The William Morris Society Newsletter: January 2007
A LETTER TO MEMBERS FROM FLORENCE BOOS A Letter from the President December 2006 Dear Members of the William Morris Society: Six members of the Governing Committee and past president Gary Aho met in New York September 16th and 17th to consider the Society’s long-term future. Tom Tobin, Mark Samuels Lasner, and I were in New York to attend the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference that weekend, and three other members live there. The seven who were able to attend (Tom, Mark, Gary, Fran Durako, Frank Sharp, Hartley Spatt and I) began our meeting over dinner with a discussion of the Society’s aims and prospects, and focused our remarks by general agreement on efforts to make Morris’ life and work more widely known. We met again for six more hours the next day at the University Club, where we discussed ways to make our web site more interactive, redesign it for greater clarity and better access, and arrange its offerings under straightforward rubrics such as "Life," "Writings," "Art" and "Social Thought." Other tentative ideas advanced included improvement of our membership brochure; possible sponsorship of an Elderhostel course; preparation of primary, secondary and adult education lesson plans for courses on Morris; editorial changes to the Wikipedia Morris entry (now widely used); and addition of proposals to prepare teaching materials at all levels to the list of projects eligible for the Society’s annual fellowships. All these projects would benefit of course from active collaboration, and we invite interested members to help. Our book sale this year was a success, and we have decided to advertise our books on eBay and elsewhere in an effort to reduce our annual revenue shortfall. To this end, we seek donations in kind from any members who might willing to contribute books and other items of Morrisian or Pre-Raphaelite interest. As for future events, we hope to celebrate Morris’s one-hundred-seventy-third birthday in March and sponsor a garden party in the Washington, D. C. area sometime next summer. I have proposed a session on "Morris and Material Culture" for the North American Victorian Studies Association Conference in Victoria next October, and we will devote our annual sessions at the Modern Language Association Convention in Chicago on December 27th-30th, 2007 to "The Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Family" and "Morris as Metatext: Editions/Printforms/Illustrations." We have also made tentative plans to host a conference in Delaware on "The Aesthetics of Rebellion: The Pre-Raphaelites and William Morris" in the summer of 2008. Since our last newsletter appeared, Alan Crawford, a historian of British architecture, has offered a talk on "William Morris: Socialist and Shopkeeper" to the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association on August 15th, and a public reading of Ignacio Zulueta’s play Red House took place July 22nd at the Bus Barn Theatre's 2006 Summer Festival in the Bay Area of San Francisco. In Red House, Ignacio has explored the complex artisanal and emotional lives of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Edward Burne-Jones through the recollections and reflections of a thoughtful and observant Georgiana Burne-Jones, and we are grateful that he has kindly given us permission to reproduce an excerpt of the script below. In late October, I also spoke about "‘Everyday Life’ in William Morris’ News from Nowhere" at a three-day conference on "Literary Utopias of Cultural Communities" in Leiden, Holland, and was impressed by the cohesion and cordiality of the conference itself and the insights of its participants. Especially interesting was a talk in which Professor Douwe Fokkema compared Morris with Herman Gorter (1864-1927), a Dutch admirer of Morris, poet and author of a four-thousand-line verse epic Mei [May], and founding member of the Dutch Social Democratic Party (Sociaal-Democratische Partij). An ardent opponent of the First World War, Gorter may be best-known to social historians for the mordantly critical "Open Letter" (1920) in which he denounced "Comrade Lenin"’s decision to crush workers’ councils in the name of socialism. In two brief trips to Amsterdam’s International Institute of Social History, I also found two hitherto unpublished Morris essays, and used Max Nettlau’s carefully preserved collection of late-nineteenth-century socialist and anarchist documents (among them the archives of the Socialist League) to make copies of early translations of Morris into Dutch, Spanish, Italian and German, some of which I hope will find a (virtual) home on the Society’s site. By the time this reaches you the new year will have begun. May it bring a measure of peace to the world’s inhabitants, and personal happiness to you. In fellowship, Florence William Morris Society Sessions at the 2007 and 2008 Modern Language Association Convention
The topics chosen for our December 2007 sessions are "Morris as Metatext: Edtions/ Printforms/Illustrations" and "The Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Family." Please send abstracts by March 20th, 2007 to florence-boos@uiowa.edu. For 2008, the topics will be "Pre-Raphaelite (and Aesthetic) Prose" and "William Morris: Friends and Associates." Morris at the 2006 MLA Thursday, 28 December 190. Pre-Raphaelitism and the World of Victorian Art 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 406, Philadelphia Marriott Program arranged by the William Morris Society Presiding: Mark Samuels Lasner, Univ. of Delaware Library
