It’s How You Say It: Top Essay Writing Tips

Writing an essay on a given topic – whether for school, university, or for any other reason – can often feel overwhelming. There are just too many things to keep in mind; too many things to pay attention to. These tips should give you a head-start in kicking off your next essay project.

So, you’ve figured out how to read poetry. You’ve understood the ins and outs of metre. You might even have considered a range of material to write about. But the idea of turning everything into a fluent essay immediately stops you in your tracks. What to do?

It’s true that many students see essay-writing as a stain on their experience at university. As that one annoying thing they have to do besides reading and enjoying themselves. To them, it often just seems like the necessary evil on the pathway towards a degree.

And it’s completely understandable. After all, anything which is assessed and can mean either pass or failure is sure to paralyse anyone’s enthusiasm. But it doesn’t have to be that way. To assist you in your essay-writing endeavours, I’ve compiled a list with several tips you can do to ensure you not only succeed in writing good essays but perhaps even enjoy writing them.

Why not a step-by-step guide?

The problem with step-by-step guides is twofold. First, every writer works differently, and second, every topic is different. Exact guidelines on how to approach each essay are therefore not only less useful than you might think, but can even be rather counter-productive.

In terms of student individuality, some people like to do complete their research entirely before writing. Others like to write while researching. Others write a complete draft just containing their own ideas before they then fit the research around it. A step-by-step guide would assume that you work exactly the way I do.

In terms of topic individuality, there are also huge differences. When writing on poetry, for instance, you might wish to focus largely on a close reading of the text. When discussing primarily (literary) theory, the amount of secondary literature might be greater. Again, a concise guide on how to write an essay might not take differences into account.

Use guidebooks – but very sparingly

If you’re a particularly industrious student, you may consider buying some guidebooks to help you in your essay-writing endeavours. After all, why not? There are many good ones out there, such as How to Get a First, First Class Essays or the Study Skills Handbook.

But after having read some of them myself, I would strongly urge you to limit yourself to one or two at the most. They often contain some really good general advice, but other than that, a lot of their general material is just common sense – such as grammar rules, common mistakes, and yes, often step-by-step guides.

Ideally, you should pick up a lot from these books during the first year at university, and just buy one for reference. It’s probably wiser investing your time in trial-and-error, rather than reading more or less the same material over and over again.

Select the right topic

If you’re at school, you may think this is a bit of a downer. One of the big differences between A-levels and university is the privilege of being able to choose your own topic. But even if you don’t have that liberty, it’s no reason to despair – most topics do actually get more interesting than they seem to be at first sight, and teachers try to nudge you towards a better understanding. Looking into your essay diligently and researching well may put you leaps ahead of everyone else, allowing you to understand really difficult stuff and enjoy the work a lot more.

If you do have the privilege, you may find that, without a doubt, selecting the correct essay topic or question is the single most important thing to do before you start. It takes a lot more responsibility since you’re in charge of your own degree of understanding the subject matter. No matter what you think your lecturer would like to read most, there’s actually only one way to go about it: choose something you enjoy.

It seems to be a fundamental psychological issue. Work unrelated to our own interests generally doesn’t motivate us, so only by writing about something you actually enjoy will you be able to motivate yourself, in the long run, to do well. After all, you’ll be spending a great deal of time researching your topic. If it puts you to sleep, how can you expect to be concentrated all the time?

The same thing can be said for the selection of your essay question. If it’s bland, obvious or has been done before, you may struggle to work with it efficiently. Instead, choose an interesting one and mould it in the direction you wish to go. At university level, most questions are posed in a way which allows you to alter them ever so slightly and do what you’ll enjoy.

Flow with your guts, not with the stream. Your teacher is more likely to give you a good mark if you’ve done your own topic well than if you half-heartedly produced something which happens to take the currently popular perspective on any given text. Do what feels right to you, not what academia currently considers ‘in’.

Know where to find research material

You’d be surprised how many students struggle to find the right material. But in our day and age, that needn’t be the case. Libraries, as I noted elsewhere, are an excellent go-to place for books. For academic purposes, obviously use academic libraries (such as the Senate House in London).

But with the internet, you may not even have to leave your room to do your research. You should probably be able to find most things online if you know where to look. Academic indexes are the best resource you have since they often provide material from journals for free (provided you have academic access from your university).

