Aestheticism and Decadence reading Wk 7
Dear All,
I look forward to meeting you this week and beginning our ‘Poetry and Painting’ segment of the Aestheticism course.
The Tennyson texts are easy to get hold of; there is an online copy of Arnold’s 1853 Preface at http://www.telelib.com/words/authors/A/ArnoldMatthew/verse/Poems/preface.html
Best wishes and see you on Thursday,
Vicky
Tonight! (Monday 9th Nov): George Eliot and the Classics
Tonight is the annual Dabis lecture at 6pm in the Windsor Auditorium Main Lecture Theatre. Dr Margaret Reynolds (QMW) will speak on ‘George Eliot and the Classics.’ Reynolds is always interesting, and good value, and admittance is free: why not go along? [AR]
Hard Times 2: Preston Lock Out
A pendant to my earlier Hard Times post, I’ve just found (online) this lovely cache of three hand-drawn and coloured contemporary cartoons of the Preston Lock Out. They’re owned by the Lancashire Evening Post, and this is what their website says about them:
One of five [er, actually three] cartoons produced during a strike by cotton workers in Preston, Lancashire in 1853 and 1854. The strike resulted in a lock-out by the employers and Irish workers were brought in to break the strike by the larger mill owners. These workers, who appear to be mostly women and children, are caricatured as lazy and ignorant with Irish accents. After the strike was settled, they were sent back to Ireland.
These people, ’scabs’ in modern parlance, were called ‘knobsticks’ in the idiom of the day. You may not be able to make out the writing below, but if you click on this link [pdf] you can have a detailed look at big enlargements of all the cartoons.
This, the legend at the foot of the image tells us, is ‘THE WARPING AND WINDING ROOM HANOVER ST MILL’ The chap on the left in the top-hat is called ‘THE MASTER’ and he says: ‘I am quizzing you, my beauties’. The fellow in green is ‘THE OVERLOOKER’, and is saying (presumably to the little boy in red who’s shinned up the loom): ‘I say you young devil come down you are sure to be kilt’. And the red-haired woman is saying: ‘Sure a now the devils skure to yes Mike come down wid yes’.
Here’s another, sadly in black and white (you can see the full colour version at the pdf link mentioned above):
You can see he’s pulling stick-figure workers out of a container labelled ‘a box full of new knobsticks’. Fascinating stuff. Incidentally, I’m not aware of any critical work on this (this fairly well-known article, ‘Dickens, Gaskell and the Preston Strike’, doesn’t mention it, for instance): it might make a nice topic, or at least a nice angle, for a Hard Times essay …) [AR]
David Copperfield and Fairy Stories
Just, briefly, to draw your attention to a brief post on Dickens and Fairy Tales occasioned by a stimulating seminar discussion on that very topic with the undergraduate third-year ‘Dickens Special Option’ crowd. I’ve just posted it at The Valve. [AR]
Victorian Zombies
I think we can file this post under ’shameless self-publicity’: but I’m just shameless enough to go along with that. I Am Scrooge, a mash-up Christmas Carol and Zombie novel, is in the shops now. You could buy a copy if you liked. I wouldn’t mind.
What’s that? You want to know what the reviews say? Well, I’ll tell you: ‘Imagine a historical Shaun of the Dead written with as many bad zombie puns as you can think of – if you’ve got a long memory, add that it’s been written by the I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again team – and you’ve got an idea of the tone … Given that Roberts is a professor of 19th Century literature, it’s hardly surprising that there are multiple references to different stories, some well-known, others obscure … Ranks alongside Blackadder’s Christmas Carol as a great comic take on Dickens.’ [AR]
BL ‘Victorian Values’ event, 20th Nov
Dear MA students,
The British Library is holding a fun night of Victoriana on the evening of the 20th November.
http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event95861.html
Admission (£7.50) includes the chance to view their Points Of View: Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs exhibition, which includes some materials that Hannah Lewis-Bill, one of last year’s Victorian MA students, worked on as part of her internship at the BL.
Thanks to Hannah for drawing this event to our attention.
All best,
Vicky
The Quickening Maze
I’d like to reiterate the general greeting, and say hello to everybody: good to see you all at this afternoon’s meeting! And in the spirit of interdisciplinarity, I’d also to direct you to a review I’ve written of Adam Foulds’ new novel, The Quickening Maze (2009) … it has been shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize, and has accordingly been in the news a little bit. This is not coursework, of course; but it’s an example of contemporary Victoriana that might be of interest to you nevertheless: John Clare, the poet, and Alfred Tennyson, also a poet, are both characters; and the mileu of the 1840s is well-captured. I’ve reviewed it over at The Valve; the same review, but with different readers’ comments, is also at my own reviews blog. I’d be interested to know your opinion, if you’ve read it. Feel free, indeed feel actively encouraged, to put your thoughts in the comments to the post below.
This year’s Booker has a couple of Victorian-y titles on the shortlist, actually: I’m in the middle of A S Byatt’s The Children’s Book right now, and will blog about it when I’ve finished. [Adam Roberts]
[7th October, update; I finished the Byatt, but didn't think overmuch of it: you can read my thoughts here. But neither it nor the Foulds won the prize in the end ... the 2009 Man Booker went, as I'm sure you know, to Hilary Mantel's excellent Wolf Hall. I've a review of that too, here.]
Welcome 2009-10 students!
Welcome to the RHUL Victorian MA blog.
We use this site to post materials and weblinks related to seminar texts and to post notices of interest to RHUL Victorianists, including notices of relevant exhibitions and talks in and around London.
There’s also a facility to post your comments so it’s a great place to follow up on seminar discussions and continue your conversations outside of class.
We look forward to meeting you at the MA Induction, Thurs 24th.
The RHUL Victorian MA team.
Upcoming William Morris exhibition
A new exhibition on ‘Experiments in Colour: Thomas Wardle, William Morris and the Textiles of India’ will run at the William Morris Gallery and Vestry House Museum, Walthamstow from 10th Oct 2009-24th January 2010.
There will also be a lecture attached to the exhibition on 11 November. For more details see www.walthamforest.gov.uk/museums-galleries
Vicky
Professor Sally Ledger
It is with enormous regret that we must announce the sudden and tragically early death of Professor Sally Ledger. Sally joined the Department of English in Autumn 2008 as Hildred Carlile Professor in English and Director of the Centre for Victorian Studies. Even in this short time she had established herself as an indispensable presence in the life of the Department. This was not only because of her outstanding scholarly distinction ─ exemplified in her recent book on Dickens and the Popular Radical Imagination as well as preceding studies of Ibsen, the New Woman, and the cultural politics of the late nineteenth century ─ but also, and at least as importantly, because of her vibrant personal qualities: her warmth, her infectious sense of humour, great good sense, and sheer intellectual energy. Under her leadership, the College had already taken important steps towards becoming the leading centre for Victorian Studies in the country. Before joining us here, Sally was Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, where she had worked in the School of English and Humanities since 1995. As a PhD supervisor and mentor of junior colleagues, Sally was second to none. A rising generation of scholars will be for ever indebted to her for showing how exemplary interdisciplinary scholarship, collegiality and sense of the value of sociability and family life could be combined. Her colleagues past and present, and indeed the world-wide community of nineteenth-century scholars, will be as shocked and saddened as we are by this news, and will join us in sending our most heartfelt condolences to her husband, Jim Porteous, and son, Richard. There will be a further announcement in respect of the funeral arrangements and a memorial service for her.