1.30 Annual Meeting of the Society, to follow immediately [election of the governing committee] 2.00 Governing committee meeting
5.30: Drinks party, which may also be a book launch for Bound for the 1890s: Essays on Writing and Publishing in Honor of James G. Nelson. Nelson is a member of the Society, as are four of
6.30 Dinner, probably $25 per person Saturday, 30 December 722. Morris and Gender 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Grand Ballroom Salon K, Philadelphia Marriott Program arranged by the William Morris Society Presiding: Florence S. Boos, Univ. of Iowa
William Morris Session at the 2007 North American Victorian Studies Association
For a session on "William Morris and Material Culture," papers are sought on the material aspects of the artistic endeavors of Morris and his circle. These may concern poetry, prose romances, translations, architecture, travel, gardening, book design, textiles, tapestries and other decorative art work, as well as Morris's work for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and his views about nature and the environment. Proposals should be sent by February 1st to florence-boos@uiowa.edu (preferable) or by February 15th, 2006 to florence-boos@iowa.edu and to navsa@uvic.ca. The conference will be held October 10th-13th, 2007, at the University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia.
Joseph R. Dunlap Memorial Fellowship and William Morris Society Awards
The Joseph R. Dunlap Memorial Fellowship supports scholarly, creative, and translation projects about William Morris and his designs, writings, and other work. Up to $1,000 per year is granted to individuals (there can be multiple or partial awards) for research and other expenses, including travel to conferences. In addition, at the fellowship committee's discretion one or two William Morris Society Awards may be offered each year for a total of up to $1000. Projects may deal with any subject--biographical, literary, historical, social, artistic, political, typographical--relating to Morris. They may be scholarly or creative, and may include translations or the preparation of educational materials. Applicants for all awards may be from any country; applications are particularly encouraged from younger members of the Society and from those at the beginning of their careers. Recipients need not have an academic or institutional appointment, and the Ph.D. is not required. Applicants with scholarly or creative projects should send to the Society a two-page description of their projects, including a timeline and an indication of where the results might be published, along with a c. v. and at least one letter of recommendation. For translation submissions, please send a copy of the translation (of the published version, if relevant), with a letter of reference from someone acquainted with both languages assessing the quality of the translation. Translations should have been completed within the past five years. We would like to place some portion of the translation on our web site if this is possible, but permission to do so is not a requirement for the award. We also encourage submission of teaching materials--especially lesson plans and course materials--suitable for use at the elementary, secondary, college or adult-education level. The Society would hope to share these teaching materials via the Society's site. For teaching materials, no letters of recommendation are needed, but we request that you enclose a cover letter describing the ways in which the materials might be (or already have been) used in learning situations. The deadline for applications for 2008 fellowship(s) is 15 December, 2007. Applications will be judged by at least three members of the Governing Committee, and results will be announced by 15 January, 2008. Kindly send applications to florence-boos@uiowa.edu or to Florence Boos, Department of English, 308 English-Philosophy Building, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242.
Like to Help? Please Consider Donating Your Extra Books to the William Morris Society
We ask members to contribute good quality books and other items to help us raise money through resale. If you have such items which you might be willing to donate, please let us know. Such donations should be sent to the William Morris Society, P. O Box 53263, Washington, D. C. 20009 or to Fran Durako, The Kelmscott Bookshop, 34 West 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218 (info@kelmscottbookshop.com).
Book by John Le Bourgeois Published A new book on the life and work of William Morris by Morris Society member John Le Bourgeois, Art and Forbidden Fruit, has been published by the Lutterworth Press. A reception to celebrate its publication was held at 6 p. m. on November 23rd 2006 at Holy Trinity Church Sloane Square in London, and copies may be obtained by writing sales@lutterworth.com or P O. Box 60, Cambridge CB1 2NT. Book on SPAB by Angela Yount
The first book on this topic for a century, Angela Yount's William Morris and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings will be published by Routledge Press in 2007. She offers a valuable assessment of how the 19th century SPAB learned from its early mistakes and survived and adapted throughout the 20th-21st centuries.