Google Scholar is an obvious one. Personally, I’m also a great fan of JSTOR and muse. DOAJ is probably the most advanced open access index out there with a focus on research journals, and OAPEN has an excellent open access book collection. It may take you some time to work out the best way to find the most useful texts, but once you’ve mastered your index of choice, you will find an almost limitless supply of essay inspiration.

There are, of course, many more, and some subject-specific ones (PMC for medicine or PsycINFO for psychology, for instance). It’s always good to be aware of any indexes out there and to figure out how to use them. When in doubt, ask your lecturer which services they tend to use.

Work efficiently and reward yourself

You probably know the type. Or are of the type yourself? Those who are so undisciplined that they force themselves to go to the library each day – and end up spending their time there watching YouTube videos or browsing social media.

The truth is, many students work inefficiently and just go to the library to calm their conscience and to claim they’re working all the time. In reality, it shouldn’t matter too much where you work, as long as you are actually working. Of course, this is difficult to do.

Try to set up your own work-reward system. Promise yourself a reward if you work concentrated for a certain amount of time. Don’t reward yourself if you don’t meet your goal. And take regular breaks in-between to maintain concentration – say, one hour of concentrated reading and then 10 minutes of social media as a reward.

Don’t start too late

There’s no excuse for this one. You know the reading list in advance and the questions are usually handed out just after reading week. The number of students who still don’t start work on their essays until much later – around Christmas or Easter – is insane.

By (efficiently) working on essays you’re already studying better than you would when just looking over your notes repeatedly, so why not use your ‘regular’ revision time for essay work? That way you won’t end up with too little time and have more time to enjoy yourself during the holidays.

Also, that way you’re motivating yourself because you begin to accumulate tangible results during the ongoing academic year. Not to mention that your nerves will thank you as well since you avoid the stress of last-minute essay-writing entirely.

Look after yourself

If you follow the advice of the previous two points, you’ll end up with much more time for personal pleasure than before – so use it to look after yourself. No more overnight work for last-minute essays. You’ll have plenty of time to sleep soundly and eat healthily.

You’ll also have a better conscience when enjoying yourself. Worked hard all week? Then there’s no reason not to go to a club, to a concert, to play a game, to read a book for pleasure. If you work efficiently and look after yourself, you’ll have a much better work-life balance.

Write well

There’s nothing more annoying than yet another essay which is written in essaynese rather than English. It’s a dreadful trend – all of the conventions in essay-writing stifle any form of creativity the medium ought to have. Anything along the lines of stupid phrases (‘In this essay, I would like to…’) to unnecessarily complex words fall under this category.

Why not, instead, try to write well? Obviously not with colloquial language, but good language which you’d still not be afraid to use every day. Write clearly, concisely, and try to make sense in what you write. Never go overboard with words nobody would ever use. A well-researched essay doesn’t need them, and it might even leave the impression that you’re hiding a bad argument behind confusing language.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use technical terms correctly – of course you should. But it does mean that you should avoid stifling your own expressive power by writing in a way which just seems to scream ‘I’m clever’ and more likely than not will annoy your examiner.

Think

In-between all the research, planning and writing, it’s surprising how many students forget to take their time to think actively about their project. But it’s during active thinking that many of the best ideas come about, so actually putting time aside for this is a great way to push forward your argument.

I think the reason so many fail to do so may be related to the feeling of not doing anything. You’re not jotting down notes, you’re not putting pen to paper – so it seems like a waste of time. But in reality, without actually stopping to grasp what your thoughts on your topic are, chances are you’ll just reproduce the ideas from secondary sources.

Consequently, I’d recommend that you really do take it slowly and think actively about what you’ve just read, what you’ve just written, and look closely at the text you’re analysing – ideally word for word if you’re hooked enough to do so.

Structure your essay, but be flexible

If you’re still at school, you sadly will have rather clear-cut structures when it comes to your essays. At university, you definitely shouldn’t maintain the formulaic methods you learned at school, but you do still need to have some structure (and if it’s the result of inventing one of your own). Anything goes, really. The thing is, it has to make sense for your topic.

In the end, an essay has to make one central argument. And to convince your readers of your argument, your essay needs a structure which builds towards it. Everything should add to the argument and demonstrate that you’ve thought it through.

But also don’t be afraid to be flexible. If things aren’t working out the way you thought they would, add a different point, or cut something out. Or shift things around a bit. The trick is to find the ideal structure for the topic at hand that you’re working on.

