Close Readings

George Gissing’s novels, Orwell once said, could be described in three words: ‘not enough money’. Writing is a matter of survival for the cast of ‘New Grub Street’ (1891), which follows a handful of literary men and women in London in the early 1880s. All of them have different ideas about success, love and personal fulfilment, and all those ideas – even the most brutally pragmatic – are subverted by the pressures of sexuality and the marketplace.

In the final episode of Novel Approaches, Clare Bucknell and Tom Crewe discuss Gissing’s great portrait of London at its shabbiest. They explore Gissing’s unrelenting realism, his gift for writing nuanced characters, and why, in Tom’s words, if the novel is gloomy, it’s ‘an invigorating gloom’.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠

Further reading from the LRB:

Frank Kermode on George Gissing:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n02/frank-kermode/squalor⁠

Rosemarie Bodenheimer on Gissing’s life:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n13/rosemarie-bodenheimer/give-us-a-break⁠

Jane Miller on Gissing’s letters:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v13/n05/jane-miller/gissing-may-damage-your-health⁠

Ian Hamilton on a new ‘New Grub Street’:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n02/ian-hamilton/diary⁠

Patricia Beer on Gissing’s women:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n14/patricia-beer/new-women⁠

AUDIO GIFTS

Close Readings and audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiogifts

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Did Dickens ruin Christmas? He was certainly a pioneer in exploiting its commercial potential. A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies in five days when it was published on 19 December 1843, and Dickens went on to write four more lucrative Christmas books in the 1840s. But in many ways, this ‘ghost story of Christmas’ couldn’t be less Christmassy. The plot displays Dickens’s typical obsession with extracting maximum sentimentality from the pain and death of his characters, and the narrative voice veers unnervingly from preachy to creepy in its voyeuristic obsessions with physical excess. The book also offers a stiff social critique of the 1834 Poor Law and a satire on Malthusian ideas of population control.

In this bonus episode from ‘Novel Approaches’, part of our Close Readings podcast, Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell join Tom to consider why Dickens’s dark tale has remained a Christmas staple.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠

AUDIO GIFTS

Close Readings and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiogifts

Did Dickens ruin Christmas? He was certainly a pioneer in exploiting its commercial potential. A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies in five days when it was published on 19 December 1843, and Dickens went on to write four more lucrative Christmas books in the 1840s. But in many ways, this ‘ghost story of Christmas’ couldn’t be less Christmassy. The plot displays Dickens’s typical obsession with extracting maximum sentimentality from the pain and death of his characters, and the narrative voice veers unnervingly from preachy to creepy in its voyeuristic obsessions with physical excess. The book also offers a stiff social critique of the 1834 Poor Law and a satire on Malthusian ideas of population control.

In this bonus episode from ‘Novel Approaches’, part of our Close Readings podcast, Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell join Tom to consider why Dickens’s dark tale has remained a Christmas staple.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠

AUDIO GIFTS

Close Readings and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiogifts

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Samuel Johnson’s doctor, Robert Levet, had piecemeal medical knowledge at best, was described as an ‘an obscure practiser in physick’ by James Boswell and was only paid for his work with gin. Yet for Johnson this eccentric man deserved a poetic tribute for demonstrating ‘the power of the art without show’, a phrase that could as much describe the poem itself. In this episode, Seamus and Mark close their series by looking at the ways in which Johnson’s elegy, 'On the Death of Dr Robert Levet', rejects the pastoral heroism of the poem they started with, Milton’s ‘Lycidas’, and compare it to two poems that offer their own kinds of unsentimental, eccentric portrait: 'Felix Randal' by Gerard Manley Hopkins and 'Stephen Boyd, 1957-99' by Mick Imlah.

Seamus and Mark will be back in January to start their new series, 'Narrative Poems'.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld⁠⁠⁠

Find tickets to Seamus's LRB Winter Lecture in London here: https://lrb.me/perrywlpod

Further reading in the LRB:

Freya Johnston on Samuel Johnson:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n09/freya-johnston/i-m-coming-my-tetsie!

Patricia Beer on Hopkins:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n11/patricia-beer/what-he-meant-by-happiness

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Though the last twelve episodes have taken Marina Warner and her interlocutors through many worlds and texts, no series could ever encompass the full scope of fantastic literature. This episode, recorded live at Swedenborg House, is an attempt to fill the gaps, or fail heroically. Marina and Adam Thirlwell are joined by Edwin Frank, editorial director of the New York Review Books and author of ‘Stranger than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth Century Novel’. Together they assess existing canons and definitions, redefine and rediscover categories and exceptions, and consider the pleasures and uses of the fantastic.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠⁠⁠

Read more in the LRB:

Colin Burrow: Fiction and the Age of Lies

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n04/colin-burrow/fiction-and-the-age-of-lies⁠

Marina Warner on fairytale:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n21/marina-warner/that-which-is-spoken⁠

Jonathan Lethem on Stanisław Lem and Science Fiction:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n03/jonathan-lethem/my-year-of-reading-lemmishly⁠

A.D. Nuttall on the rhetoric of the fantastic:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n21/a.d.-nuttall/really-fantastic

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In 1908, Virginia Woolf wrote that she hoped to revolutionise the novel and ‘capture multitudes of things at present fugitive’. ‘To the Lighthouse’ (1927) marks perhaps her fullest realisation of the novel as philosophical enterprise, and not simply because one of its central characters is engaged with the problem of ‘subject and object and the nature of reality’. In the final episode of their series, Jonathan and James consider different ways of reading Woolf’s great novel: as a satirical portrait of her father through Mr Ramsay, as a study of creative expression through Lily Briscoe, or as a mystical, Platonic quest in which form and style respond to philosophical propositions, and the truth of human experience is to be found in movement, conversation and laughter.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠

Read more in the LRB:

Jacqueline Rose: Where's Woolf? https://lrb.me/cipep13woolf1

Virgina Woolf: The Symbol https://lrb.me/cipep13woolf2

John Bayley: Superchild https://lrb.me/cipep13woolf3

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After drunkenly selling his wife and child at auction, a young Michael Henchard resolves to live differently – and does so, skyrocketing from impoverished haytrusser to mayor of his adoptive town. Every unexpected disaster and sudden reversal in The Mayor of Casterbridge stems from its opening, in a plot which draws as much from realist fiction as Shakespearean tragedy and the sensation novel.

Mary Wellesley and Mark Ford join Clare Bucknell to unpick the many strands in Thomas Hardy’s first Wessex novel. They explore how the novel – at once ‘algorithmic’, theatrical and fatalistic – is suffused with Hardy’s class anxieties, affinity with Dorset and fascination with pagan England.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠

Further reading and listening from the LRB:

Mary and Mark discuss Hardy’s medievalism on the LRB Podcast:

⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/thomas-hardy-s-medieval-mind⁠⁠

Mark discusses Poems of 1912-13 with Seamus Perry in Love and Death:

⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings/love-and-death-poems-of-1912-13-by-thomas-hardy⁠⁠

 James Wood on Hardy’s life:⁠⁠ ⁠

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n01/james-wood/anxious-pleasures⁠⁠

Hugh Haughton on Hardy’s ghosts:

⁠⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v07/n21/hugh-haughton/ghosts⁠⁠

Next episode: New Grub Street by George Gissing.

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We’re pleased to announce our four new Close Readings series starting in January next year:

‘Who’s Afraid of Realism?’ with James Wood and guests

‘Nature in Crisis’ with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith

‘Narrative Poems’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford

‘London Revisited’ with Rosemary Hill and guests

Bonus Series: 'The Man Behind the Curtain’ with Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones

Episodes will appear on Monday every week, with a new episode from each series appearing every four weeks. Episodes from our bonus series, ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’, will come out every couple of months, either as extra episodes or live events: look out for announcements!

If you're not already a subscriber, sign up for just £4.99/month or £49.99/year to listen to these series plus all our past series in full:

Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/crintro2026apple⁠

Spotify and other podcast apps:  ⁠https://lrb.me/crintro2026sc⁠

Here are the works covered in each series:

‘Who’s Afraid of Realism?’ with James Wood and guests

Flaubert, 'Madame Bovary'

Dostoevsky, 'Notes from Underground'

Stories by Anton Chekhov

Tolstoy, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich'

Kafka, 'Metamorphosis'

Woolf, 'Mrs Dalloway'

Rhys, 'Voyage in the Dark'

Bellow, 'Seize The Day'

Nabokov, 'Pnin'

Spark, 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'

Sharma, 'Family Life'

Stories by Lydia Davis

Riley, 'My Phantoms'

‘Nature in Crisis’ with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith

Carson, 'Silent Spring'

Schlanger, 'The Light Eaters'

Czerski, 'The Blue Machine'

Lovelock, 'Gaia'

Macfarlane, 'Is a River Alive?'

