Once pivotal to the English canon, Jane Austen has been adapted and readapted for Hollywood and Bollywood – and that kind of popularity comes at a cost.
The University of Queensland Press caused controversy when it turned down Campbell Newman’s memoir – but why shouldn’t a publisher be entitled to principled refusal?
A careful study of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations reveals that its influence lies not in Smith’s ability to construct an argument – but in his skill as teller of tall tales.
Adult and child fans of Dr Seuss are set for a treat in July with the publication of a lost manuscript, What Pet Should I Get? Why is it that the works of the American author have such broad appeal?
LA photographer Alex Prager is currently exhibiting short films and film stills at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne. There is something authentic behind the artifice of her highly staged…
With the release of Fifty Shades of Grey in cinemas this week, serious questions have been raised about whether the film depicts abuse – including on The Conversation. Some feminist groups have staged…
Women sharing their accounts of violence against them, and its aftermath, can be powerful. Feminism has long since taught us that personal experiences of violence, when shared collectively, can transcend…
Despite boasting a population of 2 million people – more than South Australia, the Northern Territory, Tasmania and the ACT combined – Western Sydney has, to date, had little impact on the literary pulse…
“My dearest Theresa,” Lord Byron wrote to his mistress in his garden, August 1819. A century later, on a July afternoon in 1916, Captain Alfred Bland, a British officer in World War I, sat down before…
Historically, bushfires have played an important role in Australian literature, adding a touch of exoticism in fiction written for readers back in Europe, while also offering insights into the dangers…
By now there can be few people who don’t know Harper Lee’s supposedly long-lost manuscript, Go Set a Watchman, will be published in July. It will be the first book published by Lee since To Kill a Mockingbird…
A sequel to Harper Lee’s classic 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird has been “found”, and will be published in July, her US publisher HarperCollins has announced. The sequel – Go Set a Watchman – was written…
Buttons open to the waist, skin gleaming with sweat, hair tousled, intriguing flashes of curves … men on the covers of classic romance novels, or “bodice rippers”, are objectified in many of the same ways…
Every now and then, the writer Josephine Humphreys has suggested, our lives veer from their day-to-day course and become for a short while “the kind of life that can be told as a story – that is, one in…
The staggering amount of information in the world can be overwhelming. This is partly why genres such as detective fiction are so popular – they resonate with the human desire to control and order the…
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide, and was voted The Greatest Novel of All Time in a London Daily Telegraph poll of 2008…
The Natural History Museum’s plan to remove “Dippy”, the cast of a diplodocus skeleton, from its entrance hall, and replace it with a genuine skeleton of a blue whale has been met with outrage. The #savedippy…