Literature

Here is one way to look at the shifting fortunes of women over the last two centuries: via the men many of them have sighed over.

This Valentine’s Day, don’t do anything Jane Austen wouldn’t do.

Centuries after its 1847 publication, Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë's breathtaking literary classic, remains a seminal text to scholars, students, and readers around the world. Though best known for its depiction of romance between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, it is also largely multidimensional, grappling with themes such as religious hypocrisy, the precariousness of social class, and the collision of nature and culture. But how much do you know about this famous work of English…

dewdrop: 'I felt rather lonely after the March sisters had gone as I loved their spirit and felt as if I was almost one of them, which is a clear sign of this book's greatness'

In 1861, just prior to the American Civil War, Harriet Jacobs published a famous slave narrative – of her life in slavery and her arduous escape. Two years earlier, in 1859, Harriet Wilson published an autobiographical novel, Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, tracing her life as “free black” farm servant in New England.

Open The Bloody Chamber and you know right away you’re reading a masterpiece.

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, we started thinking about what we associate with romance. Jane Austen was an obvious choice for this week’s Very Short Fact… “ In December 1817, an...

As a young woman, Virginia Woolf toured London’s National Portrait Gallery and grieved to find that almost all the portraits in the collection were of men. Woolf was so resentful that she later refused to sit for a drawing commissioned by the gallery, seemingly renouncing an opportunity to add her own portrait to its walls.

Explore the English language through Lexico's interesting and informational articles about word origins, common language questions, and fun word lists.

A Very Short Fact: English author Virginia Woolf died on this day in 1941. A long-time sufferer of depression, Woolf sensed the return of her mental illness and committed suicide. ““The idea that the...

The American Renaissance—perhaps the richest literary period in American history, critics argue—produced lettered giants Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Emily Dickinson. Much like the social and historical setting in which it was birthed, this period was full of paradoxes that were uniquely American.

Stream Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice – an audio guide, a playlist by Oxford Academic (OUP) from desktop or your mobile device

In late 19th and early 20th-century America, a new image of womanhood emerged that began to shape public views and understandings of women’s role in society. With the suffrage and labor movements, the “new woman” emerged. These modern women were attending colleges, rejecting domesticity, asserting themselves politically in public, and becoming a part of the cultural landscape through literature. As the 12th century progresses, the voices of women pushed for more self-discovery and freedom…

What does your bookshelf say about you? When you work in publishing, you tend to bypass the traditional gifts of chocolate and flowers and aim an arrow straight for the heart -- with books. Here are a few staff recommendations on books for the people you love.

Atlanta’s own Margaret Mitchell was born on this day in 1900. Browse and order prints from our collection.

As a young woman, Virginia Woolf toured London’s National Portrait Gallery and grieved to find that almost all the portraits in the collection were of men. Woolf was so resentful that she later refused to sit for a drawing commissioned by the gallery, seemingly renouncing an opportunity to add her own portrait to its walls.

In a recent article for The Huffington Post, journalist Erin Schumaker advises students not to let their brains waste away over the summer: "you might be better off skipping the beach read this summer in favor of something a little more substantive." Yet some of us might find the idea of settling down on a sun lounger with War and Peace less than appealing. To help you out, we asked staff at Oxford University Press for a list of summer classics that will help you relax without letting your…

We cannot get enough of our Out of Print stacks here at OUP Oxford. Our latest treasure hunt for our Shakespeare-related publishing has revealed these colourful books from an old series called Oxford...

Our Very Short Fact this week is about William Shakespeare, who died on this day 1616. “ Shakespeare was widely admired in his own time, still more so after the publication of the First Folio. But he...

We cannot get enough of our Out of Print stacks here at OUP Oxford. Our latest treasure hunt for our Shakespeare-related publishing has revealed these colourful books from an old series called Oxford...