Description
Book SynopsisJulian Lovelock explores the muses, confidantes and inspirational figures behind some of the best-loved English poems.
Trade ReviewWhere All the Ladders Start moves easily between text and context, teasing out the human interest between the lines. Reflecting too on existing points of critical debate, it will fascinate both the casual reader and the student of literature. In particular, some much-deserved light is cast on remarkable yet often unseen women such as Anne Donne and Mary Wordsworth. Nicola Borman, Head of English, Stowe School. Roll up! Blow the trumpet! Julian Lovelock has done it again. He takes us authoritatively to the heart of the real and imaginary characters who are central to the poems studied. Through his insights, this literary detective enlightens us about some of our greatest writers. The circus metaphor of Yeats allows us a wonderful tour in this beautifully written book. En route we encounter plenty of sex and entertainment via erudite consideration of serious matters. Professor Chris Orr RA A wonderful meditation on Art and Heart as realised in the works of nine English poets and their muses, male and female. Lovelock uses his considerable scholarship to turn the biographical fallacy on its head. The characters we come to know so well in this fascinating book are as much a creation of the poets who loved them as the poems which made them immortal. Emeritus Professor Alan Kennedy, author of A Thoroughly Mischievous Person: The Other Arthur Ransome.
Table of Contents1. Shakespeare's Sonnets 9 The 'Friend(s)', the 'Dark Lady' and Anne 2. 'John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-Done' 35 John Donne and Anne More 3. A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle 56 John Milton and Lady Alice Egerton 4. The Rape of the Lock 77 Alexander Pope and Miss Arabella Fermor 5. A Tangled Web 98 William and Dorothy Wordsworth 6. Love and Death 127 John Keats and Fanny Brawne 7. Sonnets from the Portuguese 151 Elizabeth Barrett Barrett and Robert Browning 8. 'Woman Much Missed' 172 Thomas Hardy and Emma Gifford 9. 'Where All the Ladders Start' 196 W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne and Others
