Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, draws on her experience as a trustee of the Booker Prize and as a judge for many other literary prizes to offer a response to the question, 'What is a Classic?'.

What is a Classic? English Graduate Conference 2012 Panel Debate, Talk 3 

Judith Luna, the Senior Commissioning Editor at Oxford World's Classics, draws on her practical involvement in re-launching the Oxford World's Classics series in 2008 to give a publisher's take on the question, 'What is a Classic?'.

What is a Classic? English Graduate Conference 2012 Panel Debate, Talk 2 

Dr Ankhi Mukherjee, Wadham college, Oxford, speaks to the question 'What is a Classic?' by examining the residual influence of the Eurocentric literary canon in the age of world literature and emergent formations of canons and classics.

What is a Classic? English Graduate Conference 2012 Panel Debate, Talk 1 

Professor Kathyrn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks around the manuscripts of Jane Austen, what we can learn from them about her family life but also her writing style and techniques.

Jane Austen's Manuscripts Explored 

Professor Kathryn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks about some of Jane Austen's manuscripts from the novel "The Watsons" and what we can learn about her from these.

The Watsons: Jane Austen Practising 

A short introductory video to the "Great Writers Inspire project.

Great Writers Inspire- An Introduction to the Project 

In this panel discussion from the Great Writers Inspire Engage Event workshop, Dr Seamus Perry, Dr Margaret Kean, Professor Peter McDonald and Dr Ankhi Mukherjee discuss what we mean when we talk about greatness in writing. Seamus Perry chooses Samuel Taylor Coleridge, inspired as he is by the 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and its myriad possible interpretations. Margaret Kean chooses John Milton, who used his Paradise Lost to position himself in the canon of great writers during his lifetime. Peter McDonald talks about who decides who is considered to be a great writer, suggesting literary agents, prize judges, editors, reviewers, critics, librarians, and ordinary readers. Finally, Ankhi Mukherjee discusses the greatness of V S Naipul, who was critical of the existing literary canon and so set out to create his own kind of great literature.

What is a Great Writer? An academic panel discusses the question. 

Professor Daniel Wakelin discusses the work of Chaucer and explains how he was one of the first to use everyday spoken English as a literary language in the 14th Century.

Chaucer 

Dr Rebecca Beasley explains why we should read Pound, someone she considers as the central figure in early 20th Century poetry movements. In this podcast, Rebecca Beasley talks about a poem that Pound published in Blast, the magazine of the vorticist movement -- which Pound joined in 1914. Vorticism was mainly a visual arts movement, founded by Percy Wyndham Lewis. Blast is available on the Modernist Journals Project website with certain usage restrictions: the poem discussed, Et Faim Sallir le Loup des Boys, is on page 22 of Blast, volume 2 (War Number). Looking up the poem's title in a search engine should bring it up easily. Because we don't want to infringe copyright, the poem is not quoted, so you might want to read it before listening.

Ezra Pound 

Mary Leapor

Dr Jennifer Batt talks about Mary Leapor, an 18th Century kitchen maid who wrote accomplished verses and won accolades from literary society.

Mary Leapor 

PLEASE NOTE: The 'Great Writers Inspire' project has its own website which features much more extensive, diverse and updated content. Please visit https://writersinspires.orgFrom Dickens to Shakespeare, from Chaucer to Kipling and from Austen to Blake, this significant collection contains inspirational short talks freely available to the public and the education community worldwide. This series is aimed primarily at first year undergraduates but will be of interest to school students preparing for university and anyone who would like to know more about the world's great writers. The talks were produced as part of the Great Writers Inspire Project which makes a significant body of material freely available on the subject of great works of literature and their authors. Visit https://writersinspire.org/ to see how great writers can inspire you.

John Milton

Dr Anna Beer shares a few short extracts of Milton's poem Lycidas and discusses what they show about Milton's very special qualities as a writer.

John Milton 

Dr Abigail Williams, Director of the Digital Miscellanies Index, explains how these popular collections of poetry designed to suit contemporary tastes were used in the 18th Century.