"William Morris and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings" is the result of extensive research based on many original documents from the SPAB archive in London. The archive houses information, letters, and other documentation which outlines each of the SPAB cases since it's beginning. These case studies provide insight into the specific efforts of William Morris, each of the SPAB officers, and many of the SPAB members, both in the past and the present.
"William Morris and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings" outlines Morris's ideology and motivation, the popularity of the Gothic Revivial and the preservation issues that evolved from it, and the SPAB's effectiveness in Britain through specific case studies. Then these issues are followed onto the continent, specifically in Germany in France, to examine the SPAB's influence there. Finally, the SPAB's twentieth century success in considered by looking at its current programs and cases. Victorian Studies Research Guide published by the Rivendell Press The Rivendell Press is pleased to announce the publication of Victorian Studies: A Research Guide - (revised edition) by Sharon Propas. The first edition of this guide to research sources for Victorian studies was published in 1992, just as electronic resources were becoming major tools for scholars. Since then, the internet has changed the way in which research materials, especially indexes and other finding guides, are presented and used.
http://www.rivendalepress.com/current/propas.html
Morris's Essay, "Our Country Right or Wrong"
Florence Boos's edition of this work, with illustrations, notes, and an introductory article on Morris's relationship with the late nineteenth-century peace movement, will be published by the William Morris Society of the UK in conjunction with Stanhope Press. Copies should be available at Kelmscott House and from the US Morris Society by late spring 2007.
First Presence of Morris Edition Text
A beginning version of The Life and Death of Jason has been posted on-line, with images of the manuscript ("The Deeds of Jason") and Kelmscott text. For this see http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu. The PRB, the DNB and the ODNB
The original Dictionary of National Biography’s first editor Leslie Stephen famously complained six years after its inception in 1882 that "[t]hat damned thing goes on like a diabolical piece of machinery, always gaping for more copy, and I fancy at times that I shall be dragged into it and crushed into slips" (DNB 1912-1921). Stephen might not have been surprised to learn therefore that the DNB’s early-twenty-first century successor, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004; henceforth the "ODNB"), became the broadest collaborative intellectual effort ever undertaken in British studies. It cost twenty-six million pounds to assemble, benefited from the collective efforts of ten-thousand-odd contributors, and brought its readers fifty-four thousand biographical entries (a third of them entirely new), in sixty thousand physical and a hundred thousand virtual pages (the latter at www.oxforddnb.com) [ Brian Harrison, introduction to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, OUP, 2004, vol. 1, v-xix.]. In the words of the work’s general editor Brian Harrison, "[t]he shortage of articles on women, and the way their lives were treated, had come to seem perhaps the DNB’s most notorious weakness--and it was the one most frequently mentioned when opinions were canvassed on the need for a new dictionary" [Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford U P, 2004, vol. 1, ix]. As things have turned out, the new ODNB’s 688 new life-sketches of nineteenth-century women raised their representation from five to eight percent [Ibid., xvii]. The new editors also broadened somewhat the spectrum of its subjects’ class backgrounds, and added a number of ‘collective biographies,’ such as "Women Artists in Ruskin’s Circle, act. 1850s-1900," and "Women Traders and Artisans in London, act. c. 1200-c.1500." In addition, they introduced illustrations for eighteen percent of their subjects; eight of the ten entries I examined were graced by such reproductions--a tribute, perhaps, to the artistic aspirations and associations of their subjects. A major change in the ODNB is that it has been largely written by specialists in their subjects. Staff members drafted only nine percent of the ODNB’s entries, and most of its contributors were professional scholars who volunteered to write their entries [Ibid., ix]. By contrast, Leslie Stephen and his successor Sidney Lee chose many of the original DNB’s contributors from family, friends, former fellow students at Cambridge and Oxford and fellow members of London gentlemen’s clubs. Richard Garnett, for example (1855-1906), an editor, poet and writer of short tales as well as the Keeper of the British Museum, prepared two hundred six entries, five of the ten I examined among them. The only woman who signed entries to the DNB before 1901 (eighty-one in all) was Elizabeth Lee--Sidney Lee’s sister and household companion [Gillian Fenwick, Women and the Dictionary of National Biography: A Guide to DNB Volumes 1885-1985 and Missing Persons, Scholar Press, 1994, 6]. Here I will focus primarily on the ODNB’s entries for three well-known Pre-Raphaelite literary figures, Dante G. Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and William Morris, and secondarily on the entries for Jane Morris, May Morris, Maria Rossetti and Lucy Madox Brown Rossetti. I will gather my remarks under three rubrics: new entries, greatly improved entries, and entries better in some respects but worse in others. New Entries: In the first category of new or almost-new entries appear the ODNB’s brief lives of Jane Morris and Maria Rossetti (to whom Richard Garnett devoted a paragraph-long annex in his 1897 life of her sister Christina), and portraits of each appear in their respective entries. Not so coincidentally, both of these ‘new’ subjects were women--Maria Rossetti and Jane Morris, by Susan Elkin and Frank Sharp--and Sharp, coeditor of an edition of Jane Morris’s collected letters with Jan Marsh, had brought his subject Jane Morris to the attention of the ODNB editorial board. Candor and avoidance of certain now-obvious stereotypes mark these new entries. A (counterfactual) DNB entry for Jane Morris would surely have focused primarily on her domestic roles and near-lifelong invalidism, but Sharp’s entry for "Jane [née Burden] Morris, embroiderer and artist’s model" comments in some detail on her work for Morris and Co. and her affairs with Dante Rossetti and Wilfred Scawen Blunt, but makes no mention of her illness, the rearing of her daughters May and Jenny and the latter’s debilitating epilepsy, a source of great sorrow to her and her husband. Richard Garnett included a single paragraph on Maria Rossetti in his DNB life of her sister Christina. In this he described Maria as "the most practical" of the Rossettis and "the most attentive to domestic concerns," but added that she had also left "an adequate memorial of herself in ‘A Shadow of Dante: being an Essay towards studying himself, his World, and his Pilgrimage,’ (1871), a manual highly valued by Dante scholars." By contrast, Susan Elkin’s much more extensive ODNB life of "Rossetti, Maria Francesca (1827-1876), author and Anglican nun," illustrated with a winsome photograph of its unassuming subject, focuses on her early precocity, her linguistic gifts, her work as an Italian teacher, her frustrated desire for a classical education, her devoted adherence to the Oxford movement, and her principal publications, an Italian textbook and devotional book as well as A Shadow of Dante. Elkin also endeavors to give the reader a sense of Maria’s personal traits and temperament, and observes that she managed to fulfill her lifelong ambition to join the All Saints Sisterhood shortly after she became aware of the first symptoms of cancer. Greatly Improved Entries: In Richard Garnett’s brief DNB notice for Lucy Madox Brown Rossetti (1843-1894), he mentioned only five of her paintings, made no comment about their style or manner, and omitted a number of details others might have considered significant (that after her mother’s death when she was four, for example, her father had her educated away from home until she was twelve). He did end his entry with the sympathetic remark that "she was a genuine artist, who would have obtained an eminent place among painters but for the interruption of her career occasioned by domestic cares." Angela Thirlwell, by contrast, the author of William and Lucy: The Other Rossettis (2003), tells us in her ODNB entry that Lucy Rossetti was actually Emma Lucy Madox Brown Rossetti, presents a much more fully-nuanced account of the latter’s personal and intellectual and personal life, and canvasses briefly the sources of her artwork, political views, intellectual gifts and artistic ideals. Sadly, the distinguished portrait of Lucy Rossetti executed by her brother-in-law does not grace Thirwell’s entry. Garnett’s brief DNB-sketch of Christina Rossetti’s life (about a fifth the length of his entry for her brother Dante) praised her devotion "to domestic duties and works of charity" (as he did in his remarks about her sister Maria, quoted above), and disregarded, in his assertion that she had "enjoyed the same educational advantages as the rest of the [Rossetti] family," the simple fact that unlike her brothers she had no formal education. He also expressed personal regret that "[her Anglo-Catholicism] had the unfortunate result of causing an estrangement between herself and a suitor to whom she was deeply attached. This circumstance explains much that would otherwise be obscure in her poetry, and accounts for the melancholy and even morbid character of most of it. Few have expressed the agonies of disappointed and hopeless love with equal poignancy, and much of the same spirit pervades her devotional poetry also." Garnett did admire "Goblin Market," which he found "original in conception, style, and