Nancy Goldstein is offering this LitSalon Short as a “taster” for anyone considering joining her for the full Keats’ Odes: Beauty and Truth study, starting on Thursday 4 June. We’ll be discussing Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) first, then considering Wallace Stevens’ adjacent Anecdote of the Jar (1918).

Keats wrote Ode on a Grecian Urn in May of 1819, alongside three of the other six odes for which he is best known: Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy and Ode to Indolence. In the previous month he began his sequence with Ode to Psyche; he ended it in September with To Autumn. In October of that year he turned 24. Seventeen months later he died in Rome, of tuberculosis, at the age of 25.

It is one of the most concentrated periods of lyric achievement in English literary history, and Ode on a Grecian Urn, alongside Ode to a Nightingale, is considered one of the exemplars of the English lyric tradition. 

Small wonder then that Wallace Stevens asks, in his poem written while visiting Elizabethton, Tennessee, what it means to follow in Keats’ wake — and in the wake of the entire British literary tradition. Remember: Stevens is a secular 20th-century poet from the new world power that emerges after the First World War. Previously, the United States had been largely peripheral to European great-power politics, and the country and its people were still considered boorish at best and lacking any real aesthetic tradition.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single session LitSalon Short ahead of the Keats’ Odes: Beauty and Truth study led by Dr Nancy Goldstein, starting in June.
• Wednesday, 29 April, 6.30-8.30 pm (UK), live on Zoom
• ‘LitSalon Shorts’ are single-session studies in which a facilitator shares with the wider Salon community their enthusiasm for an aspect of literature or culture.
• ‘Shorts’ are offered free-of-charge, but numbers are limited so please use the booking form below to reserve a place. 
• Although there is no fee for this study, Nancy asks you to consider making a donation – perhaps the price of your last G&T or flat white? – to José Andres’ World Central Kitchen, which feeds hungry people in war and emergency zones all over the world, from Gaza, Lebanon and Israel, to Iran, Pakistan and areas struggling with natural disasters.

This is the eleventh in a series of single session studies on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Participants are welcome to join as few or many sessions as they please.

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

from Sonnet 73

Shakespeare’s sonnets have inspired, fascinated and disturbed readers for centuries. Full of mystery and imagination, they dazzle us even as they drive us mad: Who is the fair youth to whom so many of these sonnets are addressed? Who is the dark lady, the complex beloved of so many others? Who is the rival poet and what power does he possess? Are these lyric expressions of tortured love – among other themes – the key to understanding the mysterious life of Shakespeare, or are they not autobiographical at all?

Through close analysis and hands-on interpretive work, we will examine Shakespeare’s kaleidoscopic exploration of his speaker’s romantic and tortured feelings and experiences.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single two-hour meeting led by Dr Julie Sutherland on Zoom
• Wednesday 6 May 2026, 5.00 – 7.00 pm (BST)
• Session #11 – Sonnets 71, 73 and 74
• £30.00 for two-hour study

We are offering these self-contained, individual studies of Shakespeare’s sonnets in a workshop style setting. Over time we will cover a broad selection of the 154 sonnets that comprise Shakespeare’s celebrated sequence. Participants are invited to join as few or many sessions as they please.

Before the session, Julie Sutherland will send links to online versions or attach specific copies for discussion. It is highly recommended that you print these off before joining this hands-on session. If you have a printed edition, please also have it ready so we can consider variations between texts. Have a notebook and pencil on hand as well!

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REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

Four Quartets (1943) was written at the end of T.S. Eliot’s poetic career and is considered by some to be his greatest work. The Four Quartets reflects the four seasons and the four elements, with each section having its own attendant landscape. These include the gardens of Burnt Norton, the open fields of East Coker, the small group of rocks that make up The Dry Salvages, and the village of Little Gidding. All of these spaces reflect facets of England in the 1940s while also serving as Eliot’s internal environment, a place where he wrestles with the themes of death, nature and time. The backdrop of the Second World War adds an eerie pertinence to Eliot’s musings as he contemplates his own demise, yet the poem is rarely despairing. ‘What we call the beginning is often the end,’ he states, ‘And to make an end is to make a beginning./ The end is where we start from.’

