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Date: 18 December 2002 00:00 -0500
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Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 16 Dec 2002 to 17 Dec 2002 (#2002-346)
There are 6 messages totalling 196 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Singers (2)
2. Sale of Young Children
3. Promoting Victorian studies
4. Arnold & the function of literature and criticism
5. Arnold and the job market
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Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 10:00:52 -0000
From: "Corrick, Georgia" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Singers
Dear list
Can anyone direct me to books on 19th century women singers? I am interested
particularly in Mary Davies and Edith Wynne.
Thanks.
Georgia Corrick
[log in to unmask]
www.martincorrick.co.uk
www.catswhiskers.fsnet.co.uk
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Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 12:38:15 -0000
From: Andrew Mangham <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Sale of Young Children
Apparently, in London, "baby farming" was a common thing. Poor mothers =
(who did not need another mouth to feed) would pay a one-off fee to a =
woman or a couple who would then (supposedly) get the baby adopted by =
better off people. It didn't always work out that way, however, as the =
trials of Margaret Walters (1870), Ada Williams (1899), and Amelia Sach =
and Annie Waters (1903), show. These women bought the children and then =
dumped them in the Thames (or used some other tried and tested method of =
baby disposal), while the mothers thought their children would have nice =
middle-class lives. The price of children - as charged by these women - =
was nothing like =A35 - more like a shilling. It would go a long way to =
explaining why Victorians found themselves tripping over dead children =
all the time.
C.f. Virginia B. Morris, _Double Jeopardy_ for more info.
All the best,
Andrew Mangham.
__________________________________________________________________
Andrew Mangham
Department of English Literature
The University of Sheffield
Shearwood Mount
Shearwood Road
Sheffield
South Yorkshire
UK
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sensation_novel
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Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 10:02:59 -0800
From: K Peck <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Promoting Victorian studies
One way for Victorianists to promote interest in what they do is by joining
a regional organization such as the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies
Association of the Western United States (VISAWUS), the Midwest Victorian
Studies Association (MVSA), etc. Holding office, distributing a newsletter
to colleagues and friends, sponsoring activities locally for members of the
public as well as academics can all draw positive attention to the field.
Forming a national umbrella group with strong regional groups as members
would promote Victorian studies to an even wider public. As an example of a
successful model I offer the Jane Austen Society of North America whose
membership has increased over the years as its annual conference has moved
on a cycle through the different regions. (The films and television
programs haven't hurt either!)
Regardless of the waxing and waning of academic departments, Victorianists,
drawing on the interdisciplinary strength that underlies Victorian studies,
will always be the best promoters of their work.
Kathleen Peck
Executive Director
VISAWUS
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 12:52:40 +0000
From: Paula Gillett <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Singers
In response to Georgia Corrick's inquiry regarding Edith Wynne and Mary
Davies:
> See the listings on Wynne, Sarah Edith ("The Nightingale of Wales") in
> James D. Brown and Stephen S. Stratton, British Musical Biography and in
> Oscar Thompson, Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, 4th ed, 1946. Other
> sources are listed in <Women in Music An Encyclopedic Biobibliography,>
> 2nd ed., vol 2, by Don L. Hixon and Don A Hennessee. See the same
> sources for Mary Davies, as well as the 1911-12 ed. of Grove's Dictionary
> of Music and Musicians, ed. J.A. Fuller Maitland. I include a brief
> reference in <Musical Women in England, 1870-1914:'Encroaching on All
> Man's Privileges'> (St. Martin's Press/Macmillan, 2000) to an 1893
> interview with Davies published in "The Young Woman"; Davies, best known
> as a ballad singer, expressed strong support for women's suffrage and for
> the election of women to Parliament.
I hope some of the above will be helpful.
Paula Gillett
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Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 14:29:11 -0600
From: "John P. Farrell" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Arnold & the function of literature and criticism
As a card-carrying Arnoldian, I have to express my support for Patrick
Scott's wonderful jeremiad. But my own thoughts are not quite so
dire. If the literary is not simply the political in sequined disguise,
but a genuinely trans-political discourse (as I firmly believe) that fact
will re-emerge from our current contentions.
Prof. John P. Farrell
The University of Texas at Austin
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Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 18:10:37 -0500
From: Gage McWeeny <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Arnold and the job market
The invocation of Arnold in this discussion is a really interesting one, and
I wonder if his significance in general, and the significance of "Literature
and Science" in particular to our own thin job market might be specified a
little more.
Certainly the conditions under which literature is taught today differs
enormously from the role that Arnold was attempting to elaborate for
criticism in the last third of the nineteenth century. As an earlier
discussant noted, literary criticism as we know it was not conducted
primarily within the English university in this period (rather, it
flourished in periodicals), nor was Arnold powerfully interested in
establishing its place as part of the university curriculum. Arnold's
"Literature and Science" evolved in part as a reponse to T.H. Huxley's 1880
lecture "Science and Education," which suggested that the physical sciences
deserved a more prominent place in higher education than literature. One of
the originating discourses of modern criticism, then, is elaborated
precisely in response to the degree that the status of literature, and its
correlative critical discourse of criticism, seemed to be under pressure.
In other words, historical threats to the social or institutional status of
literary study aren't just threats to our own profession as teachers, but
might be at least partly constitutive of this profession.
(This can be noted at the level of pedagogical practice as well. As John
Guillory has argued in his recent article in Profession and in lectures,
criticism as we know it from I.A. Richards and others, developed first as a
pedagogical technique to compensate for the fact that students began to
consider literature as a subject of not enough value to study it on their
own time--no matter how bad the lecture--as they did with other subjects.)
While I think I'm as rabidly pro-Victorianist as anyone on the list, my
sense is that budget cuts under a faltering North American economy won't be
cured by better p.r. In fact, the great attractiveness, energy, and
intelligence of work in the nineteenth century, which draws a large number
of graduate students to the field--who then fail to find jobs--could be part
of the problem!
Best,
Gage McWeeny
(graduate student, and in need of a job)
Princeton University
Department of English
McCosh 22
Princeton, NJ 08544-1016
609-258-4060
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End of VICTORIA Digest - 16 Dec 2002 to 17 Dec 2002 (#2002-346)
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