Closing thoughts

These are just some of the general pieces of advice I’ve picked up after 4 years of studying a subject in the Arts & Humanities. No doubt there is much more to learn, but that’s essentially why you’re at school or university– to perfect the art of writing an essay.

Can you think of any other tips one might add? Anything you disagree with? Then please leave a comment. Otherwise, if you enjoyed this post, why not share it on the social media of your choice? Then click on one of the tender buttons below.

To All Bookworms: Where To Get Your Next Fix

Is there anything better than the thrill of finding the next book that is going to engage your fantasy, teach you something new, or simply make your dull commute a bit more enjoyable?

While reading is hardly the most expensive hobby out there, it certainly can feel rather costly if you buy the newest bestseller every other week and fight your way through it within just a few days. And then there is the insane satisfaction of leafing through beautiful, lovely smelling books at your local book store and leaving with a heavy literary load but a considerably lighter wallet. Within just a few months you might realise that you’ve spent hundreds of pounds on books.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. There are many locations people can go to find great deals on cheap books, or even get books for free. And with the internet, there are plenty of other possibilities to get affordable reading material which should serve you for years to come.

So without much further ado, here’s a list of some of the best ways to get a free or cheap book in 2018.

Libraries

Yes, libraries are the good old-fashioned way to go about getting free books. Not to keep, of course, but you can often extend the duration of your loan and they usually have a beautiful collection which are sorted according to different categories, neatly ordered and only waiting for you to grab them.

Libraries are a wonderful place. It’s all about sharing the written word: returning the books when you no longer need them so that somebody else can read. Most libraries also accept donations, so if you have a heap of books you no longer need, do make the best use of this service.

Of course, you may think of libraries as a rather dusty and dull place. However, many of them have gone with the times. Nowadays many of them are done up really nicely, are clean, well-ordered and well worth spending time at.

While some are struggling, you’re more likely than not to have one in your home town. If you’re lucky enough to live in a city like London, there are more libraries than the eye can see – from small ones such as the Camberwell Library to the British Library (the largest one in the world!), there’s something for everyone.

The larger libraries often also host other types of events. The British Library features frequent exhibitions and various talks on book-related topics. Smaller libraries, too, offer things such as readings and related smaller events. So there’s really no reason not to make use of this resource – it may be old-fashioned, but it’s still highly usable.

2nd-hand bookshops

If you really feel you must own a book, but want to avoid the strain on your wallet, then 2nd-hand bookshops are your option. Most towns in the UK have one, and again, if you live in London there are literally hundreds to choose from – and many of them are absolutely delightful. Charing Cross Road alone features so many that you could spend hours browsing through old copies of your favourite books.

Like libraries, many 2nd-hand bookshops also accept donations, so if you’d like your old friends to find a more private and immediate home than a library, then this is another good option to go for. There are really worse things to do than to support an important, but small trade.

There’s something touching and sweet about 2nd-hand books. They have their own peculiar smell and you know the book you’ve bought for just £2 or £3 received much love before. It’s really a great way to save money and will serve you well for many years to come.

Lastly, the atmosphere in 2nd-hand bookshops feels a lot more homely than in traditional book stores. You may meet interesting people who share your love of the written word. The shopkeepers are usually truly passionate about what they do, and chances are you’ll discover a volume that has been out of print for many years, making a trip to one a unique experience.

Gutenberg

If you don’t mind using e-books and read primarily classics (for whatever reason), then gutenberg.org is the go-to place for you! Featuring tens of thousands of free e-books, this website serves to spread the accessibility of reading material which no longer has a copyright.

Run by a host of volunteers who do all the digitalisation, proofreading and conversion to other formats, Gutenberg is an amazing project which lives on donations. There are no charges and the books are available in a variety of formats: kindle, mobi, epub, html and more.

Chances are you’ll discover a huge range of reading material you’d never have considered before, and as an ongoing project, you can even easily get involved by digitalising more books, offering translations or donating a little to help them with their online presence.

E-book stores

If you’re not too fond of classics but still don’t mind reading e-books, most large book chains feature online stores to help you in that regard. E-books are usually cheaper than print versions (since there are no printing costs), so you’ll be able to find a good deal on most of the recent bestsellers.

Amazon Kindle Store is probably the largest with the lowest prices on e-books and thus worthy a recommendation. Just note that they only sell books in their own in-house format, rather than the industry standard epub. Also note that rumours speak of Amazon’s shady business practices, so if you’d rather not support that, go for another option.

