuddy
The award for “mould-breaking” fiction goes to a millennia-spanning epic about St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.
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