structure, as imaginative as ‘the Ancient Mariner,’" but used this phrase as a rhetorical pivot for a summary judgment that "[e]xcept in ‘Goblin Market’ . . . she never approaches [Dante’s] imaginative or descriptive power. Everywhere else she is, like most poetesses, purely subjective, and in no respect creative." Dismissing at length Rossetti’s six books of devotional writings as "meritorious in their way, but scarcely affecting to be literature," he concluded that ". . . her reputation would certainly have stood higher if she had produced less or burned more. No excision, however, could have removed the taint of disease which clings to her most beautiful poetry, whether secular or religious, ‘Goblin Market’ excepted." Four decades of Rossetti critics have sought to refute these dismissive judgments, and her admirers bring forth a dozen or more articles, books and editions each year. The editors of the ODNB did not assign Christina Rossetti’s four-page entry to one of these Rossetti scholars, but to Lindsay Duguid, a fiction-editor for the Times Literary Supplement. The entry is graced by an early sketch of Christina by her brother Dante (who merits eight pages in the ODNB), but Duguid focuses gratuitously on her appearance and the debilitating effects of Grave’s disease in ways often spared her chloral-addicted brother ("Photographs of her from the 1870s show a stout, swarthy, undistinguished-looking Victorian matron"). Duguid briefly surveys Rossetti’s posthumous reputation and recent critical reception, but imposes Freudian readings which tend to slight the range of Rossetti’s writings as well as recent critical views of them. Like Garnett and most other commentators, Duguid focuses attention on "Goblin Market," and praises "[Rossetti’s] strangely direct, assertive manner--so different from the muffled voice of her brother’s poetry," but adds a caveat that "the poetry seems more heroic when set in the context of what seems to the modern reader to be an unimaginably restricted life. . . . her pious scrupulousness seems at odds with the heartfelt emotion expressed in her poetry." Acknowledging recent "reassessments which place [Rossetti] at the head of nineteenth-century women’s writing, itself newly reassessed," Duguid finally concludes that "[Ford Madox Ford’s judgment of Rossetti as] a modern writer is the one which stands." Entries Better in Some Respects but Not Others: Richard Garnett’s DNB entry for Dante Rossetti drew heavily on William Rossetti’s 1885 memoir of his brother, and blended a measure of censure of Rossetti’s character and graphic descriptions of his personal problems under the influence of chloral with a perceptive and sometimes effusive account of the different stages of his work. Here, for example, is what he had to say about Rossetti’s poetry: In his eight-page ODNB entry for Dante Rossetti, J. C. Bullen, Professor of English at Reading University and the author of The Pre-Raphaelite Body: Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry and Criticism (1998), has furnished a detailed account of Rossetti’s life and intertwined endeavors which gives emphasis to the development of his painting, his complicated negotiations with his patrons and the ambivalent responses of his Victorian audience. Bullen tells us quite straightforwardly about Rossetti’s affair with Jane Morris and the circumstances of Elizabeth Siddal’s suicide (both absent from Garnett’s account)--and his narration of the exhumation of Rossetti’s poems from his wife’s grave is a small masterpiece of metaphorical understatement: "On 5 October Dr Llewellyn Williams was engaged to disinfect the manuscript volume of poems which had been carefully removed by gravediggers. The collection was damaged by water, and -- in keeping with the whole macabre, rather Jacobean incident--‘Jenny’ had been pierced by a worm." Rather surprisingly and in marked contrast to Garnett’s remarks, Bullen makes few personal evaluations of Rossetti’s poetry, but confines himself for the most part to a canvass of its critical reception, and concludes somewhat debatably that "Rossetti has remained much better known for his poetry [than his art]." He alludes briefly to Jan Marsh’s substantial biography, and acknowledges that "[t]he electronic archive published on the internet by the University of Virginia under the direction of Jerome McGann provides access to both Rossetti’s written and his art work," but slights this on-line edition’s apparatus of and textual, head- and footnotes and multiple versions when he asserts that "a scholarly edition of [Rossetti’s] writing has yet to be published." Otherwise Bullen’s entry seems the most current brief account of Rossetti’s life, work and interrelations with his period. William Morris died in 1896, six years after the cutoff date for inclusion in the first series of DNB volumes but before 1900, when he would have become eligible for an entry in one of the many twentieth-century supplements, and many other seekers may have had difficulty finding J. W. Mackail’s life of him, buried