William Morris Society Newsletter: Fall 2005
A LETTER TO MEMBERS FROM FLORENCE BOOS Earlier this year, we agreed to consign a substantial portion of the Society’s financial reserves to a continuing Joseph R. Dunlap Memorial Fund, which we hope will aid more writers and scholars in their efforts to finish work inspired in one way or another by the legacy of Morris and his circle. We have made nine awards thus far, since we instituted the fellowship program in 1996. Kevin Melchione (1996) used his to study of the role of craft in contemporary culture, and "isolat[e] the legitimate oral and aesthetic values in Morris’s thought." Chatham Ewing (1996) made a partial facsimile of the Kelmscott Chaucer available on the internet. Regenia Hansen (1997) produced a video of The Wood Beyond the World. Shannon Rogers (1998), who now edits our Newsletter, prepared a checklist of the books in Morris’s library. Thomas Tobin (1999), now our webmaster, finished his dissertation, The Pre-Raphaelite Critic: A Comprehensive Edition of Periodical Criticism of the Pre-Raphaelites, later published by the University of Victoria. Carolyn Gardner (1999), April Oettinger (2000) and Peter Hofenberg (2000) used their fellowships to prepare conference papers on Morris; and Philip Chase (2001) finished his dissertation "William Morris and Germanic Legend: A Communal Ideal." We have made awards to two fellows this year. Piers Hale, a historian of science, has sought to foster awareness of Morris as "a significant figure in the history of the relationship between biology and socialism . . . [who] took a keen interest in the scientific questions of the day," and argued in his paper at last July’s conference (see below) that such a view of his work will offer a "fresh perspective on Morris’s relevance to the politics of social change for the 21st Century." Ignacio Zulueta is an Oakland, California writer whose play Red House, a North American counterpart of Peter Whelan’s Earthly Paradise, imagines Georgiana Burne-Jones’s reflections in old age. Caught "in the paradox of reliving her past while simultaneously destroying it," Georgiana confronts "the vivid memories that make her widowed life seem shadowy by comparison," and struggles to lay to rest her sense of the failings of her family and friends. Barbara Dunlap and her family have earned our gratitude for their continuing support of this fellowship, and we hope others will help us recognize such creative work and critical insights in the years to come. More immediately, we have separated ourselves financially from our British colleagues, with the help and cooperation of Penny McMahon, Wendy Field, and Diana Andrews of the William Morris Society of Great Britain. Mark Samuels Lasner met with Penny and Diana in London in June to arrange to transfer of our funds and membership rolls. He has also made new banking arrangements, and he and Fran Durako have worked to improve the accuracy of our mailing list. These efforts were made to facilitate an application for tax-exempt status, which we hope will be approved before the end of the year. A small personal postscript: last spring, I was able briefly to visit the French cities of Strasbourg, Metz and Nancy--the latter an outpost of fin de siècle French craftwork and art nouveau when most of the region lay under German control. In Nancy, for example, Émile Gallé gathered together a school of artists and craftworkers in wood, glass and stone [Louis Majorelle, Victor Prouvé, Émile Firant, Camille Martin], under ‘Morrisian’ banners of comradeship, egalitarianism, and broader diffusion of artistic practice. According to Christian Debie in his Émile Gallé and the ‘école de Nancy,’ Gallé embraced Morris’s beliefs in the intrinsic value of manual labor and natural forms, and sought to create employment for the people of his region. In Morris’s spirit, he also supported Dreyfus, attacked capitalist interests, campaigned for a "people’s university" and the League of Human Rights, and strove to put into practice his conviction that "egoism and intellectual or material pride must bow down" to genuinely egalitarian artistic ideals. A small epiphany there prompted me to hope that some Morrisian or Morrisians--already at work, perhaps--will write a comparative study of the social ideals of international arts-and-crafts movements of the same period and their guiding spirits, including Gaudi and modernismo in Barcelona, Gallé and art nouveau in Nancy, and others of whom I know little in Italy, Belgium, Russia, the Netherlands and elsewhere. Sadly, July 7th, the day of four deadly explosions in the London transportation system, was