UNITED STATES AUTHOR · HISTORY AND CRITICISM · ENGLISH
Douglas Bush
Douglas Kear Murray (born 16 July 1979) is a British conservative political commentator, cultural critic, author, and journalist. He is currently an associate editor of the conservative British political and cultural magazine The Spectator, and has been a regular contributor to The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, the Daily Mail, New York Post, National Review, The Free Press, and UnHerd. His books include Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (2006), The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017), The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019), The War on the West (2022), and On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West (2025). Murray was the associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, a conservative think tank, from 2011 to 2018. Murray is a critic of current immigration into Europe and of Islam.
The winter of 1775 was a hard one.
— from Jane Austen
Most acclaimed
Jane Austen
At the heart of Jane Austen's story lies a mystery: how a woman of "genteel poverty," the seventh child of a country clergyman, an unmarried spinster for whom life was often a struggle against the indignities of financial dependency, could have produced works of such magnificent warmth and wisdom. Valerie Grosvenor Myer's flawless research proves Austen's books grew from the preoccupations of her social set - respectability, financial security, and most of all, marriage. "It is a truth universally acknowledged," begins Pride and Prejudice, "that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." In that one line are revealed the principal forces at work in Austen's novels - and in the world from which they were drawn. For many middle-class women of Austen's day, marriage was paradoxically the only method of achieving independence. Marriage could also be a life sentence. Myer shows that by many accounts Austen was pretty and flirtatious (though occasionally also sharp-tongued), and the object of at least two proposals, but obstinate in her refusal to marry for other than love. Her obstinacy condemned her to reliance on her family for financial support. As Myer points out, it also enabled Austen to write her immortal novels. Using letters, family memories, and of course the novels themselves, Myer provides a detailed and revealing look at Jane Austen - her relationship with her beloved sister Cassandra, her devotion to and pride in her brothers and their children (who remembered "Aunt Jane" with warm affection), and her independence of mind and spirit. Austen's fondest dream was to establish herself not as another "silly female novelist," but as a serious and self-supporting writer. She reveled in the reviews of those of the novels published - anonymously - during her brief lifetime. Yet as Myer shows, no one, least of all Austen herself, could have imagined her posthumous popularity.
John Milton
"What was John Milton really like as a human being? What can we learn about his poems from seeing them in the context of the fundamental nature of their author? There is an intimate and complex relation between a close understanding of a poem and a deep understanding of its maker. This book explores that relation with respect to the writings and the nature of Milton. The "inner life" of this book is that mysterious world of motives, drives, and action that takes place within. It is where we establish and come to terms with our values, with our drives, and with our sense of self-esteem. It is where we mediate with the world outside of our selves, with the world of other human beings, and with the world of nature. It is where we face our most important crises and where we seek our ultimate guidance in resolving our crucial problems. These are the topics of this book. It offers a fresh and original way of thinking about Milton and his writings."--Book jacket.