Other large e-book stores are Kobo Books, Google Play, eBooks.com and Waterstone’s – Waterstone’s own personal brand. Many of them also feature free or very low priced books for the classics, which is another good reason to use them.

Of course, an e-book robs you of the wonderful experience of smelling and feeling the printed page and you won’t be able to add another treasure to your bookshelf, but they are a brilliant way of having a number of books with you wherever you go – and can in fact be quite addictive.

For poetry lovers: Poetry Foundation

Of course, all above sources are perfectly usable for poetry lovers. But if you’re into poetry, the Poetry Foundation is an additional resource to access free material. The advantage? Sometimes you just want to read one poem rather than browse through a whole volume.

The Poetry Foundation features a huge amount of free pieces, sorted by theme, poet or school of poetry, making it very intuitive to navigate through. And the poems are all featured on their own website, so just navigate to the poet you’d like to read, select one – and there you go!

Since poetry doesn’t particularly adhere to the industry, it’s also possible to find a range of poetry on there which is still copyrighted – even a select few contemporary poets. With frequent updates and the occasional essay, the Poetry Foundation is a definite website to bookmark.

Closing thoughts

If you use just one or several of these resources, you should probably never fall short of having something to read again. In 2018, reading material is more accessible than it has ever been before – so why not make the best use of it?

Can you think of any other sources I might have featured in this list? Anything to add? And what are your thoughts on classical vs e-books? Then please leave a comment below. Otherwise, why not share this post on the social media of your choice? If you desire to do so, please click on one of the tender buttons below.

Dark Romanticism: A Brief Introduction

We’ve all heard a great deal about Romanticism. Whether we’re talking about poetry, music or art, most people have a rather concrete picture in their mind whenever anyone mentions the word. But what about its gloomier cousin, Dark Romanticism?

For the last article of October – and the final Halloween-themed one – I want to introduce you to a movement in the arts which not that many people have heard about, although most will probably be familiar with some of the works or artists I’ll mention.

As the word implies, Dark Romanticism is closely related to Romanticism. And like Romanticism, it has had a stark influence on many contemporary artworks, including novels, film, music and more. But enough of the introduction – let’s dive right into the world of the Dark Romantics!

What is Dark Romanticism?

Much like its lighter-hearted cousin, Dark Romanticism grew out of a resistance to the Age of Enlightenment, to the Industrial Revolution and general rationalisation, placing special emphasis on raw emotion, pure aesthetic experiences and other forms of intense feeling. But taking a gloomier turn from there, Dark Romanticism focuses on all the negatives of this approach. This includes irrationality as the end-result of a resistance to absolute rationality, demonic and grotesque aspects of human nature, and some of the darkest possible themes – suicide, death, madness, terror.

Consequently, many of the motifs we can find in Dark Romanticism are part of the realm of the uncanny. Love becomes lust, imaginative experience becomes escapism, nature features mist and lightning, buildings often feature haunts and ruination.

Dark Romanticism also involves other elements, such as demons and ghosts, pseudo-sciences, alchemy and magic, occultism, drugs (especially opium or alcohol), nightmares, melancholy and depression, resignation, despair, possessiveness, decay and personified evil.

Isn’t it just Gothic fiction?

If you’ve been following the article this far you’ve probably been wondering whether there’s any difference between Gothic fiction and Dark Romanticism – and there is! Gothic fiction is more of a wide-reaching genre which can refer to particular works of art over a wide period.

As such, Dark Romanticism can be classified as a part of Gothic fiction. The latter can refer to works from any period of time, whereas the former is tied to its relation with ‘regular’ Romanticism. Consequently, we would classify Edgar Allan Poe as a late Dark Romanticist, whereas Bram Stoker is too Victorian to be considered one. Meanwhile, both are indisputably members of Gothic fiction.

But there are also differences in the types of media used. Gothic fiction is usually literary or related to film, whereas Dark Romanticism lies within the realm of literature and visual art (and some Romantic music, although that is probably debatable).

Furthermore, as with every artistic movement, the differences are often fleeting, and so we might classify even something contemporary as heavily inspired by Dark Romanticism – making it questionable as to how useful the distinctions are beyond using them to define a particular type of art in a particular moment in history.