also the opening day of the "Morris in the 21st Century" conference at Royal Holloway College in Surrey. Many of us were unable to leave London, and others sturdily pulled suitcases for miles to get to Waterloo Station. More than seventy participants reached Regenia Gagnier’s painfully relevant lecture on "Morris, Cosmopolitanism and Globalization" that evening, which included Morris’s condemnation of political assassination. Other North American speakers at the conference included Sarvenaz Amanat ("Reflections of Persian Art and Design in the Works of William Morris"), Noelle Bowles ("The Nightmare of John Ball: Collars for the Working Class and Morris’s Vision of Social Justice"), David Faldet ("The Land They Were Made For: Morris, Jane Addams and Norwegian-American Craft"), Christine Whitney ("Transforming Grimm: Love and Desire in William Morris’s ‘Rapunzel’"), Jessica Yates ("William Morris’s Influence on J. R.. Tolkien as a Poet") and Elizabeth Miller ("How We Might (Not) Read: William Morris’s Textual Dystopia"), to mention only a few. Tom Tobin was virtually present through his CD on "Using the Internet as a Morrisean Socialist Tool," and an impressive number of speakers from non-anglophone countries travelled to England from Japan, Australia, Hungary, Russia, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands. That weekend, conference participants also had a rare chance to visit Hammersmith for a garden party at Kelmscott House, where four of us (David and Sheila Latham, my husband Bill and I) lived in the summer of 1979. On behalf of the two-dozen-odd North American participants, we would like to express our gratitude to Joy and Jock Birney, the house’s present occupants, and more generally to Phillippa Bennett, Ruth Levitas, Rosie Miles and Peter Preston, who devoted many hours of "useful work" to make the conference a success for us all. There will be two Morris sessions at this winter’s Modern Language Association Convention in Washington, D. C., December 27th-30th, and a dinner for the panelists and all other members who wish to join us. The scheduled speakers at "Places and Spaces: Mapping the Pre-Raphaelite Aesthetic" (1:45-3:00 p. m., Wednesday December 28th, Marriott Wardman Park Hotel), will be Christopher M. Keirstead, Royce Garner, Betsy W. Tontiplaphol and Adrienne Sharp; and at "Morris and Modern Theories" (1:45-3 p. m., Friday December 30th, Marriott Wardman Park Hotel), the speakers will be Martin Danahay, Rosie Miles, and Richard Kaye. As always, those who do not belong to the MLA are welcome to attend these sessions of papers—but please contact us for passes at florence-boos@uiowa.edu (Florence Boos) or marksl@udel.edu (Mark Samuels Lasner). The dinner, which will also serve as the Society’s annual meeting, is open to everyone. More details of the MLA sessions and the time and place of the dinner will come in a brochure to be mailed to members in November. In the meantime, we wish you all a beautiful and peaceful fall. In fellowship, Florence Boos NEWS FROM PAST FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENTS Peter Hoffenberg writes to announce that he has published "Socialist and Orientalist? William Morris and the ‘Eastern’ Question of Indian Art" in The Australasian Victorian Studies Journal, vol 10, 2004. He credits the article’s success to the fellowship, writing, "Here is the fruit of your generosity. I remain very grateful for your travel grant as it made my trip to Toronto possible. I doubt that this paper would have been published without the benefit of conversations at that meeting." Congratulations, Peter. MORRIS SESSIONS AT THE MLA, 2005, 2006 AND 2007 WILLIAM MORRIS PANELS, 2005 Wednesday, 28 December 1. "Morris and the Spatial Poetics of Europe," Christopher M. Keirstead, Auburn Univ., Auburn Friday 30th December 1. "Toward a Postmodern Theory of Production: Baudrillard, Marx, and Morris," Martin Alan Danahay, Univ. of Texas, Arlington WILLIAM MORRIS PANELS, 2006 & 2007 In order for interested members and others to plan ahead, we are announcing Modern Language Association session topics for the following two years. For 2006, the topics will be "Morris and Gender" (masculinities, ‘new’ and old women, eroticism, Victorian reformism) and "Pre-Raphaelitism and the World of Victorian Art." For 2007, the topics will be "Morris as Metatext: Editions, Printforms, Illustrations" and "The Pre-Raphaelite Family." A WILLIAM MORRIS MANUSCRIPT COMES TO DELAWARE by Mark Samuels LasnerWilliam Morris was a life-long purchaser, reader, user, and collector of books, Over the years he accumulated a large "working library" of