On such a night as this, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe strode out by night in the Eternal City as the moon stood high and serene and the sweet wind gently kissed the trees – perhaps.

Young cock robin, extensive territory, HWP, D/D free, red breast, seeks hen. When a bird sings, it sings itself, and principally what species it is. A robin after all can do very little of any interest or to any purpose with a wren.

After the fall of France in 1940, Joyce became increasingly uncomfortable. In December he went back to his former home of Zurich, but died there suddenly in January of the following year.

Britain’s most valuable poetry prize, funded by the estate of TS Eliot, has gone to David Harsent for his collection Fire Songs.

The American novelist Kent Haruf, whose novels were set in small town Colorado, died late last year. ‘I don’t feel like death is right round the corner. But if it is, it’s a bigger corner than I thought it was.’”

Having no intimates, and no one to whom she could confide her feelings, Frances Burney addressed them confidently to Nobody.

Whatever we have done, or whatever we have failed to do, may pursue us through restless nights for many decades after our conscious minds have forgotten it all.

The great romantic poet found the Adriatic city to be a place where he could indulge both his spiritual and intellectual longings and his more carnal ones.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was considered the most promising African American writer at the turn of the twentieth century. A musical for which he wrote the lyrics was performed in Dublin 110 years ago.

German novelist Siegfried Lenz, who has died aged 88, was a political collaborator of Günter Grass and a champion of reconciliation between Germany and the countries it had devastated in the Second World War.