away in volume iii of the first DNB supplement. Mackail, the Burne-Jones’ son-in-law, classical scholar, Oxford Professor of Poetry (1906-11) and author of the two-volume Life of William Morris (1899), is still considered the best contemporary source we have for Morris’s life (with qualifications noted below), and his DNB entry for Morris was superior to the others I have examined in style and literary (if not social or artistic) acuity. Markedly less sympathetic with Morris’ politics, Mackail asserted with distaste that Morris was "conspicuous alike by means, education and character" among his comrades in the Socialist League. Mackail also dispatched Morris’ work for the Eastern Question Association and the founding of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in two sentences, and mistitled as well as misdated Hopes and Fears for Art, 1882, Morris’ first volume of essays on social topics which he cited as The Aims of Art, 1887, puzzling mistakes for an otherwise careful scholar. Finally, Mackail made only one passing allusion to Jane, May and Jenny Morris, in his remark that "Morris and his family" were forced to leave the Firm’s premises in 1872. Mackail’s countervailing strengths in this essay lay in his summary assessments of Morris’ literary work, which I cannot reproduce in full. Here are two excepts: MacCarthy may lack a sympathetic ear for the quality of Morris’ poetry, but prose style and organizational skills are fluent and persuasive. In her ODNB entry she also weaves together deftly the many concurrent strands of Morris’s life in ways which present the details and likely motivations of his wide-ranging endeavors with perceptive and empathetic insight. MacCarthy’s ability to give new resonance to an oft-told tale is evident in passages such as the following: Morris’s visionary novel News from Nowhere became one of the essential early twentieth-century socialist texts, translated into numerous languages and widely distributed in Russia in pre-revolutionary years. In Britain his political influence ran through from R H. Tawney and G. D. H. Cole to Clement Attlee and the founders of the post-war-welfare state. . . . From the 1970s onwards Morris’s protectiveness of the environment led him to be recognized as a founding father of green politics. Morris’s tangible legacy is in his works of art. In spite of attempts by such modernist critics as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner to claim Morris as a modernist, he had come to be defined by the end of the twentieth century as a conservative radical designer. Morris’s wallpapers and textiles, still in quantity production a hundred years after his death, make him arguably the most successful industrial designer ever known. Morris & Co. stained glass appears in retrospect as one of the wonders of Victorian church art. The Kelmscott press generated the private press movement, important in its influence on twentieth-century European and American typography and book design. . . . In his grand and sympathetic view of human potential Morris was both of his own Victorian age and far beyond it. E. P. Thompson described him correctly as ‘a man whom history will never overtake’ (E. P. Thompson, 730). Passed over in the DNB twentieth-century supplement for those who died between 1930 and 1940, May Morris appeared belatedly in its Missing Persons volume, published in 1994, only ten years before publication of the ODNB. In her entry for this supplementary volume, Linda Parry, author of William Morris Textiles (1983) and Textiles of the Arts and Crafts Movement (1988), was able to take into account new information which had appeared in Jan Marsh’s Jane and May Morris (1986). Parry also provided an expert’s overview of May Morris’ activities as a "designer and embroideress," and added her speculation "that [Morris’s] preoccupation with her promisingly clever older sister, Jenny (Jane Alice), caused unhappiness in May’s childhood and further spurred her on to succeed in the practical arts." Jan Marsh’s entry for May Morris in the ODNB, accompanied by a graceful picture of May looking down at her work, is about three times as long as Parry’s, and comments more extensively on her childhood influences as well as her publications, exhibitions and several of her designs. Parry, for example, had recorded that ". . . in 1907 [May Morris] helped found the Women’s Guild of Arts," but Marsh notes more pointedly that "[a]s women were excluded from the professional craft association the Art Workers’ Guild, in 1907 May Morris founded the Women’s Guild of Arts, remaining president until 1935." Parry also made little mention of May Morris’s political allegiances, but Marsh observes that "[a]s a young woman May Morris followed her father politically, joining the Socialist League alongside figures like Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling, with whom she shared a passion for the new drama, acting with them in a private production of Henrik Ibsen’s controversial A Doll’s House in 1886, as well as the celebrated Socialist