Blog | Lucienne Boyce

Madness in the margins

I have a copy of Sir Almroth E Wright’s 1913 The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage in which an early or the original reader has pencilled copious notes. I don’t …

A Savage End

I’ve just read two fascinating works by Cicely Hamilton, actress, writer and suffragette and one of my feminist heroes. Hamilton (1872–1952) wrote the words to the suffragette anthem, The March …

Not Just William

How peculiar to discover Richmal Crompton (1890-1969) included in The Independent Forgotten Author’s series in an article dated 23 May 2010. William Brown has hardly been forgotten if the over …

I’ve recently finished reading Richard Holme’s splendid two volume biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and topped it off with Adam Sisman’s equally splendid Wordsworth and Coleridge: A Friendship. Coleridge’s was …

The Buddha and Books Part 1

I’ve just finished reading The Lacquer Lady by F Tennyson Jesse (first published in 1929). The novel is set in Mandalay in the 1880s and charts the fall of the …

Refusing to be counted

Yesterday (2 April 2011) was the anniversary of the women’s boycott of the 1911 Census and I marked the event by joining historians Jill Liddington and Tara Morton on their …

The Hollow Crown

As in a theatre the eyes of men,After a well-grac’d actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next,Thinking his prattle to be tedious;Even so, or with …

Elms and Bees

I had another wonderful evening in Chepstow’s Drill Hall on Saturday (5 March 2011) at a Poetry on the Border event. This time I went to see Carol Ann Duffy …

Saki in Singapore

The obvious choice of reading for a trip to Singapore must be Rudyard Kipling, one of the writers associated with Raffles Hotel which is named after Britain’s colonial administrator par …

Eminent Victorian

For they stood in one of the famous wood and common lands of Southern England – great beeches towering overhead – glades opening to right and left – ferny paths …

Treasured Possessions

“March 3rd 83Dear SirThanks for your note; the gout sticks to me so that I am still unable to make any appointment, but I will come on the very first …

Creating a monster

To Oxford last week to see the Bodleian Library’s exhibition Shelley’s Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family. The exhibition looks at the way in which Shelley’s posthumous image …