Only Collect: An Introduction to the World of the Poetic Miscellany 

Professor Peter McDonald gives a talk on the work of South African Nobel Laureate, J.M. Coetzee. Professor McDonald sets out the various less-than-great guises of the writer in Coetzee's fiction. He goes on to consider passages from Foe (1986) and Disgrace (1999) to highlight Coetzee's linguistic disruptiveness that might be considered traits of postmodern or post-colonial writing. In these close readings, Professor McDonald demonstrates how in just a few words, we can see that J.M. Coetzee is a great writer.

J.M. Coetzee 

Olive Schreiner

Professor Elleke Boehmer gives a talk on Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), the South African novelist, pioneering feminist, and anti-imperialist polemicist. For Boehmer, Schreiner is not 'great' in the conventional sense (she did not possess the great literary brain of George Eliot, for example), but she is a great inspiration in many spheres: she influenced other writers (fellow South African J.M. Coetzee, in particular); other critical thinkers and activists (including John A. Hobson and Vladimir Lenin); and general trends in feminism, gender studies, and postcolonialism.  As Boehmer explains, Schreiner's greatness is to be found in her flaws and failures. Under the pseudonym 'Ralph Iron', Schreiner published one critically acclaimed book - The Story of an African Farm (1883) - and was highly praised in London literary circles.  However, she failed to publish any more novels; she wrote two draft manuscripts but was never completely satisfied with them, so never sought publication. Schreiner suffered writer's block and several episodes of illness (both physical and psychosomatic).  These struggles produced inspiring, yet never fully formed, treatises on South Africa, racism, imperialism, capitalism, gender, and other material and power relations. Indeed, it is Schreiner's struggles - her constant revisions and enduring attempts to give a formative shape to the world - which make her the embodiment of modern life, of a world in constant flux.  She was a Modernist ahead of time. Schreiner died in 1920, two years before one of the most significant years for Modernist literature (1922 saw the publication of James Joyce's 'Ulysses', T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land', and Virginia Woolf's 'Jacob's Room'), but her innovative attempts to change the way the world was perceived make her a truly Modern writer.  Boehmer ends her talk with a brief insight into Schreiner's biography and work. Schreiner was brought up by missionary parents but went on to denounce religion. She worked as a governess, before moving to the UK to begin (but never complete) medical school. Her choice of reading matter was varied, but she was particularly taken with J. S. Mill and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Finally, Boehmer reads a couple of extracts from The Story of an African Farm, asking us to pay particular attention to the masterful ways in which Schreiner gives aesthetic form to her native South Africa through shifting between macrocosm and microcosm, between the country itself and detailed descriptions of single flowers.

Olive Schreiner 

Dr Faith Binckes explains why modernist short story writer and critic Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is a great writer, highlighting her involvement with the 1911-1913 periodical Rhythm, edited by her second husband John Middleton Murry. Dr Binckes discusses how three stories from 1912 - 'The Woman at the Store', 'How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped', and 'Sunday Lunch' - illustrate different facets of Mansfield's writing. Though she has in the past been considered a domestic writer of women's and children's concerns, these earlier versions of stories play with a colonial New Zealand setting (later written out), deal with fairytale and race, and poke fun at the London literati, respectively.  Katherine Mansfield was originally from New Zealand but came to London in 1903. She was a prolific story writer, whose talent made Virginia Woolf envious. Mansfield's two best known collections are Bliss and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922). Mansfield died in January, 1923 of pulmonary tuberculosis. Dr Binckes' podcast focuses on Mansfield's early involvement with Rhythm, which she wrote for under a number of pseudonyms, supported financially, and edited. Dr. Binckes discusses how three stories from 1912 - 'The Woman at the Store', 'How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped', and 'Sunday Lunch' - illustrate different facets of Mansfield's writing. Though she has in the past often been considered a domestic writer of women's and children's concerns, these earlier versions of stories play with a colonial New Zealand setting, deal with fairytale and race, and poke fun at the London literati, respectively. Mansfield's use of New Zealand is especially interesting in these early stories, as these details were often written out when the stories were published in book form. The periodical versions thus allow the reader to experience Mansfield's original intentions for her stories.

Katherine Mansfield and Rhythm Magazine 

George Eliot

Dr Catherine Brown gives a talk on George Eliot and her influences.