literature, books on the decorative and fine arts, political tomes, and the writings of his friends and contemporaries, To this he added, sparingly at first, then with growing enthusiasm from the 1880s onward, a remarkable gathering of medieval manuscripts and early printed books. By the time of his death Morris had one of the best private libraries in Britain, comparable, if not equal to, those owned by titled aristocrats and members of the "swinish rich." Like many bibliophiles who have so many books they cannot locate them on their shelves and who are proud of their achievement, Morris wanted a catalogue of his collection. His attempts were recorded in three manuscripts and in a quantity of notes, some of which were incorporated into Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteen Century (1898), the Kelmscott Press volume edited by Sydney Cockerell which was all ever produced of the elaborate illustrated printed catalogue Morris planned in the early 1890s. Morris’s first manuscript attempt to list his books, which he wrote with his daughter May, dates from around 1876. Formerly owned by Paul Mellon, this is now at the Yale Center for British Art. The second manuscript, compiled in 1890–91 largely by Jenny Morris with some entries by her father, was recently acquired by the Bridwell Library of Southern Methodist University from the auction of Bernard H. Breslauer’s library at Christie’s, New York last 22-23 March. The third, a calligraphic manuscript written by Morris circa 1890, also offered in the Breslauer sale, is now in my collection. It is, if I may be forgiven the biased opinion of the possessor, perhaps the most fascinating of all these very interesting documents. The catalogue is a fragment, listing but twelve manuscripts (six of them by Morris himself) and fifteen incurables over eight pages, and even in itself incomplete, with only four ornamental initials completed in watercolor, the rest penciled in. Yet, in the careful if idiosyncratic descriptions, in the simplified humanist hand of a great artist, in the beautiful, if tentative decorations there is the overwhelming, intimate presence of William Morris. We watch him at play, so to speak, as he treys to come up a design scheme and a bibliographic system—this was before Cockerell came on the scene—ultimately giving up the task as too difficult or too time-consuming. The incomplete nature of the manuscript makes it especially appealing, as does the fact that this work, done at the time of the Kelmscott Press was just underway, represents Morris’s last attempt at manuscript illumination. Of interest, too, is the manuscript’s history. A note on the flyleaf records the fact that it was given by Jane Morris to Sydney Cockerell in 1898. Cockerell then had it bound (by Katherine Adams) in red morocco with an additional manuscript, a three-page draft of The Story of Haldar, written out by Morris in an entirely different, neo-Gothic style. The composite volume, which was shown in the Morris centenary exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1934, was sold, with the bulk of Cockerell’s Morris materials, at Sotheby’s, on 10 December 1956. The purchaser was the famed bibliophile, Major J. R. Abbey, who owned at least two other Morris calligraphic manuscripts. The manuscript was purchased at the Sotheby’s auction of Abbey’s library in 1975 by Bernard H. Breslauer, the legendary bookseller who attempted (and to large degree succeeded) in forming the finest bibliographical library in private hands. Although eccentric, not to mention difficult, Breslauer was persuaded to lend the manuscript to "William Morris and the Art of the Book" at the Morgan Library in 1976, where I saw—and coveted it. Twenty years later, I had the chance to actually handle the manuscript when we managed to convince Breslauer to lend again, to the Grolier Club’s centenary exhibition, "William Morris: The Collector as Creator." This treasure—I hesitate to call such a Holy Grail-like object a mere manuscript—now forms part of the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection on loan to the University of Delaware Library. Associated with the Special Collections Department of the University of Delaware Library, the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection is appropriately housed in the Morris Library (named for Judge Hugh M. Morris, but the library’s head, Susan Brynteson, is the Mae Morris Director of Libraries!). The collection’s focus is on British literature and art of the period 1850 to 1900, with an emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelites and on the writers and illustrators of