Also, within Romanticism itself it’s difficult to distinguish succinctly between dark and ‘regular’ Romanticism; few artists were as consistently uncanny and dark as Poe – perhaps E.T.A. Hoffman or the Marquis de Sade; others less frequently so, such as Lord Byron or John Keats.

Dark Romantic Music

To complicate matters even further, let’s have a brief look at Dark Romantic music. The reason why this complicates things is that, of course, Romanticism in music incorporates the entire 19th century, rather than just the late 18th/early 19th century as in literature and the visual arts.

I’d feel slightly inclined to classify primarily parts of early Romantic music as Dark Romanticism because it’s in the early 19th century that Romantic music was closest to the ‘roots’ of Romanticism (and Dark Romanticism is part of the ‘roots’ of Romanticism). Anything along the lines of darker pieces by Schubert or Schumann, or even late Beethoven, falls under this category.

To give you a couple of examples, here’s Franz Liszt’s Totentanz (Dance of Death). The theme is obviously perfectly suitable for Dark Romanticism and the constant onslaught of uncanny, darker harmonies and the threatening underscore of the Dies Ira melody make this an excellent piece for those in a gloomy mood.

A second example is Franz Schubert’s Der Tod und das Maedchen (Death and the Girl), a haunting Kunstlied (song) about the coming of… well, death. It contains a brilliant contrast between the quick-paced voice of the dying girl and the dark, solemn tone of Death. Always haunting and eerie, it gives you a brilliant sense of inevitable tragedy.

Dark Romantic Visual Arts

Since Romanticism in the visual arts is much more narrowly defined than in music, it’s a lot easier to make a case whether a piece can be seen as Dark Romanticist or not. To point out the obvious, a lot of Dark Romanticist art is so-called because it uses darker scenes and colours – and because it enables the artist to depict the ‘dark’ subject matter directly, such as death, darkness and general depictions of morbidity.

Indeed, it probably boils down to the depicted scenes. If a work deals with the sublime, exaltations of any kind and general feelings of joy, it’s probably ‘regular’ Romantic; if it deals with death, madness, melancholy or related themes, it’s Dark Romanticism. In the visual arts, we can literally see death: people dying, yelling for help, shipwrecks, storms, darkness engulfing all.

In other words, a William Turner depicting a ship during a storm is Dark Romantic. A Henry Fuseli is more often than not Dark Romantic through his depiction of witches, demons, and scenes of madness. Again to give you a couple of examples, here’s one from the Belgian painter and sculptor Antoine Joseph Wiertz. After the death of his mother, he painted his famous Deux jeunes filles – La Belle Rosine, which captures the confrontation of death and beauty (much like Schubert’s Der Tod und das Maedchen).

A second example is Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare. This haunting picture features a woman lying asleep in an uncomfortable pose with an imp-like figure sitting on her chest. Its dreamlike depiction of uncanny eroticism was a huge success after its first exhibition in 1782 – and it leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Is the picture the manifestation of her nightmare, or is this a vision she has during her sleep?

Dark Romantic Literature

I don’t want to go into too much detail about literature related to Dark Romanticism since I already covered a lot of Romantic horror-like literature earlier this month. Nevertheless, since horror and Dark Romanticism aren’t exactly the same, it might be nice to provide a brief list of literary works which might be considered Dark Romanticist:

  • Marquis de Sade: Justine. This 1791 novel depicting a young woman recounting her story on her way to punishment and death after attempting to live a moral life. It’s an exploration of how trying to be good can end with dire consequences

  • Matthew Lewis: The Monk. This is a 1796 novel about a monk falling into sin. It was criticised by many for its heresy and obscenity

  • Lord Byron: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Featuring the first Byronic hero, this poem published between 1812 and 1818 explores the travels and reflections of its hedonistic protagonist

  • Mary Shelley: Frankenstein. See my other article for more information

  • Anything by Edgar Allan Poe. Esp. The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-tale Heart or The Raven, all of which deal with anxiety, ruin, depression, and overall gloom

  • Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal. Okay, I’m cheating with this one. It’s actually a rather late work, having been published in 1857. But French symbolism was rooted in Romanticism, and this scandalous volume deals with eroticism and hedonism – a wonderful combination in the arts

Closing thoughts

Due to the wide-reaching nature of Dark Romanticism, this article is hardly a comprehensive list of all features and examples from the movement. But they may have given you a good overview as to what elements define something as Dark Romantic art and will let you go on your own journey to discover its pleasures.