Contrary to Eliot’s suggestion, we will start at the beginning and work our way to the end (perhaps to look back on the beginning with new eyes). The study will take place over five weeks.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Five meeting study led by Karina Jakubowicz live on Zoom
• Wednesdays, 13 May – 10 June, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK)
• £200 for five two-hour meetings

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REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at litsalon@gmail.com in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

As the first epic Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf holds a unique place in the history of English literature. Set in the warrior societies of dark age Denmark and Sweden, it tells of the hero Beowulf and his three victorious fights with the monstrous creature Grendel, with Grendel’s ferocious, vengeful mother, and with a venomous, fire-breathing, treasure-hoarding dragon.

Every translation of a work of literature is a new interpretation of the original and there have been many versions down the centuries. In this LitSalon Short, Tim Swinglehurst will discuss some of the more recent traditional translations of Beowulf and compare them to the acclaimed 2021 ‘feminist’ version translated by celebrated author and editor Maria Dahvana Headley, which focuses on themes of toxic masculinity, power dynamics and warrior-bonding while, in the words of Professor Carolyne Larrington, allowing “space for the poem’s women to stretch and breathe”. 

Tim will also explain why he has chosen this translation, described by The New Yorker as “a Beowulf for our moment” as the focus for a four-week study of Beowulf he will lead from 2-23 July 2026 (full details can be found here).

JOINING DETAILS:

• A one and a quarter hour LitSalon Short led by Tim Swinglehurst live on Zoom
• LitSalon Shorts are offered free of charge but places must be pre-booked using the form below.

John Keats wrote all six of the odes that anchor his legacy in 1819 — five of them in a two-month period, during April and May, and the sixth that September. In October of the same year he turned 24. Seventeen months later, at the age of 25, Keats died in Rome of tuberculosis, leaving behind one of the most concentrated periods of lyric achievement in English literary history.

In addition to covering all of Keats’ odes, in this six-week study we will also examine their extraordinary influence on the lyric tradition by examining other works that wrestle with Keats’ canonical meditations on art, beauty, truth and transience.

Week 1: Ode to Psyche — We begin the study by discussing the first ode in Keats’ sequence — his first mature work — contrasted with two poems by Wallace Stevens, one of Keats’ best known modern admirers and critics. Like Keats, the earlier Stevens poem builds a mental shrine to an internalized goddess of imagination; the later poem is the last one Stevens ever wrote, while he knew he was dying (published posthumously).

• Wallace Stevens: To the One of Fictive Music (1923) & Of Mere Being (1955)

Week 2: Ode to a Nightingale — written in early May 1819, reportedly composed in a single morning under a plum tree in the garden of Wentworth Place (now Keats House, Hampstead).

• Emily Dickinson: I Heard a Fly buzz — when I died (1862)
• Rita Dove: Reverie in Open Air (2003)

Week 3: Ode on a Grecian Urn — written May 1819, closely contemporary with the Nightingale ode. The two are often read as companion pieces exploring related problems of art, permanence, and mortality from different angles.

• Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate (1942)
• Eavan Boland: The Dolls Museum in Dublin (1992)

Week 4: Ode on Melancholy — written May 1819.

• William Butler Yeats: Sailing to Byzantium (1927)
• Sylvia Plath: Tulips (1961)

 Week 5: Ode on Indolence — also May 1819, though it was the last of the Spring odes to be published (posthumously in 1848).

• Wallace Stevens: The Snow Man (1921)
• Anne Carson: The Keats Headaches (2019) a handout will be supplied

Week 6: To Autumn — written on 19 September 1819, in Winchester, after Keats took an evening walk along the water meadows of the River Itchen.