the 1890s. Its holdings comprise 2,500 first and other editions (including many signed and association copies), manuscripts, letters, works on paper, and ephemera. (Along with the calligraphic manuscript, Morris is represented by most of his books, and the library has comprehensive Kelmscott Press holdings.) Access is by appointment only, and enquiries and visits from members of the William Morris Society are especially welcome. For further information contact: Mark Samuels Lasner, Senior Research Fellow, University of Delaware Library, 181 South College Avenue, Newark, DE 19717, Tel. 302-831-3250, lib-msl@winsor.lib.udel.edu. EXHIBITIONS WAKING DREAMS: The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum, will visit seven more U. S. cities from October 2005 through July 2007. Guest curated by Stephen Wildman, the curator of the Ruskin Library, Lancaster University, England, the exhibition is described as follows: The Pre-Raphaelite movement began in 1848, when three young British artists--Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais--banded together with other like-minded artists to revolutionize British art. Rebelling against the artistic traditions of the Royal Academy, they preferred the simplicity and monastic principles of late medieval art preceding the Renaissance master, Raphael. The Pre-Raphaelite collection of the Delaware Art Museum is the most significant outside Great Britain. Included in this exhibition are a large group of oils and watercolors by Rossetti, as well as works by Edward Burne-Jones, Fredrick Sandys, Ford Madox Brown, Hunt, Millais, and others. Complementing this array of two-dimensional works are decorative arts that embody the genesis of the Arts and Crafts movement, including two chairs designed by William Morris and Rossetti, jewelry, ceramics, and metalwork.
Philbrook Museum of Art (Tulsa, OK) April--July 2006 Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, OH) October 2006--January 2007
BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 3 vols, Editor: Terry L Meyers, Pickering and Chatto. The three volumes of Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne adds more than 550 letters to the canon that were not available when Cecil Y Lang published his collection of Swinburne letters in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This new collection includes hundreds of unpublished letters addressed to Swinburne, as well as providing a number of accounts and descriptions of Swinburne either previously unknown or fallen from scholarly knowledge. In addition to the full texts of the letters and thorough annotations, the edition includes a major appendix updating Lang’s earlier work – identifying where holographs then missing are now housed (and correcting the printed texts from the originals), identifying correspondents and allusions then uncertain or unknown, and correcting or narrowing mistaken or unknown dates.
The Pickering Masters: 1 85196 774 5: 3 Volume Set: £295/$475
BOOKS FOR SALE THROUGH OAK KNOLL PRESS Causley, Monroe S. Arthur W. Rushmore and the Golden Hind Press. Oak Knoll Press 2005. First edition, limited to 160 numbered copies, each one numbered and signed by the author. The work is a short biography of Arthur Rushmore and a comprehensive bibliography of his works set by hand for Harper & Brothers and his own Golden Hind Press. This edition was hand set in Monotype and printed on an old Heidelberg press. Tipped in are examples of the unique paste papers produced by the Golden Hind Press along with actual pages from the press’ numerous works. This important edition is quarter-leather bound and gold stamped for the discriminating collector. The bibliography covers all known works designed and/or printed by Rushmore from his early days at Harper & Brothers (1927) to his death in 1955 and a few titles printed by his wife shortly thereafter. This special edition on Rushmore and his place in the American fine press tradition will be appreciated by all enthusiasts of this important genre. Printed in Athens, Greece by Kotinos in association with The Madison Public Library in Madison, New Jersey. $150 Morris, William. A King’s Lesson, Printed to Commemorate the Centenary of the Birth of William Morris, 1834-1934. With a woodcut by Charles W.Smith. Madison, NJ: The Golden Kind Press, 1934. A King’s Lesson by William Morris was set in Hammer Uncial type, and 145 copies printed by hand on Arak paper by Arthur Rushmore at The Golden Hind Press in Madison, New Jersey, finished on December 1st, 1834. Linen back with blue Ingrs paper sides. Pasted label on spine. Copy number 144. Colophon signed by A. W. Rushmore. Printer’s device following the colophon rendered by The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia. Iv, 20p. [1] leaf of plates. 