Today is #WorldBookDay and as we are living through a pandemic, I thought I might suggest a book that deals with disease and is less known: An early example of American gothic, Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs of The Year 1793, by Charles Brockden Brown, is a fascinating story of a man who during the early years of the Republic, moves from a village to Philadelphia in order to seek himself a better lot after going through a life of hardship in his family farm but upon setting foot in town, contracts the Yellow Fever which was ravaging in those days. The book has a brilliant account of the urban life during the Early Republic period, the way commerce was associated with slave trade and how the active players of the market were involved in shenanigans and misconducts towards one another. Another interesting aspect of this book is the particular attention it draws towards the educated urban middle class and the way their progressive attitude, specially when it comes to an issue like women’s rights, changes the course of events.

You might have heard about the obnoxious sculptor who believed women to be flawed creatures, made a sculpture of a woman with whom he fell in love and then the sculpture turned real, wiping out his misogyny for good. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is a retelling of this incident, where a reprehensible language coach has to teach a poor girl from the art of eloquence and refined speaking. The play is a scene of confrontation for man v woman, rich v poor, and educated v uneducated! It’s also about learning a language... so maybe you might want to have a look at it! It has also been turned into a famous movie called “My Fair Lady.”