Close Readings

The coffee served in London in the 1690s was notoriously unappetising, likened at the time to ‘burnt shoes and charcoal’. Nonetheless it was extremely popular, not least for the energy and locations it provided for two great booms in London life: financial speculation and a genuinely public print culture. For this episode, Rosemary is joined by Markman Ellis, professor of 18th-century studies at Queen Mary University of London, to look at the architecture, literature and culture of ‘politeness’ that emerged after the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the stories spun out of it by Daniel Defoe and John Gay. They discuss the coffee houses where London’s stock exchange and marine insurance market were created, the front rooms where women enjoyed the new ‘visiting system’ and the increasingly hazardous streets where Moll Flanders and others sought their fortune.

Reading by Fiona Sheehan

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:

Steven Shapin on coffee: https://lrb.me/lrep901

Tom Paulin on Defoe: https://lrb.me/lrep902

Michael Ledger-Lomas on the South Sea Company: https://lrb.me/lrep903
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‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’ has baffled readers and critics ever since it was published in Men and Women in 1855. It baffled its author, too. It ‘came upon me as a kind of dream’, Browning recalled. ‘I had to write it then and there, and I finished it the same day.’ The result, inspired by a line spoken by Edgar (as Poor Tom) in Act III of King Lear, is a grim, hallucinatory quest poem that exemplifies Browning’s talent for what G.K. Chesterton called ‘the poetry of mean landscapes’.

In this episode, Seamus and Mark read Browning’s mysterious poem as a rejection of the resources and consolations established by the Romantics. They then turn to an earlier narrative poem, ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ (1843), in which Browning uses a comical, Byronic tone to tell the story of another prophetic figure.

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: https://lrb.me/npep901

Matthew Reynolds: https://lrb.me/npep902

Donald Davie: https://lrb.me/npep903
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Over the past twelve years, the walls and shop shutters of Upper Manhattan have been gradually filled by giant paintings of climate-threatened birds, inspired by the species depicted by the artist John James Audubon, who lived in the area. Emily Raboteau’s ‘Lessons for Survival’ (2024) takes these murals, along with Raboteau’s own photographs of local birds, as a way into exploring the challenges faced by a mother of two Black sons in New York City living through Hurricane Sandy, the first Trump presidency, Covid and mounting climate breakdown.

In this episode, Meehan and Peter talk through the different aspects of Raboteau’s project of survival, from experiences of gentrification and medical racism to the models it offers for dealing with existential threat and ‘justifiable rage’, and Raboteau’s stylistic achievement of bringing together the urban and natural environment.

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

Further reading in the LRB:

Meehan Crist: When the ice melts: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep901⁠

Liam Shaw: Great Auks: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep902⁠

Richard Fortey: Sea Slugs, Wombats, Microbes: ⁠https://lrb.me/nicep903⁠
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If Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day (1956) belongs firmly to postwar American realism, then Pnin (1957) certainly doesn’t. With its self-conscious fictionality and unreliable narrator, Nabokov’s novel is a model of postmodernism. Yet for all its playfulness, the book maintains, in its powers of noticing and subtle emotional intelligence, a strong commitment to the real. To examine the debts to realism in Nabokov’s story of a Russian-born academic in the United States, James Wood is joined by Patricia Lockwood, who wrote about Nabokov for the LRB in 2020. They discuss why, despite the cruelty of the narrator, Pnin offers one of Nabokov’s most affectionate portraits, and whether it’s possible to define the style of a writer often referred to as a ‘master stylist’.

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 on (and by) Nabokov in the LRB:

Patricia Lockwood: https://lrb.me/realismep901

Vladimir Nabokov: ‘The University Poem’ (read by Ralph Fiennes): https://lrb.me/realismep902

Michael Wood: https://lrb.me/realismep903
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The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 brought a flurry of changes to London life. Women were allowed to appear on stage for the first time, the Royal Society was founded and the West End, with its squares, parks and fashionable ‘season’, was born. But the social whirl stopped abruptly in 1665 with the arrival of plague, which was followed in 1666 by the catastrophic Great Fire of London. To talk about these events and the new city that emerged from the ashes, Rosemary is again joined by Vanessa Harding, emerita professor of London history at Birkbeck. They look at the invaluable observations of Samuel Pepys, the continental ambitions of Christopher Wren and the emergence of political parties from the succession crisis of the 1680s.

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

Further reading in the LRB:

Margaret Anne Doody on Aphra Behn: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep801⁠

Deborah Friedell on Samuel Pepys: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep802⁠

Simon Schaffer on Christopher Wren: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep803⁠

James Shapiro on plague writing: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep804⁠
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