Topic description and stories

Terence, Andria, translated by Maurice Kyffin (London, 1588)

… dot, dot, dot: how the ellipsis made its mark

21 Oct 2015

We avoid them in formal writing but they pepper our emails … In 'Ellipsis in English Literature', Dr Anne Toner explores the history of dots, dashes...

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The frontispiece of Ned Ward's Vulgus Brittanicus (1710)

On the eve of the Booker Prize: a sideways look at the literary puff

12 Oct 2015

A literary puff is the promotional blurb that appears on book jackets and publishers’ press releases. Dr Ross Wilson, Faculty of English, discusses...

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Words for mud and mountain, wind and wetland: answers on a postcard, please

01 Apr 2015

‘Dumberdash’ is an old Cheshire term for a short but violent storm. A ‘lumpenhole’ is a deep trench for fluid farmyard waste. The man who remembers...

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Travellers under open skies: writers, artists and gypsies

30 Oct 2014

In her new book Representations of the Gypsy in the Romantic Period , Sarah Houghton-Walker provides a fascinating insight into writers’ and artists...

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Image from a 14th century manuscript of the Romance of the rose, one of the best-known texts of the Middle Ages

Conquering a continent: how the French language circulated in Britain and medieval Europe

22 Jan 2014

A 13th-century manuscript of Arthurian legend once owned by the Knights Templar is one of the star attractions of a new exhibition opening today at...

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Jenny pictured at Madingley Hall

SOCCs appeal: online learning versus the classroom

13 Aug 2013

MOOCs – or massive open online courses – have been touted a cure for the education sector’s ills by some, but merely the latest symptom of it by...

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Cambridge launches first Creative Writing degree

26 Mar 2013

The University of Cambridge’s first Master of Studies (MSt) in Creative Writing will explore the art of writing in all its many forms and guises, not...

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Dickens letter

Ever your affectionate Father, Charles Dickens

07 Feb 2012

A letter written in 1868 by Charles Dickens, the bicentenary of whose birth falls today, to his son Henry, who had newly arrived at Cambridge...

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Poet Clare Holtham and Uzbek chieftain in Afghanistan, early 1970s

For lust of knowing what should not be known

12 Nov 2011

Clare Holtham (1948-2010) had a huge enthusiasm for learning. After a troubled childhood, which led to a spell of homelessness, she became an...

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