Despite the controversy surrounding his authorship and even the rumors spread about his life, Shakespeare is still an artist whose works, whose life, spans the centuries. As Ben Jonson wrote, Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for all time.” That his sonnets and plays have stretched beyond his generation and […]
Although this will post the day after William Shakespeare’s birthday, I’m writing it on the anniversary of the day that we assume he was born, so I feel like just grabbing all sorts of wonderful things about the Bard and posting them in one place. Why? Because I can, and, […]
There are so many facets of Shakespeare’s works that have endeared him to the ages. His plots, his stirring landscapes, his stories of triumph and tragedy and, most certainly, his characters have withstood centuries. That his work has transcended time is not surprising; it is, however, his characters that we […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.