If you fancy listening to, looking at or reading something which is old, solemn and serious but with a touch of the eerie and uncanny, Dark Romanticism is for you. It’s also an excellent way to discover some of the roots of our contemporary Gothic fiction and horror. Thus, it’s perfect to finish off this Halloween-inspired month.

Did you enjoy this article? Do you want to add something? Or tell me that I missed something important? Then please leave a comment below. Otherwise, why not share it on the social media of your choice? Then click on one of the tender buttons below.

Why there are no good Lovecraft film adaptations

While often considered an outsider in literary circles, H. P. Lovecraft’s writing nevertheless maintains a large popularity. But in the world of movies, directors seem to struggle to get across the right tone. In this post, we’ll go through some of the reasons why this might be.

If you’re into Lovecraft, enjoy the oddly archaic (even for his time) language, overuse of adjectives and descriptive elements, the accessible style and above all the gorgeous sense of uneasiness and fear stemming from incomprehensible horror in his writing, chances are you’re rather frustrated that there are essentially no good Lovecraft adaptations out there.

Yes, of course there are Lovecraft-inspired films which are reasonably well done, but when it comes to direct adaptations of his lore or stories, there’s a bit of a gaping hole (with one exception, which I’ll get to towards the end). But why is this the case? I believe there are several aspects about his work which simply make him difficult to translate to film.

The fear of the unknown

Not only does Lovecraft tap into the fear of the unknown, but his writing is usually centred around the fear of the incomprehensible unknown. We’re not just talking a fear of something we don’t know and could learn to know, but the fear of something which lies outside of the grips of our imagination. Films, being a scenic and sonic medium, necessarily portray things which are based in reality – even when they’re set in an otherworldly universe (Sci-Fi, Fantasy). But how do you capture the nature of something so different and horrific that it makes onlookers go mad? No matter what you display on the screen, it will be a disappointment, and if you downplay it too much the film might not grip the audience properly.

The fear of human insignificance

In many ways, Lovecraft was a product of his age. Living in the first half of the 20th century, he felt the gnawing sense of insignificance which emerged out of human progression – and which plagued many philosophers and psychologists around that time. Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of nihilism, especially, seems to shine out of Lovecraft’s writings – whether he was aware of it or not. We get the same sense of fear of the meaninglessness of life, and how small humanity is when facing the rest of the universe. But how do you capture nihilism in film? How do you reflect the spirit of an age when it’s so psychological? That’s right: you don’t!

Psychological horror

While there have been many great psychological horror films out there – The Shining springs to mind – they’re few and far between. It’s a difficult genre to get just right, and Lovecraft relies entirely on psychological horror. The fears he explores are primal, basic, hidden beneath all sense of rationality, and portraying this in film requires a great deal of skill and subtlety. Too much relies on the imagination, on tapping into a psychological area we are hardly aware of, to allow for films to do him justice – making Lovecraft a risky area to attempt.

The horror relies on his writing style

I’m not going to debate whether Lovecraft’s writing is any good, although there are large discussions in other circles. Generally, people often criticise his deliberately archaic style and his overuse of adjectives and his simplicity (despite both former aspects!). But I believe that all this adds to the sense of horror in his writing. In the same way that his subject matters are weird and otherworldly, so is his style. It reads like English and it’s easily understandable – but it’s strange, eerie, and matches the mood perfectly. But here’s the problem. If the horror relies on his writing style (whether it’s good or not), how would you translate that into a visual medium without a written narrative? Simple: it’s not possible.

That one good Lovecraft adaptation

If you read through this article so far and thought to yourself, ‘well, that would be excellent material for a silent film in the style of the 20s’, then I’d agree entirely! Thinking of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, the silence, pacing, and weirdness of early silent films would provide an excellent style to portray one of Lovecraft’s stories. And indeed: one particular Lovecraft adaptation has done it exceptionally well.

The Call of Cthulhu from 2005 is an excellent, low-budget and very faithful rendition of Lovecraft’s story of the same name. They even kept the camera quality similarly old-fashioned and less than optimal. This allows us to experience a wonderful bit of Lovecraftian horror since it captures the right tone succinctly. I’d recommend it highly.

Sadly, there’s not really a large enough market for this kind of thing. So we’ll probably never get anything quite like it again. But at least – and this is a good thing – many directors use Lovecraft-inspired techniques in their horror films, even if they’re never comprehensive and only hint at the source material. However, it does mean that we’ll never really go completely without Lovecraftian elements.

