‘Seize the Day’ was published in 1956, but its grammar of realism was barely changed from that deployed in ‘Madame Bovary’ exactly a hundred years earlier. The precise details, the free indirect style and the use of leitmotif all reveal Bellow as a keen student of Flaubert and the 19th-century realists. Yet his novella about a disastrous day in the life of the sloppy, jobless 44-year-old Tommy Wilhelm also bears the intervening influence of modernism, not least in its opening section in which, for twenty pages, our hero simply stands on the street thinking about his life. In this episode, James Wood discusses the Bellovian prose style with its Melvillian love of words and biblical undertones, and explores the book’s evocation of a postwar Manhattan imbued with masculinist conventionality. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingswaor Read more in the LRB: Saul Bellow talks to Melvyn Bragg: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n08/melvyn-bragg/in-conversation-with-melvyn-bragg-saul-bellow-talks-about-his-new-novel-and-about-the-women-of-eastern-europe⁠ Andrew O’Hagan on Saul Bellow’s letters: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n01/andrew-o-hagan/they-don-t-say-that-about-idi-amin⁠ James Wolcott on Bellow’s later life: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n02/james-wolcott/the-unstoppable-upward⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When James VI of Scotland arrived in London in 1603 to become the first ‘King of Great Britain’, expectations were high. They were soon disappointed, not least for the Catholics who tried to blow him and half of Westminster up in 1605. But the plot failed, and with James’s reign came a new, lavish court life, the emergence of the first newspapers amid the booming print industry around St Paul’s, and, with the guidance of Inigo Jones, the arrival of the renaissance in London’s architecture with the development of Covent Garden and the first of the city’s squares. To continue her story of London, Rosemary is joined again by Vanessa Harding to see why James’s Stuart settlement eventually failed under the personal rule of Charles I, leading to a civil war in which London became the financial and military headquarters for the victorious Parliamentarians and James’s grand new banqueting house at Whitehall was used as the backdrop for his son’s execution. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applesignuplr⁠⁠ Other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/scsignuplr⁠ Read more in the LRB: Perry Anderson on the Civil War: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n21/perry-anderson/maurice-thomson-s-war⁠ Blair Worden on the Civil War: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v13/n16/blair-worden/conrad-russell-s-civil-war⁠ Maggie Kilgour on Milton and London: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n20/maggie-kilgour/pens-and-heads⁠ John Gallagher on Early Modern news: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n03/john-gallagher/quickly-quickly-quickly⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was one of the first people to hear ‘The Ruined Cottage’, read aloud to him on a visit to the Wordsworths in 1797, and he later described it as ‘one of the most beautiful poems in the language’. Like ‘Michael’ (1800), it depicts the disintegration of ordinary lives under social and psychological pressures, reflecting Wordsworth’s interest in rural poverty as much as the natural world. In this episode, Seamus and Mark look at the two poems as part of the literary revolution brought about by the Lyrical Ballads, in which everyday language is used to depict marginal lives without sentiment, guided by Wordsworth’s assertion that ‘men who do not wear fine clothes can feel deeply.’ Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/applesignupnp⁠ Other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/scsignupnp Read more in the LRB: Marilyn Butler on The Lyrical Ballads: https://lrb.me/npep702 Jonathan Wordsworth: Wordsworth in Love: https://lrb.me/npep701 Seamus Perry on 'The Prelude': https://lrb.me/npep703 Colin Burrow on Wordsworth: https://lrb.me/npep704 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Through folktales, memoir and hard science, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass argues for the intertwining of Indigenous knowledge systems and empirical science, to support ‘mutual flourishing’ between humans and the environment. Braiding Sweetgrass was an enormous success for a small press publication, becoming a bestseller and a touchstone for readers searching for alternatives to extractivist realpolitik. In this episode, Meehan and Peter look at the most compelling features of Kimmerer’s technique – reminiscent of Darwin at his best – and where her book risks scientific overreach. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ture⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠ture Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In ‘A Room of One’s Own’, Virginia Woolf writes about how radical it feels to read the sentences: ‘Chloe liked Olivia. They shared a laboratory together…’. Woolf probably didn’t know the work of her contemporary Jean Rhys, but if she had read ‘A Voyage in the Dark’ (1934), she might well have marvelled at, and even envied, its radical realism. Rhys’ story of a young woman who moves from the Caribbean to England and enters a world of financial and sexual exploitation was drawn from experiences unavailable to Woolf. In this episode, James is joined by the biographer Miranda Seymour to discuss Rhys’s virtuosity of technique and detachment, her extraordinary ear for dialogue and the places where her mastery of realist method gave way to modernism. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingswaor Read more in the LRB: Mary-Kay Wilmers on Jean Rhys: https://lrb.me/waorep701 Carole Angier on Rhys's letters: https://lrb.me/waorep702 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Thomas Platter, a Swiss tourist, went to see ‘Julius Caesar’ at the Globe Theatre in 1599, it wasn’t Shakespeare’s language that attracted his attention but the ready availability of refreshments and the high quality of the players’ clothes. The revolution in playmaking that he witnessed on the south bank of the Thames reflected widespread innovations in London’s cultural life in the reign of Elizabeth I. For the first time, we can see the city clearly, in the panoramas and maps inspired by Dutch artists. New ideas about history are emerging in the works of Stow and Holinshed. And the growth of trade through piracy, with a new centre of commerce in Thomas Gresham’s Royal Exchange, marks the beginning of England's imperial expansion. In this episode, Rosemary is joined again by Vanessa Harding to discuss this extraordinary moment in London’s history and some of the reasons behind it, from Elizabeth’s genius for survival to the city’s lack of a university. Reading by Duncan Wilkins Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/applesignuplr⁠ Other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/scsignuplr⁠ Read more in the LRB: Charles Nicholl on Elizabethan true crime: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep601⁠ Michael Dobson on Shakespeare's life: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep603⁠ Colin Burrow on Walter Raleigh: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep02⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her diary entry for 20 November 1797, Dorothy Wordsworth describes a late afternoon walk with her brother William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. ‘ We went eight miles in the dark,’ she wrote, ‘William and Coleridge employing themselves in laying the plan of a ballad.’ This was the origin of the opening poem of the ’Lyrical Ballads’, published the following year – the book often seen as marking the beginning of Romanticism. In this episode, Seamus and Mark discuss the strange hallucinatory power of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and Coleridge’s search for a meter that could capture the force of his imagination. They also consider some of the poem’s many interpretations, from the influence of abolitionist writing to William Empson’s reading of the shooting of the albatross, and consider whether it’s best understood as a terrible encounter at a wedding reception. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/applesignupnp⁠ Other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/scsignupnp Read more in the LRB: Barbara Everett on Coleridge the modernist: https://lrb.me/npep601 Susan Eilenberg on the life of Coleridge: https://lrb.me/npep602 Marilyn Butler on the Lyrical Ballads: https://lrb.me/npep603 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The idea that a river is a living being has important legal consequences. But it also has imaginative consequences, which can, in George Eliot’s words, ‘enlarge the imagined range for self to move in’. In ‘Is a River Alive?’ (2025), Robert Macfarlane travels with the lawyers, Indigenous people, scientists and others who are working to protect rivers in Ecuador, India and Quebec, and challenges himself to see rivers in a way that widens the category of life. In this episode, Meehan and Peter assess Macfarlane's quest and look at the different kinds of writing he deploys along the way, including adventure story, biography and philosophy. They also look back to the origins of the rights of nature movement at the University of Southern California in the 1970s and consider whether the choice between seeing a river as either a resource or a fellow being is a false one. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ture⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠ture Read more in the LRB: Rebecca Solnit on water: https://lrb.me/nicep601 Kathleen Jamie of Robert Macfarlane: https://lrb.me/nicep602 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In August 1923, halfway through writing ‘Mrs Dalloway’, Virginia Woolf recorded a new idea in her diary: she would ‘dig out beautiful caves’ behind her characters, and ‘the caves shall connect, and each comes to daylight at the present moment’. This was Woolf’s ‘tunnelling process’, a transformative approach that led to the novel's celebrated modernist innovations, with its depiction a group of circulating consciousnesses in London over the course of one day. But underlying these innovations are the techniques of 19th-century realism, and in this episode James Wood explores what Woolf owes to Dickens and Flaubert, and the ways she breaks down these certainties to arrive at the ultimate unknowability of character. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingswaor Read more the LRB: Jacqueline Rose on Woolf: https://lrb.me/realismep601 Gillian Beer on Woolf‘s essays: https://lrb.me/realismep602 David Trotter on ‘Mrs Dalloway’: https://lrb.me/realismep603 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the start of the 16th century London was still recognisably medieval, crowded within its walls, dominated by churches and monasteries and deeply tied to Catholic Europe. By the end of Henry VIII’s reign, much of that world had vanished. The Reformation not only changed the religious practices of its inhabitants, it brought a widespread transfer of property that reshaped the character and activity of the city and turned it into a theatre of power, punishment and debate. Rosemary is joined by Vanessa Harding, emerita professor of London history at Birkbeck, University of London, to look at the events that transformed London into a commercially expanding and ideologically contested Protestant capital under the Tudors, from the arrival of Caxton’s printing press in Westminster and the beginnings of an aristocratic West End to Mary I’s brutal attempt to restore Catholic England. Reading by Duncan Wilkins Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applesignuplr Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/scsignuplr Read more in the LRB: Hilary Mantel on England under Mary I: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep504⁠ Lucy Wooding on Henry VIII and the merchants: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep502⁠ Patrick Collinson on Henry VIII's Reformation: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep503 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices