Kate McLoughlin is a Professor in English Literature at the University of Oxford. She studied for a BA in English Language and Literature at Oxford and an MPhil in Renaissance Literature at Cambridge before qualifying as a barrister. She then worked for the Government Legal Service, with stints at the European Commission in Brussels, the Conseil d'Etat in Paris and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, before returning to Oxford for a DPhil in English. Thereafter, she held posts at the University of Glasgow and Birkbeck, University of London. Her other books include Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq (2011) and Veteran Poetics: British Literature in the Age of Mass Warfare, 1790–2015 (2018) and, as editor, The Cambridge Companion to War Writing (2009) and The Modernist Party (2013). She holds a diploma in piano performance from the Royal College of Music and occasionally publishes poetry.

This is a magnificent work, exhilarating in the breadth of its journeys through time, across religious divides, and from intimate lullabies to public protests. McLoughlin has written a British literary history for our times, alert to the unsaid and the suppressed, teeming with variegated riches, demonstrating the power of dauntless reading, deep scholarship, and contemplative curiosity as we listen for the voices of the living past.

• Thanks Image Credits Note to Readers Introduction: Notice 1: Exile, Cradle, God 2: 1. Tongue-Tied Lovers, Coy Mistresses, Unspoken Desire 3: Shakespeare's Silences 4: Sacred Silences Focus (i) 'A Monster for Silence': Margaret Cavendish's 'Of Silence' (1655) and The Lady Contemplation (1662) 5: The Quiet Life 6: Sage Silences Focus (ii) 'I lay down my pen': Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748) 7: Sublime 8: Inexpressible Grief 9: Enough Said 10: Songs of Silent Solitude Focus (iii) 'What They Didn't Say': Henry James's The Golden Bowl (1904) 11: Worlds Beyond Words 12: Barbaric 13: The Sound (and Look and State) of Silence Focus (iv) 'Those Whose Voices We Cannot Hear': Jay Bernard's Surge (2019) 14: Searching for Silence in the Anthropocene Shutting Up Notes Works Cited Index

Kate McLoughlin is a Professor in English Literature at the University of Oxford. She studied for a BA in English Language and Literature at Oxford and an MPhil in Renaissance Literature at Cambridge before qualifying as a barrister. She then worked for the Government Legal Service, with stints at the European Commission in Brussels, the Conseil d'Etat in Paris and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, before returning to Oxford for a DPhil in English. Thereafter, she held posts at the University of Glasgow and Birkbeck, University of London. Her other books include Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq (2011) and Veteran Poetics: British Literature in the Age of Mass Warfare, 1790–2015 (2018) and, as editor, The Cambridge Companion to War Writing (2009) and The Modernist Party (2013). She holds a diploma in piano performance from the Royal College of Music and occasionally publishes poetry.

This is a magnificent work, exhilarating in the breadth of its journeys through time, across religious divides, and from intimate lullabies to public protests. McLoughlin has written a British literary history for our times, alert to the unsaid and the suppressed, teeming with variegated riches, demonstrating the power of dauntless reading, deep scholarship, and contemplative curiosity as we listen for the voices of the living past.

• Thanks Image Credits Note to Readers Introduction: Notice 1: Exile, Cradle, God 2: 1. Tongue-Tied Lovers, Coy Mistresses, Unspoken Desire 3: Shakespeare's Silences 4: Sacred Silences Focus (i) 'A Monster for Silence': Margaret Cavendish's 'Of Silence' (1655) and The Lady Contemplation (1662) 5: The Quiet Life 6: Sage Silences Focus (ii) 'I lay down my pen': Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748) 7: Sublime 8: Inexpressible Grief 9: Enough Said 10: Songs of Silent Solitude Focus (iii) 'What They Didn't Say': Henry James's The Golden Bowl (1904) 11: Worlds Beyond Words 12: Barbaric 13: The Sound (and Look and State) of Silence Focus (iv) 'Those Whose Voices We Cannot Hear': Jay Bernard's Surge (2019) 14: Searching for Silence in the Anthropocene Shutting Up Notes Works Cited Index

Kate McLoughlin is a Professor in English Literature at the University of Oxford. She studied for a BA in English Language and Literature at Oxford and an MPhil in Renaissance Literature at Cambridge before qualifying as a barrister. She then worked for the Government Legal Service, with stints at the European Commission in Brussels, the Conseil d'Etat in Paris and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, before returning to Oxford for a DPhil in English. Thereafter, she held posts at the University of Glasgow and Birkbeck, University of London. Her other books include Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq (2011) and Veteran Poetics: British Literature in the Age of Mass Warfare, 1790–2015 (2018) and, as editor, The Cambridge Companion to War Writing (2009) and The Modernist Party (2013). She holds a diploma in piano performance from the Royal College of Music and occasionally publishes poetry.

This is a magnificent work, exhilarating in the breadth of its journeys through time, across religious divides, and from intimate lullabies to public protests. McLoughlin has written a British literary history for our times, alert to the unsaid and the suppressed, teeming with variegated riches, demonstrating the power of dauntless reading, deep scholarship, and contemplative curiosity as we listen for the voices of the living past.

• Thanks Image Credits Note to Readers Introduction: Notice 1: Exile, Cradle, God 2: 1. Tongue-Tied Lovers, Coy Mistresses, Unspoken Desire 3: Shakespeare's Silences 4: Sacred Silences Focus (i) 'A Monster for Silence': Margaret Cavendish's 'Of Silence' (1655) and The Lady Contemplation (1662) 5: The Quiet Life 6: Sage Silences Focus (ii) 'I lay down my pen': Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748) 7: Sublime 8: Inexpressible Grief 9: Enough Said 10: Songs of Silent Solitude Focus (iii) 'What They Didn't Say': Henry James's The Golden Bowl (1904) 11: Worlds Beyond Words 12: Barbaric 13: The Sound (and Look and State) of Silence Focus (iv) 'Those Whose Voices We Cannot Hear': Jay Bernard's Surge (2019) 14: Searching for Silence in the Anthropocene Shutting Up Notes Works Cited Index