There are few mirrors in literature as merciless as Stevenson’s, and none quite so fogged by our own breath. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is less a Gothic tale than a confession disguised as one - a dimly lit sermon on the human condition, preached from the pulpit of a London … Continue reading The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Tag: Life
The Bed of Procrustes: Where Truth Is Made to Fit
The Bed of Procrustes - a tale from the dust of Greek myth, yet one that rises from the roadside like a grim milestone marking the journey of civilisation. Procrustes, that innkeeper of cruelty, the highwayman with hospitality on his lips and butchery in his hands, offered travellers a night’s rest on his iron bed. … Continue reading The Bed of Procrustes: Where Truth Is Made to Fit
The Misery: Whispering Ghosts and the Pistol on the Table
Adolf Werner (1862–1916), The Misery, c. 1900. Public domain. Some paintings merely decorate a wall, and some paintings accuse you from the other side of the room. Adolf Werner’s The Misery (c. 1900) is firmly in the second category. It doesn't flatter the parlour, nor charm the eye with pastoral pleasantries. It leans forward, ghost on shoulder, and … Continue reading The Misery: Whispering Ghosts and the Pistol on the Table
The Ghost That Wasn’t There: On Hughes Mearns’ Antigonish
“Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there.” Thus begins one of the most famous fragments of verse ever to slip through the cracks of English literature - part nursery rhyme, part ghost story, part psychological confession. Hughes Mearns’ Antigonish (1899) was written in the playful spirit of nonsense, yet like all … Continue reading The Ghost That Wasn’t There: On Hughes Mearns’ Antigonish
A Ghost in the Glass: Charlotte Brontë and the Churchyard Photograph
Haworth Churchyard photograph, John Stewart, c.1856–57. © Brontë Society. Sourced via annebronte.org. There’s a photograph - albumen print, sepia-toned, crisp with the shadows of headstones - that has set imaginations aflame for more than a century. It shows Haworth churchyard, with its lichen-bitten tombs and overhanging sky, a place where the dead vastly outnumber the … Continue reading A Ghost in the Glass: Charlotte Brontë and the Churchyard Photograph
Wording 