22 cm x 6 ½ cm Morris, William. Message of the March Wind. Drawing by Elizabeth Shippen Green. Madison, NJ: The Golden Hind Press, 1938. Hammer Uncial type, printed in red and black. 200 copies, hand press. In Rushmore’s hand, "For Alice Tompkins." 18 x 15 inches. ARTICLES "’Our Country Right or Wrong’: A Little-Noticed Essay by William Morris" by Florence Boos "Our Country Right or Wrong," signed and dated by Morris on January 30th, 1880, lay quietly for many decades in British Library Add. M. S. 45,334, duly cited in Eugene LeMire’s checklist of Morris’s speeches and lectures but never published under its original title. When I learned that May Morris had printed less than a third of it in Artist Writer Socialist (as a lecture on "War and Peace" for "some Radical body"), I became convinced a couple years back that these reflections of a thoughtful "Radical" intellectual merited publication in full. In 1880, Morris was a ‘left-Liberal’ in search of better realizations of his ideal of fellowship than the self-aggrandizing policies of the "imperial party" and the weathervanes of Gladstonian Liberalism, and he had already begun to think about the paradoxes of ‘righteous’ slaughter, and sanctimonious calls for domestic submission in the name of foreign ‘liberation.’ What, he asked himself, was a ‘nation’? How could one truly love, not a common language or ancestry, or a history of joys and hardships, but a ‘nationality’? Was the nineteenth-century ‘nation-state’ (from natio, in turn from nasci, to be born) just a dubious monopoly of power invoked to sanctify authoritarian rule over a tribus or collective familia (the Latin term for a household of slaves)? At this point in his life, Morris still endorsed--along with most of the rest of us--one of the iron laws of political equilibration: . . . if we can’t have the absolutely best man at our head, let us at least have the best we can get [the lesser evil!]; and he and his fellows must be such men as look forward with hope not backward with regret . . . . Such ambivalent compromises however lay heavy on his heart: . . . let us take the trouble, any trouble, to live like free men. . . . now, look you, it is some 6 years that I have scarcely felt like a free man, and that lies heavily upon me; and in spite of all my good wishes for your welfare I hope it does upon you also, & upon all those whose principles bind them to Peace, Retrenchment and Reform [the current slogan of the Liberal Party]. Moreover, he had opposed the "Zulu War" and the Anglo-Afghanistani War, and his active engagement as an antiwar organizer, demonstrator and speaker against the threats of imperial conflict in the Balkans ("the Eastern Question") had also focused his yearning for a better social order, in which "justice" would be the "passionate desire of . . . life": I think of a country where every man has work to do, and no one has too much: . . . he would live honorably, and as happily as national external circumstances would allow him, and would help others to do likewise: you may be sure he would take good care to have his due share in the government of his country and would know all about its dealings with other countries: justice to himself & all others would be no mere name to him, but the rule of all his actions, the passionate desire of his life -- What King, what potentate, what power could prevent such a man from both giving and taking his due? (56). The catchphrase "Our Country Right or Wrong" had recently come into existence as the title of a contemporary patriotic ditty, and he reflected on . . . words [which] were harmless in themselves, or indeed might be interpreted to mean a noble sentiment, yet I cannot help thinking that what they did mean was something neither noble or even harmless. I don’t think I am wrong in supposing them to have been taken as . . . the banner of a tribe . . . which . . . unless they are well looked after [may become] dangerous also: that tribe has been called the tribe of the Jingos. His opposition to this "tribe," in turn, led him to attempt a sustained analysis of . . . National Vain-glory, which is both begotten of ignorance and begets it: . . . it prates of the interests of our country, while it is laying the train of events which will ruin the fortunes, and break the hearts of the citizens; it scolds at wise men and honest men for what it calls a policy of isolation, while itself it would have nothing to do with foreign nations except for their ruin and