SPIRES AND SHADOWS: DEPICTIONS OF OXFORD IN LUCY ATKINS’S MAGPIE LANE

Authors

  • Antony Hoyte-West

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2024.16.23

Keywords:

Lucy Atkins, Magpie Lane, Oxford, place, psychological novel, setting

Abstract

Oxford is one of the world’s most iconic cities, and over the centuries it has been a source of inspiration for many authors. A recent addition to this body of literature is Lucy Atkins’s 2020 psychological novel Magpie Lane. Set in a fictional Oxford college, the narrator, Dee, has been engaged as a nanny for the unwanted child of the college’s newly-appointed Master who has just arrived with his new wife. Amid a turbulent background of family trauma, mysterious personages, and seemingly supernatural occurrences, this contribution illustrates how the book’s Oxonian location, characteristics, and traditions enrich the complexities of this gripping work, exploring how these features and the unique atmosphere of its setting are crucial to the events and development of the novel.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Downloads

Published

2024-12-30

How to Cite

Hoyte-West, A. (2024). SPIRES AND SHADOWS: DEPICTIONS OF OXFORD IN LUCY ATKINS’S MAGPIE LANE. Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies, 16(1), 443–458. https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2024.16.23

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 1 (2024): BELLS - volume 16

Section

LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors are confirming that they are the authors of the submitting article, which will be published (print and online) in  Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies by the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade (Faculty of Philology, Studentski trg 3, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia). Author’s name will be evident in the printed article in the journal. All decisions regarding layout and distribution of the work are in hands of the publisher.
  2. Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit their self to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
  3. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  4. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.