Mary Oliver: The Summer Day (1990)

John Berryman: Dream Song 14 (1964)

JOINING DETAILS:

• Six meeting study, live on Zoom, led by Dr Nancy Goldstein
• Thursdays, 6.30-8.30 pm (UK time), 4 June – 9 July
• £240 for six meetings

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REDUCED COSTS:  We are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We can’t promise to help but please email us if you would like to be considered for a reduced-fee place (your details will be treated as confidential).

The first major poem in English literature, Beowulf was composed between the eighth and eleventh centuries in a language which few English speakers understand today. Set in the warrior societies of dark age Denmark and Sweden, it tells of the hero Beowulf and his three victorious fights with the monstrous creature Grendel, with Grendel’s ferocious, vengeful mother, and with a venomous, fire-breathing, treasure-hoarding dragon. It is also, in the words of celebrated author and editor Maria Dahvana Headley, a recent translator of the poem, “a dazzling, furious, funny, vicious, desperate, hungry, beautiful, mutinous, maudlin, supernatural, rapturous shout”.

We will be reading Beowulf in Headley’s acclaimed, radical, ‘feminist’ version – “brash and belligerent, lunatic and invigorating” as The New Yorker describes it. It’s “a Beowulf for our moment”, focusing on themes of toxic masculinity, power dynamics and warrior-bonding while, in the words of Professor Carolyne Larrington, allowing “space for the poem’s women to stretch and breathe”. 

Headley declares that the lines in her translation are “structured for speaking, and for speaking in contemporary rhythms” and she maintains the alliterative and rhythmic drive of the original. This is a translation which demands to be read aloud and to be heard attentively, and this study will provide an opportunity so to honour both poem and translation.

Every translation is a new interpretation of the original, Headley’s more brashly and explicitly than most. As we read, we will also keep one eye on more traditional translations (and from time to time scrutinise the original Old English) to try to discern other themes and ideas haunting the world of Beowulf.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Four-meeting study led by Tim Swinglehurst live on Zoom
• Thursday 2, 9, 16 & 23 July 2026, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time)
• We will read the translation by Maria Dahvana Headley, published by Scribe UK, ISBN: ‎ 978-1911617822
• £140.00 for four meetings.

Step into the vast cosmos of John Milton’s Paradise Lost in this immersive eight-week study. More than a poem, Milton’s epic is a world unto itself, one with vaulted heavens, smouldering hells and a fragile Eden. It presents a realm where every choice tips the balance of creation. This study invites curious minds to lose themselves in the epic’s grandeur and wrestle with the questions it refuses to let go: what does it mean to rebel? To obey? To be free? To fall?

Over eight two-and-a-half-hour sessions, we will traverse all twelve books of Paradise Lost, tracing Milton’s visions of angels in revolt, serpentine deceits, and humankind on the brink of catastrophe. Each week, close reading of key passages will spark lively conversation about the poem’s grand themes: freedom and fate, temptation and grace, the allure of evil, and the possibility of redemption. Along the way, we shall uncover the thunderous music and daring invention that defines Milton’s verse.

This study is as much about experience as analysis. Reading this great work aloud will enable us to feel the powerful rhythm, sharpen our thinking in the heat of dialogue, and discover together how a 17th-century poet still speaks to us with urgent clarity. Participants will not just read Paradise Lost. They will inhabit it, wrestle with it, and carry its fire forward.

Whether you come for epic storytelling, moral philosophy, or the sheer intoxication of language, this study promises a journey that is as challenging as it is exhilarating. Experience or rediscover Milton’s masterpiece and join us as we explore what it means to “awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.”

JOINING DETAILS:

• Eight-week study, live on Zoom, led by Dr Julie Sutherland
• Eight two-and-a-half-hour meetings, Tuesdays, 5.00-7.30 pm (UK time)
• 14 July – 1 September 2026
• £320 for eight meetings and background notes and resources
• We will use the Penguin Classics edition: Paradise Lost by John Milton, edited by John Leonard (ISBN-10: ‎ 9780140424393)