ours: its great office is for ever to cry out for war without knowing what war means: all other nations, it deems, pay the price of war; but we never do, and never can pay it, and never shall. The price of war -- a heavy price is that; confusion and reaction at the best, ruin at the worst. (38-39) In keeping with the ancient ethic of the golden rule, as well as its more recent cousin the Categorical Imperative, he brooded about the consequences of "bringing the war home": . . . I can’t get out of my head thoughts of how I should like it myself if real war were here in the land, . . . How should I like it: I, a man of peace, a craftsman, with a wife and children to take care of: . . . I can’t help thinking what confusion actual war, present in the land, in London and its suburbs, would make of all this! What a face I should pull for instance when I came back to my house after it had been occupied by our own troops for a morning! What words I should use as I hunted for my MSS. and drawings among the ruins of my furniture! How I should cry out at having to begin life over again at 46 because of the stupid whim of a half-educated subaltern! And yet such a thing as this would be such a trifle amidst the great tragedy, that no one could so much as say, "I’m sorry for you." (43) The author of Sigurd the Volsung (1876) had also begun to express reservations about the ultimate implications of an unchecked warrior ethic: [W]hen, for example the Montenegrins have gained their well-deserved freedom, do we not pause in anxious expectation, & ask, what will they do next? They have learned war, can they learn any thing else. . . . So, you see, it is by their fitness for peace and not for war that we must judge them in the long run: we look to them to make peace out of war. (42) In summary, I believe one can see in this little-known and quite possibly never-delivered speech an anticipation of Morris’s last recorded comments on violence and revolution, written in 1892-93. In this period of eternal imperial recurrence, Morris’s words in these passages also seem to me to ring with immediacy and force. To quote an ancient phrase, "He being dead yet speaketh": There is no royal road to revolution or the change in the basis of society. To make the workers conscious of the disabilities which beset them; to make them conscious of the dormant power in them for the removal of those disabilities. . . here . . . is the work of patience, but nothing can take the place of it. . . . The doing of it speedily and widely is the real safeguard against acts of violence, which even when done by fanatics and not by self-seekers are still acts of violence, and therefore degrading to humanity, as all war is. (Hammersmith Socialist Record; AWS 2:326). And in his posthumously published reflections, written in 1893: . . . the change effected by peaceable means would be done more completely and with less chance, indeed with no chance of counter-revolution. . . . . In short I do not believe in the possible success of revolt until the Socialist party has grown so powerful in numbers that it can gain its end by peaceful means, and that therefore what is called violence will never be needed. . . . As to the attempt of a small minority to terrify a vast majority into accepting something which they do not understand, by spasmodic acts of violence, mostly involving the death or mutilation of non-combatants, I can call that nothing else than sheer madness. And here I will say once for all, what I have often wanted to say of late, to wit that the idea of taking any human life for any reason whatsoever is horrible and abhorrent to me. (AWS 2: 351) (Morris’ essay appears in full in The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 14: Spring 2005, accompanied by "Dystopian Violence: William Morris and the Nineteenth-Century Peace Movement," an article in which I developed some of these ideas at greater length. I would like to thank Peter Wright, Peter Faulkner, and other members of the British and North American Morris Societies for their helpful responses to earlier versions of "Dystopian Violence." Copies of this issue of the JPRS are available from David Latham, http://www.yorku.ca/jprs or dlatham@yorku.ca.) SIMEON SOLOMON ARCHIVE UPDATED The Simeon Solomon Research Archive (SSRA) has been updated and revised. This is a timely event, as the site has now been in existence for five years, AND this year marks the 100th anniversary of Solomon's death. In commemoration, opening very soon in Birmingham, England will be the much-anticipated retrospective exhibition of the Victorian artist's work with a published catalog.