Essentially, it all boils down to this. Transcribing the indescribable and incomprehensible to film is inherently difficult. The range of aspects that a Lovecraftian story consists of makes him generally unsuited to movies. This is the case even if individual elements can be adapted. Unless, of course, there was a decent market for old-fashioned silent films.

Do you have any questions or anything to add? Then please leave a comment in the comment section below. Otherwise, if you enjoyed this article, why not share it on the social media of your choice? Then click on one of the tender buttons below.

Beauty in Death: St Pancras Old Church

Tucked neatly between St Pancras International and St Pancras Hospital, the small and wonderful St Pancras Old Church and its gorgeous churchyard ooze a feeling of enigmatic beauty. But what is it that makes this location so strangely alluring?

The old church is not something you’d expect to find in central London. Obvious for the area of one of the largest train stations in one of Europe’s biggest cities, everything around King’s Cross and St Pancras International is gigantic, overwhelming, industrial.

And if you think of a church in the area, chances are you’d be more inclined to conjure images of St Pancras Church in your mind – the Greek Revival church with its ionic columns and eerie caryatides on several sides of the building. The thing is, this church is comparatively new.

A bit of history…

The beautiful St Pancras Old Church, on the other hand, is ancient – and rather small. As the newly built up areas around St Pancras, especially near Euston Road, were beginning to boom, the parish quickly decided that it was time for a larger church, so in 1816 they began building the new St Pancras Church.

The old church, on the other hand, is believed to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in England. In earlier times the parish of St Pancras stretched almost the whole way from Oxford Street to Highgate. The local population abandoned the site in the 14th century and the church was left to its demise, with services only held about once a month at the end of the 18th century. When St Pancras Church was completed in 1822 its predecessor lost its status as a parish church.

Today, St Pancras Old Church is the parish church of Somers Town and a popular go-to place for people seeking a bit of peace and quiet – rather fascinating considering its central location. But it’s also a spectacular place to visit for arts-enthusiasts.

A lovely churchyard…

Shaded gently by many lovely mature trees, the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church also has a fascinating history. It was a popular burial place for many Roman Catholics from around London, including French refugees, the last resting place of composers Carl Friedrich Abel and Johann Christian Bach, as well as sculptor John Flaxman. There’s even a memorial tomb for Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, the writers and philosophers who are today probably more widely known as the parents of Mary Shelley.

But the churchyard’s greatest allure is its peaceful nature. Because of its variety of trees and green spaces and sweet looking gravestones, it’s just a nice place to be. It’s ideal to rest and sit down for a while, perhaps while reading the odd book or contemplating the old stones that decorate the entire area.

A literary background

For literary enthusiasts, St Pancras Old Church is an equally important place to visit. Jerry Cruncher in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is a body snatcher who makes his way to the churchyard at night to steal some corpses for dissection at medical schools.

It was also here that the future Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley planned their marriage at the grave of Mary Wollstonecraft. The Shelleys, of course, would go down in literary history as one of the greatest collaborating couples.

The Hardy Tree

The Hardy Tree, one of the Great Trees of London, is probably the most spectacular of sites to visit if you happen to go to the churchyard. The large ash tree’s roots partially reach out from the soil, forming their way through a pile of neatly arranged headstones surrounding it, making both rock and wood an intricate part of each other.

Such an odd sight deserves an explanation. The tree gets its name from Thomas Hardy – obviously nowadays known for his great novels such as Tess or Jude, as well as his poetry – who worked here at a young age in the 1860s. He oversaw the excavation of the graveyard while the Midland Railway built the London terminus. Since many of the gravestones were in the way, they placed them in a linear fashion around the tree. More gruesomely, as the railway tracks were being built, many corpses would have been exposed to the open air, so Hardy had to excavate them before the building began – possibly one explanation for the generally gloomy tone in his novels and poetry.

Closing Thoughts

If you’re around King’s Cross or St Pancras International, be sure to visit St Pancras Old Church. If not for the sake of the church itself, then certainly because of its eerie and unnatural churchyard. It’s beautiful and uncanny, and you’re certain to love it.

There’s just something fascinating about cemeteries – especially those overladen with as much history as St Pancras. Perhaps it’s also a fascination with the morbid and death which draws us to the kind of appreciation of ceremonies related to laying people to rest.

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