Kimmerer, 'Braiding Sweetgrass'

Raboteau, 'Lessons for Survival'

Moore and Roberts, 'The Rise of Ecofascism'

Riofrancos, 'Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism'

And more TBD

‘Narrative Poems’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford

Marlowe, ‘Hero and Leander’

Shakespeare, ‘Venus and Adonis’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’

Milton, Book 9 of ‘Paradise Lost’

Pope, ‘The Rape of the Lock’

Coleridge ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’

Wordsworth, ‘The Ruined Cottage’ and ‘Michael’

Keats, ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ 

Browning, ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’

Clough, ‘Amours de Voyage’

Tennyson, ‘Enoch Arden’

H.D., ‘Helen in Egypt’

Seth, ‘The Golden Gate’

Carson, ‘Autobiography of Red and ‘Red Doc>’

‘London Revisited’ with Rosemary Hill

Each episode will cover a period of London’s history and begin with a piece of writing. The first episode, on Roman London, will start with an extract from Dio Cassius’s account of the Roman conquest from his Roman History.

‘The Man Behind the Curtain’ with Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones

Cervantes, 'Don Quixote'

Shelley, 'Frankenstein'

Eliot, 'Middlemarch'

Joyce, 'Ulysses'

Ellison, 'Invisible Man'

Pynchon, 'Gravity’s Rainbow'

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Thom Gunn’s career as an elegist was tied closely to the onset of the Aids epidemic in the 1980s, during which he saw many of his friends die. Despite loosening his early formalism after absorbing the work of the New American Poets, Gunn’s vision of the poet was not as a confessional diarist but rather a careful stylist of well-wrought verse drawing on the traditions of Fulke Greville and Ben Jonson. In this episode, Seamus and Mark look at elegies including ‘Talbot Road’, ‘The Gas-poker’ and others from his celebrated collection The Man with Night Sweats, where Gunn combined this allusive, rhetorical style with a poignant realism to recreate his subjects. They then turn to the more self-reflexive, oblique elegies of Paul Muldoon, who has reinvented the form in richly-patterned, playful poems such as ‘The Soap Pig’ and ‘Incantata’.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld⁠⁠⁠

More in the LRB:

Thom Gunn's 'Lament': ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldep12gunn1⁠

Colm Tóibín on Gunn: ⁠https://lrb.me/ldep12gunn2⁠

Michael Nott: Thom Gunn in New York: ⁠https://lrb.me/ldep12gunn3⁠

Markl Ford on Muldoon: ⁠https://lrb.me/ldep12muldoon1

Get in touch: [email protected]

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When the polymorphous writer Ursula K. Le Guin died in 2018, she left behind novels, short stories, poetry, essays, manifestos and French and Chinese translations. The huge and loyal readership among children and older readers that she built during her lifetime has only grown since her death, as has recognition of her work as ‘serious’ literature. Chafing against her confinement in genre fiction, she liberated sci-fi, fantasy and YA literature from the condescension to which they had long been subjected. In 2016, she joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetime by the Library of America.

For the final regular episode of Fiction and the Fantastic (though there will be one more special episode) Marina and Chloe read ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ and ‘The Dispossessed’: works of exceptional imaginative power and intellectual range, passionate idealism and keen-eyed observation. Is Le Guin’s status in both literary and ‘genre’ canons a testament to the force and clear-sightedness of her radical – even prophetic – political vision? And what does it mean for the fantastic if we accept her self-characterisation as a ‘realist of a larger reality’?

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠⁠⁠

Further reading and listening from the LRB:

Colin Burrow on Ursula K. Le Guin:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n02/colin-burrow/it-s-not-jung-s-it-s-mine

A collection of writing on science fiction from the LRB:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/collections/in-hyperspace

Amia Srinivasan on Le Guin’s experiments with pronouns:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n13/amia-srinivasan/he-she-one-they-ho-hus-hum-ita

Colin Burrow discusses Le Guin with Thomas Jones on the LRB Podcast:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/magical-authority

Next episode: A taxonomy of fantastic literature with Marina, Adam Thirlwell and Edwin Frank.

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