Irish author James Joyce isn't known for writing works for children. But in September 1936, Joyce wrote a letter to his grandson, Stephen James Joyce, containing a special story. That story has now been published by Ithy's Press for the first time in a...

Hanif Kureishi argued it was important for a writer who his/her reader was. People who wrote should have a sense of the reader and the reader’s needs. He emphasised young writers in particular should keep the reader in mind. Reacting to the moderator’s...

Anyway, by the time I was eight, I’d discovered Enid Blyton and stopped thinking about anything except how to get my hands on a new book. At 10, I moved on to Charles Dickens. At 14, Thomas Hardy and Tolstoy. At 15, Maupassant. At 17, I was an...

It did indeed refer to a Reuben Dodd as a central figure in the story that was going around Dublin at the time. The suggestion as relayed by one Martin Cunningham was that Reuben was being deported to the Isle of Man by his father after having trouble...

Jack Kahane, the English founder of Obelisk Press in Paris, was a bold and discerning reader (and the subject of a fascinating study by Neil Pearson). Besides “Tropic of Cancer,” Obelisk’s publications included works by James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence,...

I sent you a little cat filled with sweets a few days ago but perhaps you do not know the story about the cat of Beaugency. The letter included his story ‘The Cat and the Devil’, a short fairytale with echoes of ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’ and some...