This is a book about the things we hide from other people. Love affairs, grief, domestic strife and the mess at the bottom of your handbag. Part memoir, part imagined history, in The Lost Properties of Love, Sophie Ratcliffe combines her own experience of childhood bereavement, a past lover, the reality about motherhood and marriage, with undiscovered stories about Tolstoy and trains, handbags and honeymoons to muse on the messiness of everyday life.
An extended train journey frames the action – and the author turns not to self-help manuals but to the fictions that have shaped our emotional and romantic landscape. Readers will find themselves propelled into Anna Karenina’s world of steam, commuting down the Northern Line, and checking out a New York El-train with Anthony Trollope’s forgotten muse, Kate Field.
As scenes in her own life collide with the stories of real and imaginary heroines, The Lost Properties of Love asks how we might find new ways of thinking about love and intimacy in the twenty-first century. Frank and painfully funny, this contemporary take on Brief Encounter – told to a backing track of classic 80s songs- is a compelling look at the workings of the human heart.
SOMETHING LIKE BREATHING
January 2019
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Other
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Are we nearly there yet?; Karl Ove Knausgaard's infantilizing approach
June 2018
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Other
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
The Art of Curling Up: Charles Dickens and the Feeling of Curl-Papers
January 2018
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Chapter
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Paraphernalia! Victorian Objects
Literary Criticism
Karl Ove Knausgaard
January 2018
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Other
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
No more tears
January 2017
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me⋯
January 2017
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
EVERYDAY STORIES The literary agenda
January 2017
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
HIGHBALLS FOR BREAKFAST The very best of P. G. Wodehouse on the joys of a good stiff drink
January 2017
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
The trouble with feeling now: Robert Browning, Thomas Woolner and the touching case of Constance and Arthur
December 2016
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Journal article
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19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
Using a marble statue by the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner as its focus, this article discusses historical and present-day concerns about the act of feeling for aesthetic objects. The statue, entitled Constance and Arthur, a portrait of two deaf children, was first shown at the chaotic and commercially driven 1862 International Exhibition. Woolner asked Robert Browning to write a poem to act as a catalogue entry for the statue. The completed eight-line stanza would serve the purpose of encouraging exhibition visitors to focus on the statue, and promote Woolner’s reputation as a sculptor of note. Examining the history of the poem’s production, I argue that Browning’s words work both as a tool to focus attention, and a critique of the ways in which commercial pressures prevent attentive feeling. Drawing on the work of Tobin Siebers, David Getsy, and others, I suggest that such commercial pressures persist today, not simply in exhibitions and museums, but in the academy, particularly through the dominant mode of literary historicism. Paired together, the statue and poem become a way of probing the limits of a historicist approach to emotion, and of suggesting the possibility of alternatives.
Woolner, new formalism, Browning, disability, feeling, historicism, sculpture, international exhibition
Drawing 'perhaps'
March 2016
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
The episodic Trollope and An Editor's Tales
March 2016
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Journal article
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Victorian Studies
This article considers how the figure of the fictional editor, and the idea of editing, illuminates ideas of selfhood, attention, and continuity in Trollope's work. Focusing on An Editor's Tales (1869–70), and The Way We Live Now (1875), I argue that the idea of the editor, and the act of editing, provided Trollope with a productive metaphor for thinking about the idea of the self in time. Trollope is drawn to a model of selfhood that bears comparison with Galen Strawson's concept of a non-narrative or “episodic” self. Engaging with readings of Trollope as “situationist” or “akrasic,” my essay offers an alternative. I highlight the most extreme, “episodic” aspects of his writing, and consider how their formal manifestations affect our readerly response.
Review of Simon Grennan’s Dispossession: A Novel of Few Words, After Trollope’s John Caldigate
March 2016
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
Stressed, Unstressed: Classic Poems to Ease the Mind
January 2016
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Book
But the basis of poetry is the alternating rhythm of stressed and unstressed
syllables that replicates the beating of the human heart. Tiger tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night Stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed: we hope
you ...