CONFERENCES THE MEDIEVAL IN MOTION: Neomedievalism in Film, Television, and Video Games (An Anthology of Critical & Pedagogical Analysis). The editor is soliciting proposal for essays (or completed essays) concerning the representation of the medieval period in computer, video, and console gaming. While the anthology is organized around the idea of "neomedievalism" (defined below), contributors are encouraged to theorize the relationship of the medieval / medievalisms to gaming in all its permutations. Additionally, although it is not a widely known fact, the video game industry outgrossed Hollywood last year in terms of domestic sales, and many students' first taste of the medieval period comes through the prism of video and console games. Thus, computer and console games are an important area for pedagogical reflection as well. Possibilities include:
Proposals are due 10/1/2005 and Final Essays are due 1/15/2006. Please send essays to the Section Editor for Video Games: BOOK UNDER CONTRACT WITH: EDWIN MELLEN PRESS Send drafts and/or proposals to:
WALTER PATER, NEW QUESTIONS, LATENT QUESTIONINGS, A Conference organized by the International Walter Pater Society, July 27-28, 2006 at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Walter Pater’s restless intelligence raised many new questions in his own day. What are the questions that readers of Pater should be asking today? What critical and theoretical issues should be exposed to our collective gaze, perhaps long overlooked or overshadowed, but always enfolded in his text with "all that latent colour and imagery which language as such carries in it"? What new contexts and frameworks for considering Pater’s writings should be explored? Submit 500 word proposals for conference papers by November 30, 2005:
FLORILEGIUM, THE JOURNAL OF THE CANADIAN SOCIETY OF MEDIEVALISTS, invites submissions for its next volume, scheduled for publication in Summer 2006. Papers on any aspect of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (including the post-medieval representation of the medieval period) are welcome. A section of this volume is set aside for a special cluster exploring the topic of medieval popular culture (and its later reception), and additional papers on any aspect of this theme are particularly encouraged. For information about the journal, please visit All submissions are refereed in a double-blind review by at least two international Submissions, due by 10/20/05 should include three hard copies and should be mailed to: NORTHEAST VICTORIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION 32ND ANNUAL MEETING, April 7-9, 2006 at Drew University, Madison, NJ. Topics might include (but are not limited to):
For a teaching roundtable, we also welcome separate proposals regarding the relations between undergraduate and graduate instruction in Victorian literature and culture: how do the aims, expectations, emphases, and challenges of teaching the Victorians vary at different levels? (Roundtable contributors should aim at creating an atmosphere for stimulating discussion rather than presenting a formal paper.) Proposals (no more than two double-spaced pages) by Oct. 15, 2005 (e-mail NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND THE CULTURAL MOMENT, A Graduate Student Literature Conference at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, March 31-April 1, 2006. Whether discussing the Industrial Revolution, the Woman Question, or other forms of political turmoil, many nineteenth-century writers condensed larger issues of the day into specific literary events -- or moments -- that both reflected and defined the historical and cultural climate of the time. Our fourth annual graduate conference hopes to examine key cultural moments of the nineteenth century and their relationship to both contemporary and modern literary creation, criticism, and reception. How was the significance of a given moment either crystallized or created by a literary work? How did specific historical events or movements shape nineteenth-century literature? How were scientific innovations used by authors in their works to reflect social or political revolutions? How did writers on opposite sides of the Atlantic or on opposite sides of the world respond to the same cultural moments? How do modern cultural moments reflect or shape our perception of nineteenth-century texts? Possible topics could include but are not limited to:
Abstracts of 250 words or less are due by November 15, 2005. Please include your name, the name of your institution and program, and any A/V needs that you may have. Submit abstracts electronically via email to respective representatives:
THE RESEARCH SOCIETY FOR VICTORIAN PERIODICALS (RSVP) will hold its annual conference September 15th through 18th at the George Washington Please consult RSVP's website (www.rs4vp.org) for specific information about conference registration and local arrangements. A tentative program is online, and a more complete program will be posted this coming weekend. Any additional questions can be directed to Maria Frawley at MFrawley@gwu.edu.