League burlesque The Tables Turned, or Nupkins Awakened (1887), written by her father." Parry briefly characterized May’s last twenty-four years at Kelmscott Manor as a period in which "she involved herself in village life with all her characteristic energy and enthusiasm until her death . . . , " but Marsh adds that "during the First World War [May Morris] helped to establish the local Women’s Institute, and . . . built two cottages in her mother’s memory and, in 1934, a village hall to mark the centenary of her father’s birth; the architect for both projects was Ernest Gimson, and the opening of the hall was attended by the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald." These informative ancillary observations and the entry’s full list of sources, likenesses and archival materials make Marsh’s entry the best introductory account we have of May Morris’ life. What conclusions might be drawn from comparisons of these two very different but sequentially related reference-works? Was David Amigoni correct when he asserted that "We need . . . to preserve the old DNB: it possesses a vital textual afterlife as a linguistically and culturally dense insight into the complex business of late Victorian life writing"? [Journal of Victorian Culture, 10.2 (Winter 2005): 287] If what Amigoni had in mind was a straight observation that the literary judgments of Victorian ‘men of taste’ were sufficiently and interesting and informative in themselves to warrant continued retrieval of the DNB’s venerable tomes from their storage-vaults (and the ODNB conveniently provides the earlier versions along with each current entry), he was right. Thoughtful and well-read Victorian biographers such as Garnett offer us the considered opinions of a cultured readers of their class and time with a purity later scholars could never begin to reconstruct. Those opinions had horizons and unexamined limitations which they could not anticipate--and so do ours. Nonetheless, for teaching as well as reference, the ODNB will almost by definition be indispensable. Its illustrations and more readable format make it as attractive and accessible as its more modest American rival, the more pedagogically oriented Dictionary of Literary Biography, and a century of research and interpretation have made it possible for its biographies to explore wider aspects of Victorian social reality, and avoid opinionated excesses of the sort which made the most idiosyncratic DNB entries either quaintly charming or infuriating.
The ODNB’s accomplishments are sufficiently many so that it might seem captious or utopian to ask for more. But the project’s administrators have fortunately solicited more biographies and revisions, and promise to include them in periodic on-line emendations and reprinted volumes of the Dictionary in years to come. Perhaps those who read them may be inspired to seek out and complete Victorian lives yet untold. If so, and if we are fortunate, our successors may acknowledge our efforts as they in turn enter the endless ascending helix of the ‘hermeneutic circle.’ RED HOUSE
CAST MRS. BURNE-JONES:
SETTING A respectable house in London, June 1898.
SCENE ONE: A COUCH to the left, a BED to the right, and a PIANO at center. EMPTY FRAMES of wood, suspended at right angles. They could be paintings or windows or portals.
MR. BURNE-JONES
At the left door: NED in long coat, soft wool jacket, plum trousers, looking green and ill and leaning heavily on GEORGIE, dressed in a cheap and cheerful day dress. NED
Georgie carries a pair of suitcases, a GREEN UMBRELLA, a parasol, and, of course, her husband. NED & MR. BURNE-JONES
Mr. Burne-Jones removes his hat. Ned stands alone. Steady on, now. Off we go! Ned steps over the threshold and stumbles. Mr. Burne-Jones tosses his hat at Mrs. Burne-Jones. GEORGIE
MRS. BURNE-JONES
GEORGIE & MRS. BURNE-JONES
MRS. BURNE-JONES
GEORGIE
NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
NED & MR. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
Mr. Burne-Jones hands his cane to Mrs. Burne-Jones. NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES & NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
GEORGIE
MR. BURNE-JONES
NED
Georgie helps Ned towards the bed, as Mr. Burne-Jones crosses towards the couch with Mrs. Burne-Jones following. Neither couple is aware of the other as they pass in the center. GEORGIE
MRS. BURNE-JONES
GEORGIE
MR. BURNE-JONES
Mr. Burne-Jones removes his gloves. GEORGIE
Ned sits on the bed. MR. BURNE-JONES & NED
Mr. Burne-Jones and Ned snap their fingers. GEORGIE
MRS. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
Georgie kneels before Ned. Mr. Burne-Jones sits on the couch. GEORGIE
Ned nods. Georgie smiles. As Mr. Burne-Jones speaks, Georgie removes Ned’s coat and jacket. MR. BURNE-JONES
He holds his gloves out. Ned wiggles his feet. MR. BURNE-JONES & NED
Mrs. Burne-Jones takes the gloves, and begins removing his scarf. Georgie removes Ned’s shoes and socks. MR. BURNE-JONES
Georgie carefully sets aside Ned’s coat, jacket, shoes, and socks.
MR. BURNE-JONES (cont.)
