literary criticism

It is 70 years since the first Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie, which closed to 24 curtain calls. Its author, 34-year-old Tennessee Williams, went on to write A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and to pioneer what Arthur Miller called 'a revolution' in American theatre. John Lahr’s biography Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh won this year’s National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for 'quality of prose'. In this talk Lahr relates Williams’s literary voice to his self-proclaimed hysteria – what he described as “six engines inside a jalopy”.

John Lahr has written for the New Yorker since 1992, where for 21 years he was Senior Drama Critic. He is the author of Notes on a Cowardly Lion, a biography of his father, star of The Wizard of Oz, and of biographies of Joe Orton and Dame Edna Everage. He has edited the diaries of Ken Tynan and Joe Orton, and has twice received the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He was the first critic ever to win a Tony Award – for co-authoring Elaine Stritch At Liberty. The event is introduced by Andrew O'Hagan.

We are grateful to the Hawthornden Charitable Trust for sponsoring this event.

John Lahr - Tennessee Williams and the out-crying heart

Set on ‘a Wednesday in mid-June’, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (like James Joyce’s Ulysses) takes place over the course of a single day. Virginia Woolf’s biographer Hermione Lee talks to novelist Alan Hollinghurst about Woolf’s legacy and influence, especially on his most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair. During this celebration of one of the 20th Century’s most important novels, literary critic Elaine Showalter, author of the seminal A Literature of their Own, and Sarah Churchwell, Chair of Public Understanding in the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, discuss the significance of Mrs Dalloway and its ongoing influence on literary culture.

Dalloway Day 2018

Open the wardrobe door and climb into the magical world of Narnia! Join us as we discuss one of the most famous children's book series of all time, The Chronicles of Narnia as well as C.S. Lewis, the brilliant man behind the beloved books. On the show, we talk with C.S. Lewis' stepson, Douglas Gresham about his experience with the late writer. Gresham shares anecdotes about his parents—how their love, romance, and kindness changed his life forever. We also talk with Eoin Colfer, author of the bestselling Artemis Fowl series! He tells us about how Narnia influenced his work and how, much like C.S. Lewis, he never intended on writing a series at all.

To learn more about The Chronicles of Narnia, visit http://bit.ly/36f93Dd
Do you have a story about how a classic book changed your life? Tweet @readingpod or email us at readingpod@harpercollins.com. Learn more at rememberreading.com. Until next time!

The Chronicles of Narnia (ft. Douglas Gresham & Eoin Colfer)

In a 2015 article for The Guardian, Val McDermid, one of the UK’s most celebrated crime writers, wrote: ‘When people lose trust in politicians, they need to find it elsewhere. Maybe, because they trust writers to tell some kind of truth buried in the fictions, we’re being listened to in a way we rarely have before.’ 

In this event, Val is joined by Jeanette Winterson to reflect on the ways in which crime fiction has developed over the last half century, how what we read shapes the people we are, and whether we should all be listening more closely to writers. Val McDermid has published more than 30 works and has sold over 15 million books worldwide. Her latest psychological thriller Broken Ground, which is the fifth in a series of books featuring DCI Karen Pirie, was published in 2018, the same year in which she was one of the Man Booker Prize judges. Jeanette Winterson is a best-selling, award-winning writer, whose works of fiction and non-fiction include Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, The Gap of Time, The Stone Gods and the seminal, semi-autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester.

Literature Matters Breaking Ground

Founded in 1820, the RSL acts as a voice for the value of literature, honouring and supporting emerging and established writers whilst creating a bridge between authors and audiences of all backgrounds and experiences to engage as many people as possible with the wealth of literature in the UK.

Literature Matters Breaking Ground

Royal Society Literature