Iconic authors
Themes
Bibliography of the day
Safety in Numbers, the Lying-In Hospital and Its Shifting Verdict on Where Women Give Birth
Hospitals once promised safer births, then Nightingale's figures made the lying-in ward look deadlier than the home. Cleanliness reversed the verdict again. Each time, the answer followed the dominant danger: contagion inside, or neglect and distance outside.
Counting the Bard, How Verse Tests and Critical Taste Fought Over Edward III
Victorian metrists counted the habits of verse; critics like Swinburne trusted the ear. Edward III, a history play of uneven brilliance, shows why neither instrument could settle who wrote it, and what each reveals about the very idea of an author.
