Originally published in 1932, this definitive guide to English Literature edited by Margaret Drabble has been updated on several occasions. The main focus of the alphabetical listing is writers and their major works. Writers of course include authors, playwrights and poets. Shakespeare is afforded two and a half pages, which must be one of the longest entries. (Milton’s is comparable.) Within the entry for any writer, an asterisk next to the title of a work or the name of another writer indicates a separate entry where more detail can be found. So, if you want to read about one particular Shakespeare play, look under its title rather than under Shakespeare.

English Literature, Jenny Stringer, Margaret Drabble

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Described as ‘A Treated Victorian Novel‘, ‘A Humument‘ is the creation of artist Tom Phillips, and he has been working on it for around forty years. I first became aware of him when I was an art student at Manchester Polytechnic and became interested in creating visual art that relied on words taken out of context. Phillips was certainly an influence on me, but I’m afraid all but two of the lecturers on my course steered clear of me and apparently did not understand what I was trying to do. The fact the Phillips’s work has prevailed gives me a little faith in myself, but that is another story. My brother is one of the few people who remembers my artwork, so when he came across a copy of the fourth edition of ‘A Humument‘ at the Pallant House Art Gallery in Chichester about a year ago, he bought it for me as a birthday present. I was delighted.

Phillips has taken a Victorian novel originally entitled ‘A Human Document’ by W. H. Mallock and transformed each page into a miniature work of art, selecting certain parts of the text and then using various media such as collage, watercolour or gouache over the top of the remainder of the text to create images and ‘poems’ that are in turn beautiful, funny, erotic, bizarre, intricate, … the list goes on.

Tom Phillips

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Having read and been so impressed by several of Margaret Atwoods works of fiction, I imagined that a book written by her about the art or activity of writing would prove to be an interesting read. As explained in the introduction and prologue to the book, the chapters here are based on the Empson Lectures given by the writer at the University of Cambridge in the year 2000.

Chapter 1, entitled Who do you think you are? is mainly autobiographical, tracing Atwood’s early years from her birth in Ottawa in 1939 up until her undergraduate student days at Victoria College, the University of Toronto.

Margaret Atwood

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