Beat. MRS. BURNE-JONES
Mrs. Burne-Jones exits with scarf, gloves, cane, and hat. Beat. MR. BURNE-JONES
Beat. I think. NED
Beat. Georgie goes to a frame and looks ‘outside’. I didn’t mean the shutters and blinds. GEORGIE
NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
He settles in and closes his eyes. And on this day, especially. GEORGIE
MR. BURNE-JONES
GEORGIE
Mr. Burne-Jones has dozed off. And Ned- Oh, Ned. NED
GEORGIE
NED
GEORGIE
Ned smells, and makes a face. I admit its very pungent, and yet, it doesn’t suffocate.
NED
GEORGIE
NED
Ned puts his hands over his eyes. GEORGIE
NED
GEORGIE
NED
GEORGIE
NED
GEORGIE
NED
GEORGIE
NED
GEORGIE
NED
GEORGIE
NED
GEORGIE
NED
GEORGIE
NED
GEORGIE
She grabs the green umbrella and opens it. Ned leans over to vomit. Georgie inverts the umbrella beneath his chin. NED
Georgie holds the umbrella stoically.
GEORGIE
NED
Mrs. Burne-Jones enters beneath the following lines. GEORGIE
NED
Brief tableau at the bed. Mrs. Burne-Jones sniffs the air, then shakes her head and goes to the sofa. MRS. BURNE-JONES
No response. She sits at the piano and plays an loud opening chord. Mr. Burne-Jones awakens. MR. BURNE-JONES
MRS. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
Ned has dry heaves. Georgie pats his shoulder. Tableau. It’s simply too brutal to go anywhere at all. Why leave the house you like and the things you know and pack yourself off to somewhere perfectly filthy and drab? MRS. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
Beat. "It is gone." Mrs. Burne-Jones touches his forehead. MRS. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
MRS. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
MRS. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
GEORGIE
NED
MRS. BURNE-JONES
Georgie sings a provençal folk song softly: "Çe Fut en Mai". Mrs. Burne-Jones stands. MR. BURNE-JONES
MRS. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
MRS. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
MRS. BURNE-JONES
Beat. I couldn’t believe it was so- Unchanged. After thirty eight years it persists, defiant. One could recognize all the little lanes and roads and empty orchards. The fields round the garden were untouched, and oh, you should have seen the garden. The apple blossom was out, but none had yet gone to fruit. The great roses hedges were taller than ever and denser and thicker, but peering through I could still see the steep roofed well tucked away in the courtyard.
Georgie finishes her song.
MR. BURNE-JONES
Beat. MRS. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
Beat. MR. BURNE-JONES & NED
GEORGIE
MR. BURNE-JONES & NED
GEORGIE
MRS. BURNE-JONES
MR. BURNE-JONES
Mrs. Burne-Jones plays. After a moment, Georgie sings. The vocals and accompaniment synch up seamlessly. There were three ravens sat on a tree,
Down in yonder green field,
The women glimpse one another, and cease. NED & MR. BURNE-JONES
The women rise, unable to see one another, and very slowly cross to center. GEORGIE & MRS. BURNE-JONES
GEORGIE
MRS. BURNE-JONES
GEORGIE
MRS. BURNE-JONES
NBJ
NED
MR. BURNE-JONES
GEORGIE & MRS. BURNE-JONES
Although they cannot see each other, the women reach out and touch one another’s hand.
End of Scene. APPENDIX A : "Çe Fut en Mai" – first seven verses of the song sung in scene 1.
APPENDIX B: The Three Ravens, from Thomas Ravenscroft’s 1616 edition of "Melismata". There were three ravens sat on a tree,
Down in yonder green field,
His hawks they fly so eagerly
She lifted up his bloody head,
She buried him before the prime,
God send every gentleman
Morris Crossword Puzzle Keepsake prepared by Betsy G. Fryberger with David Donaldson and Jane Harris
ACROSS 1. Destination of the haymakers
DOWN 1. A capital socialist
This puzzle was first published in March 1975 on the occasion of an exhibition "Morris & Co." held at the Stanford Art Gallery (now the Cantor Arts Center), Stanford, California, and is reproduced by the kind permission of Betsy G. Fryberger. Conferences and Calls for Papers "Birth of the Bestseller: The 19th Century Book in Britain, France, and Beyond"
Victorian Secrets
Victorian Landscape Descriptions
Size Matters: Scale and Proportion in Victorian Literature and Culture
Victorian Emotions (special issue, Victorian Studies)
The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP)
COLOPHON This newsletter was written and edited by Shannon L. Rogers. 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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