"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

In The Closed Room

Frances Hodgson Burnett, born in Manchester and relocated to America during her adolescence following the death of her father, swiftly became the breadwinner for her family by crafting fiction for popular magazines. Hodgson demonstrated a talent for transforming clichés about England into captivating narratives tailored for the American mass-market: though she initially focused on creating dialect stories featuring North Country working women, she started writing stories about children after her marriage to Swan Burnett, an American, and the birth of her two sons. She will unfortunately lose one of them to tuberculosis. Aside from The Secret Garden, her other renowned masterpiece is Little Lord Fauntleroy, the epitome of the Beautiful Child genre.

This short story features a garden too, and children of course, in a charming way that can only be compared to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel “The Scarlet Letter”. Only the garden is open, endless, and it’s hidden in a closed room.

You can download an eBook today on my Patreon.
Summertime

The Road is Made by Walking

Antonio Machado was a major Spanish poet and playwright, associated with the Generation of ’98, a group of writers who reflected on Spain’s identity and crisis at the turn of the 20th century. He was born in Seville in 1875 and died in 1939 in

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August 11, 2026 6:00 am

Kathleen Jamie on Attention and Corridors

Kathleen Jamie is a Scottish poet and essayist, born in 1962, known for her prose and poetry about landscape, place, and everyday life. Findings is her essay collection of personal reflections, first published in 2005, and it moves through nature and cities, archaeology, hospitals, family

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August 10, 2026 6:00 am
comics and illustration

Leo Ortolani, Tapum

A un certo punto ci sarà una battuta, in questo fumetto, e riderete. Sappiate che è l’unica. Com’è giusto che sia. Se devo paragonare quest’opera a qualcosa, il confronto più azzeccato è probabilmente lo spettacolo che Marco Paolini trasse dal Sergente nella neve di Rigoni

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August 9, 2026 9:00 am
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Antonio Machado was a major Spanish poet and playwright, associated with the Generation of ’98, a group of writers who reflected on Spain’s identity and crisis at the turn of the 20th century. He was born in Seville in 1875 and died in 1939 in

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