Please send 250 word abstracts and a short CV by 11/15/05 to: Brian Adler, The Graduate School, Valdosta State University, 1500 N. Patterson St., Valdosta, GA 31698 badler@valdosta.edu FAX: 229-245-3853
VICTORIAN POETRY is soliciting papers on Elizabeth Barrett Browning for the Winter 2006 issue, guest-edited by Marjorie Stone and Beverly Taylor. Contributors may consider any aspect of EBB's literary writings, including her correspondence, essays and prefaces, as well as her poetical works. The editors would particularly welcome essays that expand the focus beyond Aurora Leigh, considering hitherto neglected works and/or aspects of EBB’s poetic practice, cultural contexts, relations with other writers, reception, and place in literary history. Two copies of essays should be sent by January 15, 2006, one to the other to: Professor Beverly Taylor, Department of English--CB #3520, University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520. Manuscripts, no longer than 25 double-spaced pages typescript, should follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition. Submissions should include telephone numbers and email addresses. Contributors are responsible for securing any necessary permissions and paying related fees.
THE INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH STUDIES/UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN POPULAR CULTURE SEMINAR invites proposals for 40 to 50-minute papers on any aspect of Victorian cultural life - literature, journalism, art during the period 1830-1914. Proposals for papers from graduate students very welcome. Coverage in previous papers has encompassed George Smith, G.K. Chesterton, Linley Sanbourne and Oscar Wilde. The seminar is intended as a relaxed forum in which students and academics can respond to ongoing work in the area of Victorian and Edwardian culture. Seminars will take place throughout the 2005/06 academic year. Please send proposals (max. 200 words) by Friday 26 August. Further inquiries welcome.
RUSKINIAN THEATRE: THE VICTORIAN THEATRE AND THE VISUAL ARTS, Lancaster University, 13-15 July 2006. Proposals are invited for papers and respondents for a 2 day colloquium sponsored by the History Department and the Ruskin Programme at Lancaster University, and the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, University of Birmingham. This colloquium is part of the AHRC funded project: Ruskinian Theatre: the Aesthetics of the Nineteenth Century London Popular Stage, 1870-1900, which seeks to investigate the interrelationships and influences of John Ruskin’s aesthetic and social theories on the popular London stage in the late nineteenth century. Our meeting in 2005 focussed on "Ruskin, Shakespeare, and the Victorian Theatre" and was part of the "Victorian Life Writing" conference at Lancaster University. In 2007, we will meet at the University of Birmingham for a symposium on "Contemporary Issues in Theatre History & Historiography." In 2006, our focus is on the popular stage as a meeting place for the contemporary arts, particularly for the interconnections between the visual and the performing arts. We are also continuing our investigation of the possibilities of the late nineteenth century popular theatre as a site for aesthetic and ethical education, propaganda, debate, or controversy. We seek to revise the standard narratives of theatre and cultural history in this period which ignore the popular theatre through the focus of standard theatre histories on the ‘literary drama’ and an emergent Modernist aesthetic. Plenary speakers are expected to include Professors Jim Davis, Shearer West, Jeffrey Richards, and Kate Newey. We seek proposals and expressions of interest from theatre and art historians, and historians of popular culture and the fin de siècle. We are particularly interested in contributions which rethink the relationship between visual culture and the stage. Papers are invited which address these themes (either in negotiation with John Ruskin’s work, or not), and might cover (but are not limited to):
Proposals should reach the conveners by 30 April 2006. All papers submitted will be considered for publication as part of the project. Further enquiries and proposals should be directed to: THE MORRIS MARKETPLACE: A Shopper’s Guide CASTLE HOWARD http://castlehowardestate.co.uk Tel: (+44) 01653 648444 Fax: (+44) 01653 648529 Email: house@castlehoward.co.uk
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COLOPHON This newsletter is usually written and edited by Shannon L. Rogers; however, this issue was graciously collected by Florence Boos and set by Diane Andrews (after a computer virus destroyed the "proper" newsletter). Items for inclusion, books for review, news from or about members, calls for papers, conference announcements, event notifications, and comments are welcomed. Shannon Rogers
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