Robert Graves’ “I, Claudius”

Robert Graves was a highly acclaimed English author generally associated with the earlier twentieth century (though in fact he lived to be 90 and died in 1985). He was a poet, a memoirist, a critic, a biographer, a classical scholar and translator, and a novelist, publishing nearly 150 significant texts in his lifetime. Among these… Continue reading Robert Graves’ “I, Claudius”

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William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”

While Nobel laureate William Golding wrote several other novels in his life, including the Booker-Prize winning novel Rites of Passage in 1980, it is surely on the strength of his 1954 debut novel Lord of the Flies that his reputation chiefly rests. Although reviews were generally positive when the novel came out, it struggled to sell out its original… Continue reading William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”

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Jane Gardam’s “Old Filth”

Jane Gardam, the contemporary British novelist now in her 96th year, is quite highly regarded in her home country (she is OBE after all) but is little known outside the United Kingdom, and is virtually unknown in the U.S. Yet she is the winner of several awards and has been a prolific author of both children’s… Continue reading Jane Gardam’s “Old Filth”

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John Galsworthy’s “The Forsyte Saga”

The work that set the pattern for all subsequent multi-generational family sagas in English, John  Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga, comprising three novels and two short interludes, covers a period from the late Victorian to the late Edwardian age in Britain, beginning in 1886 and ending in 1920 when the last surviving member of the older generation has… Continue reading John Galsworthy’s “The Forsyte Saga”

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