Katie Ebner-Landy’s The Character Sketch as Philosophy was published in October 2025. She teaches at Utrecht University.
Dare you but write, you are Minerva’s bird,The owl at which these bats and crows must wonder,They’ll criticise upon the smallest word:This wanteth number, case, that tense and gender.
If you think you know what the 17th-century poet Anne Southwell means by referring to Minerva’s owl, you are probably wrong. Southwell is alluding to Ovid’s story of a jealous crow, who...
What do we mean when we call someone a ‘character’? It’s often a way of indicating that a person habitually says or does things that most people wouldn’t say or do. It might be that the character...
Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.