George Eliot - A Very Large Brain 

William Blake

Dr David Fallon introduces the poetry, painting, and engraving of William Blake, focusing on the imaginative and visionary aspects of Blake's work and his desire to break the publics 'mind-forg'd manacles'. Dr Fallon also highlights Blake's exposure to the political radicalism of the 1780s and 90s through his work as an engraver for the Unitarian publisher Joseph Johnson. Blake's unorthodox Christianity led him to challenge conventional notions of good and evil in his visionary 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell', in which dynamic energy is praised.  Blake is best known for his Songs of Innocence and Experience and 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'. Dr Fallon highlights Blake's exposure to enlightenment thinking and the political radicalism of the 1780s and 90s through his work as an engraver for the Unitarian publisher Joseph Johnson. Johnson published works by Joseph Priestley (Unitarian minister and discoverer of oxygen), ground-breaking feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and Erasmus Darwin (grandfather to Charles Darwin), among others. Blake's unorthodox Christianity led him to challenge conventional notions of good and evil in his visionary 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' (1790-93), in which dynamic energy is praised above all else. In the poem, Blake famously wrote 'The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.'

William Blake 

Dr Jennifer Batt gives a talk on Stephen Duck, one of the 18th Century labouring-class poets.

18th Century Labouring Class Poetry 

Jonathan Swift

Dr Abigail Williams gives a talk on Jonathan Swift and the Art of Undressing.

Jonathan Swift and the Art of Undressing 

Dr Francis Leneghan gives a talk on Beowulf, one of the most important works in Anglo-Saxon literature. The title of this collaborative project, 'Great Writers Inspire', naturally brings up several questions, most importantly of which is, 'What is a Writer?' In his talk on the Old English poem Beowulf, Francis Leneghan discusses that very concern. The term 'author' does not convey the same static quality in the Anglo-Saxon period as it does in the modern day. Beowulf could have existed in a multiple of versions, depending on how many Anglo-Saxon poets (scops) were around to interpret and re-tell the tale, much like the many interpretations of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'. He also discuses the poet's taste for poetic license, taste, and embellishment that his own character, Beowulf, possesses. The poet invites the audience to consider the complex role of oral poetry, and how the audience - both Anglo-Saxon and modern - should interpret this work. Is this particular poet's rendition of events true? Is Beowulf a less trustworthy individual since he embellishes the nature of the fight when reporting back to Hygelac's court? Every performance and reading reshapes the poem and how we approach it, even to the modern day. The Beowulf-poet, in a sense, is more of a collective noun than an individual author. Also, if you want to hear what Old English sounds like, check out 2:25-2:32 to hear Leneghan speak the opening lines of the extraordinary poem, or 6:27-7:01 to hear the section in which Hrothgar's poet praises Beowulf by comparing him to the valiant men of old.

Beowulf 

I call this the &#34;Mansplainer&#34; podcast. They speak with such confidence and swagger yet what they say is not particularly astute.

Mansplainers

While I can appreciate the speakers&#39; enthusiasm for why a chosen author &#34;inspired&#34; them, there is a great deal missing in why &#34;I&#34; would be inspired. I was neither inspired to be a better writer nor a better person. This was merely reminiscent of &#39;bring your favorite person to school&#39; day. This may be exciting for some, so give a few of the talks a try, but if those are not agreeable, do not hold hope that the others will be better.

Needed More Depth for Me

PLEASE NOTE: The 'Great Writers Inspire' project has its own website which features much more extensive, diverse and updated content. Please visit <a href="https://writersinspires.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://writersinspires.org</a><br><br>From Dickens to Shakespeare, from Chaucer to Kipling and from Austen to Blake, this significant collection contains inspirational short talks freely available to the public and the education community worldwide. This series is aimed primarily at first year undergraduates but will be of interest to school students preparing for university and anyone who would like to know more about the world's great writers. The talks were produced as part of the Great Writers Inspire Project which makes a significant body of material freely available on the subject of great works of literature and their authors. Visit <a href="https://writersinspire.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://writersinspire.org/</a> to see how great writers can inspire you.

Great Writers Inspire

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Best Episodes: Interesting Stories & Things

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