The journal of literary criticism Cambridge Quarterly has released a 'Retrospective Virtual Issue', selecting eight essays from several hundred it has published over more than five decades to celebrate reaching its 50th volume.  The current editors selected some of their favourite essays for inclusion.  Two of the eight are by members of the Bristol English Department, showcasing our established and continuing strengths in the appreciation and criticism of poetry.

Tom Mason, who taught in the Department from 1978 and is now a Research Fellow here, contributes ‘Abraham Cowley and the Wisdom of Anacreon’, originally published in 1990.  Editor Kathryn Murphy describes this as a ‘particularly successful’ essay, tracing the reception history of two neglected eighteenth-century writers and showing the reader how to appreciate their ‘joyful carelessness’.

Jane Wright contributes ‘The Princess and the Bee’, published in 2015.  James Williams calls it ‘one of a handful of essays on Tennyson that has the capacity permanently to change how we read a familiar work’, using close reading to ‘elevate… the critic’s social and political commitments’.

Both articles are free to download.