Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
‘Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.’ Read more…
Since no one marries the girl/boy next door any more, chances are you’ll need a date or two to track down the elusive ‘one’. (Or ‘two’. Or ‘three’. We’re all going to live until we’re at least 110, which is a long time to live with just the one.)
Nothing is more terrifying than first-date nerves: the combination of choosing an appropriate outfit (the leopard-print boots? the sequinned dress? the smoky eyes?), navigating conversational topics and dusting off your best flirtatious behaviour seems to turn the most assured of us into quivering wrecks. You stutter your way through the first fifteen minutes of conversation, grateful for the bar’s low lighting (the sequinned dress was a mistake), until the first few boozy gulps kick in, cranking your dating prowess up a notch. In your dreams. Read more…
Disclaimer: This article contains mention of an expletive that may cause offence. Read more…
Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at 4th Estate! We’ve made a mixtape of literary lovesongs for you. Aren’t we just adorable?
This month our blog theme is ‘Love in All its Forms’ – we’re celebrating the diverse ways in which love is depicted in literature – so we asked our authors to tell us who their dream fictional date would be. Laline Paull would hop into a hot air balloon with Lord Asriel from Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ and fly to a party in West Egg, New York…
This month our blog theme is ‘Love in All its Forms’ – we’re celebrating the diverse ways in which love is depicted in literature – so we asked our authors to tell us who their dream fictional date would be. Seni Glaister is torn between an 18th Century cad and a brooding Cornishman…
This month our blog theme is ‘Love in All its Forms’ – we’re celebrating the diverse ways in which love is depicted in literature – so we asked our authors to tell us who their dream fictional date would be. Will Smith would like to cheer up Lucy Snowe from Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Villette’…
This month our blog theme is ‘Love in All its Forms’ – we’re celebrating the diverse ways in which love is depicted in literature – so we asked our authors to tell us who their dream fictional date would be. Perhaps unexpectedly, Nell Zink would like to exist in a Late Romantic utopia with an elderly nobleman from the pages of an interminable work of 19th Century Austrian bourgeois realism…