Poetry
DISPOSSESSION A novel of few words after 'John Caldigate'
January 2016
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: Connell Short Study Guide
January 2016
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Book
Stressed Unstressed: Classic Poems to Ease the Mind
January 2016
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Scholarly edition
The Poetry of Medicine.
January 2016
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Journal article
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London journal of primary care
Outlining an educational initiative for those who work in the National Health Service (NHS), this article argues that literary reflection has been too easily seen as a simple tool which may improve the practitioner's empathic skills and benefit patient-centred care. Using anecdotal feedback, the author reports ways in which a series of literary workshops held for professionals in the NHS have added to practitioners' general sense of well-being. Feedback shows that participants perceived literature in the workshop setting as being more than an enabler of 'empathy'. They reported that reflecting on literature in a group setting is an opportunity to think about their own autonomy, pleasure and creativity. The article concludes with a reflection about priorities in regulatory culture, its relationship to burnout, and ideas for future work.
A collection of scholarly essays on Geoffrey Hill, including pioneering work by Rowan Williams and Christopher Ricks, which provides insights into the cultural, literary, political, and theological complexities of a figure thought by many ...
Literary Criticism
On Being “a man of the world”; Geoffrey Hill and Physicality
June 2012
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Chapter
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Geoffrey Hill
A collection of scholarly essays on Geoffrey Hill, including pioneering work by Rowan Williams and Christopher Ricks, which provides insights into the cultural, literary, political, and theological complexities of a figure thought by many ...
Literary Criticism
P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters
January 2012
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Scholarly edition
This is the definitive edition of P.G. Wodehouse's letters, edited with a commentary by Oxford academic Sophie Ratcliffe.
Biography & Autobiography
THE PASSIONATE MUSE Exploring emotion in stories
January 2012
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
On Sympathy
February 2009
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Book
Taking Shakespeare as its starting point, this book examines why and how we read poetry, how we relate to fictional characters, and whether reading is good for you.
Lost graces
December 2008
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
Safety first
December 2008
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
Whaddya mean?
December 2007
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
Dead of winter
December 2006
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
Review: The Dark Landscape of Modern Fiction
April 2005
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Journal article
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The Review of English Studies
47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4703 Language Studies, 4705 Literary Studies
A bun in the oven
December 2004
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
Girl, willing to travel
December 2004
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
Life in sonnet form
December 2004
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
White trash, dark deeds
December 2004
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
Review: Samuel Beckett and the Primacy of Love
April 2004
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Journal article
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The Review of English Studies
47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4703 Language Studies, 4705 Literary Studies
The 'Haven Home for Delinquent Girls'
January 2004
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
The 'Tattooed Girl'
January 2004
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
'Lucky Girls'
January 2004
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
'Transmission'
January 2004
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Arboreal encounters
December 2003
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
The 'Whole Story' and other stories
January 2003
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
'Learning to talk'
January 2003
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Prompts and prodigies
December 2002
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
Stammering, silence
December 2002
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Journal article
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TLS - The Times Literary Supplement
Savage loving: Beckett, browning and the tempest
January 2002
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Journal article
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Samuel Beckett Today - Aujourd hui
This paper considers allusion, parody and ethics in Beckett's work. Bearing in mind Genette's thoughts on the tenderness of parody, it considers Beckett's allusions to The Tempest and explores the difficulty in determining his sympathies towards other writers, readers, and fictional creatures. This difficulty is partly due to his tonal indeterminacy and reluctance to own allusive sources. I argue that this indeterminacy about sources and origins is in itself parodic - recalling Prospero's difficult acknowledgment of Caliban. The article proceeds to uncover allusions to Browning's "Caliban upon Setebos" in How It Is, suggesting that Beckett's mockery of sympathetic identification works through parodic (and therefore tender) acts of textual allusion.
The 'Seven Sisters'
January 2002
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
The 'Unfortunates'
January 2002
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
'Murderers I Have Known'
January 2002
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
'Sacrament of lies'
January 2002
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Journal article
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TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
The Condition of England Novel
Internet publication
Writers such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë illuminated contemporary social problems through detailed descriptions of poverty and inequality. Dr Sophie Ratcliffe considers how the Condition of England novel portrayed 19th-century society, and the extent of its calls for reform.
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