THE TESTAMENT OF CRESSEID AND SEVEN FABLES
Robert Henryson
Translated by Seamus Heaney
Faber, Hardback, 208pp, ISBN 9780571249282, Price: £12.99
Claire Pascolini-Campbell
In this, his most recent work, Nobel prize-winning poet and Beowulf translator Seamus Heaney leaves the 8th century behind and embarks upon a translation of 15th century Robert Henryson’s ‘The Testament of Cresseid’ and ‘Seven Fables’. The material of the texts in question (or at least the characters that feature in them) will be known to many readers: the story of Cresseid through Boccacio, Chaucer or Shakespeare’s adaptations; the fables through Aesop or, …

MORE TREES TO CLIMB
Ben Moor
Portobello Books, Paperback, 140pp., ISBN 9781846271984. Price: £9.99
Christopher Teevan
If you haven’t heard of Ben Moor before, you may still recognise him. He was the face of Jif Lemon for a number of years and, during the nineties, he also appeared in a number of sketches for Lee and Herring among others. A regular performer on the Edinburgh fringe, Moor has been writing and performing his one man shows nearly every year for the best part of two decades. More Trees To Climb collects together the ‘bare …

MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF MAGIC

Tom Holt

Orbit, Hardback, 352 pp., ISBN: 978-1-8149-505-7, Price: £12.99
I.E.Sawmill
Following the troubled life of salesman Chris Popham as he is forced to straddle dimensions and realities, May Contain Traces of Magic is the newest in a long line of humorous quasi-mythopoeic novels by Tom Holt. Chris must attempt to shift a shipment of magical Multi-Function Megacurses to uninterested punters, battle demons who are hell-bent on ruining his life and – hardest of all – save his flailing love life against all the odds.
May Contain …

Mary Joyce, A Novel: John Clare’s Muse
Russell C. Carter
Blenheim Press, Paperback, 100 pp., ISBN 978-1-906302-12-2. Price: £9.95
Edward Randell
In 1841, the 47-year-old John Clare, England’s greatest nature poet, walked from High Beach Asylum in Essex to Northamptonshire in search of the woman he called “my dear wife”, Mary. But Mary Joyce of Glinton was dead – and had never been his wife.
The story of the woman with whom the mentally ill Clare became increasingly obsessed ought to be an intriguing one. Unfortunately, this self-published effort by Clare enthusiast Russell C. Carter …

Vénus Khoury-Ghata Alphabets of Sand
Translated by Marilyn Hacker
Carcanet Press, Paperback, 88 pp, ISBN 978 1 85754 977 5.
Price:£12.95
Katherine Wootton
Vénus Khoury-Ghata’s collection, Alphabets of Sand, creates a folkloric world in which the dead speak, language is made of giddy and untamed sprite-like syllables, and the natural world’s personality is as lively as a child’s. A Lebanese writer living in France since 1973, Khoury-Ghata’s work reflects her bilingual and multi-national experience, with the traditions of Arabic storytelling and the effect of the Lebanese Civil War, which began shortly after she moved …

A JURY OF HER PEERS: AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS FROM ANNE BRADSTREET TO ANNIE PROULX
Elaine Showalter
Virago, Hardback, 400pp.,ISBN 978-1844080786, Price: £22.50
Janette Currie
In her latest book, Elaine Showalter revisits the contested territory of her pioneering study of English women writers, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing (1977). A Jury of Her Peers concentrates on the American counterparts and as such, attempts to reshape American literary heritage. Showalter aims to make the “invisible visible” by shining a light on “neglected” and “forgotten” …

SIR FRANK KERMODE is the author of many influential works of literary criticism and has been a major presence in the critical landscape for the second half of the Twentieth Century. He talks to The Literateur about academic careers, the dubious pleasures of Theory, the role of the critic, and the end of the world.
Tom Bailey
The Literateur: Sir Frank, it’s a privilege to be here to interview you today. Thank you very much for giving your time.
First off, you have been some years outside of the academic machine now – …

Archaeology of Words: Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns
Louise Kemeny
‘I ran slowly; the landscape flowed back to / its source’ (VI)[1]
In Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns the concepts of time and space are vague, defined by their interaction with words and movement. History and memory are mixed in moving pictures, tugging always at the connections between the different planes of reality contained within the sequence. These are namely the life and doings of King Offa who ruled Mercia from 757 to 796 AD;[2] Hill’s own childhood and his experience of the Second …

The Lancelot Dilemma in Malory’s Morte Darthur: How Can the Greatest Knight in the World Have Sex with the Queen?
Eric Lacey
Sir Thomas Malory’s Lancelot was a ‘trew knyght’[1] because he was exemplary in all facets of his character. [2] Indeed, Malory was so eager to emphasize this, that Lancelot is referred to as a ‘trew’ knight four times within the first seven leaves of the Winchester manuscript (the manuscript thought to be closest to Malory’s original), three occurrences of which come from the knight himself in the repetition of “as …

Louise Kemeny
Bibliomania
: A rage for collecting and possessing books. (OED)
: An obsessive–compulsive disorder involving the collecting or hoarding of books to the point where social relations or health are damaged. (Wikipedia)
Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872) was nothing if not a bibliomaniac. “He was quite bonkers, I mean he was completely barking,” Mr Horne* tells me. We are sitting in the bookcase-lined living room of the central London residence from which Mr Horne runs his antiquarian book dealing business. And he’s right; Phillipps referred to himself as “a complete Vello-maniac” (as the …