---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: 03 October 2002 00:00 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 1 Oct 2002 to 2 Oct 2002 (#2002-271)
There are 32 messages totalling 1164 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Literary Approaches to Poverty (5)
2. Poetry anthologies, contd.
3. Hopkins query
4. CFP: Thinking About Progress, 1800-1850 (11/8/02; 4/4-5/05, London)
5. Grill Park Road/dubious "hotel" (2)
6. VICTORIA (3)
7. Renaming Thackery (was "Thackeray") (4)
8. Books on Florence by British Tourists 1900 (2)
9. "Drawing-room Versifiers" (was Re: VICTORIA) (5)
10. auto-quoting on VICTORIA
11. Concise Edition
12. Choosing Editions od 19C texts
13. Walter Scott imitators
14. Poetry anthologies/Versifiers
15. Blandness and Drawing-Room Versifiers (2)
16. Poetry anthologies
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 07:34:31 -0400
From: Suzanne Keen <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Literary Approaches to Poverty
Dear Collegaues on the list:
I turn to you after making the dispiriting discovery that Arthur
Morrison's _Child of the Jago_ (or indeed any other Morrison) is
unavailable for order. I am planning a course for sophomores on
Literary Approaches to Poverty, and my scheme was to assemble a
month-long unit of reading from Victorian literature. Now I find that
enormous Gaskell novels are the only thing in print. Given that I have
only about a month, length matters. Do you have any suggestions? Any
genre, so long as it's available and in some way or another "literary."
Thanks in advance.
Suzanne Keen
Professor of English
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 07:59:50 -0400
From: Patrick Scott <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Poetry anthologies, contd.
What is very annoying about the Concise Broadview (which I am using in
spite of these reservations next semester) is that serious poets (e.g.
Clough) get seriously shortchanged to allow space for drawing-room
versifiers. This is not the evolution of the canon, but a collapse of
judgment within the professional community.
Patrick Scott
Patrick Scott
Associate University Librarian for Special Collections
& Professor of English,
Rare Books & Special Collections,
Thomas Cooper Library,
University of South Carolina,
Columbia, SC 29208, USA.
Tel: 803-777-1275
Fax: 803-777-4661, attn Dr Scott
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 08:26:47 -0400
From: "Rodrick, Anne B." <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Literary Approaches to Poverty
Hi, Suzanne:
I do--am doing right now--a freshman humanities course called "Hard
Times: Wealth, Poverty, and Responsibility in Victorian England." I
use 4 novels--they do take up a lot of time--but for what it's worth, my
students really liked "Mary Barton," are fairly intrigued by "Felix
Holt," and still face "Hard Times" (literally and figuratively, I
suspect) and "Marcella." I use the Broadview versions of all of them
because, esp. with "Hard Times," the appendices and the notes tend to be
good. The first time I taught this class, "Marcella" was not in print
and I used Engels' "Condition of hte Working Classes," which was a huge
hit. If you think it would help, I can send you a copy of my syllabus.
The humanities course here is supposed to "introduce freshmen to
questions of ethics" and the topics are very wide-ranging (last year I
team-taught a humanities course called "Perspectives on the Holocaust")
so I'm not taking a strictly literary approach. (I confess I try to
lobby students to at least consider history as a major during the time I
have them in my clutches in this class.)
Good luck!
Anne Rodrick
Assistant Professor of History
Wofford College
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 13:45:27 +0100
From: Mike Newman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Literary Approaches to Poverty
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> I turn to you after making the dispiriting discovery that Arthur
> Morrison's _Child of the Jago_ (or indeed any other Morrison) is
> unavailable for order. I am planning a course for sophomores on
> Literary Approaches to Poverty, and my scheme was to assemble a
> month-long unit of reading from Victorian literature. Now I find that
> enormous Gaskell novels are the only thing in print. Given that I have
> only about a month, length matters. Do you have any suggestions? Any
> genre, so long as it's available and in some way or another "literary."
Gissing's "New Grub Street" springs to mind as a manageably sized text
which sits at the very interface of literature and poverty.
I believe it remains in print on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mike
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 15:08:25 +0000
From: Emma Mason <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Hopkins query
Colleagues,
In *The Advantage of Lyric*, Barbara Hardy writes that 'Hopkins thought that
all poetry was love poetry.' Does anyone know where Hopkins says this? Many
thanks in advance.
Emma Mason
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:40:36 -0400
From: Meri-Jane Rochelson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Literary Approaches to Poverty
Gissing's *The Nether World* is a good choice, though it's also long. Its
descriptions of poverty are comparable to Morrison's.
Meri-Jane Rochelson
Florida International University
----- Original Message -----
From: "Suzanne Keen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 7:34 AM
Subject: Re: Literary Approaches to Poverty
> Dear Collegaues on the list:
>
> I turn to you after making the dispiriting discovery that Arthur
> Morrison's _Child of the Jago_ (or indeed any other Morrison) is
> unavailable for order. I am planning a course for sophomores on
> Literary Approaches to Poverty, and my scheme was to assemble a
> month-long unit of reading from Victorian literature. Now I find that
> enormous Gaskell novels are the only thing in print. Given that I have
> only about a month, length matters. Do you have any suggestions? Any
> genre, so long as it's available and in some way or another "literary."
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Suzanne Keen
> Professor of English
> Washington and Lee University
> Lexington, VA 24450
>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 15:45:04 +0100
From: David Clifford <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: CFP: Thinking About Progress, 1800-1850 (11/8/02; 4/4-5/05, London)
Moving Forwards, Looking Back: Thinking about progress 1800-1850
Friday 4 -- Saturday 5 April 2003, PLEASE NOTE NEW DATES
Senate House, University of London, UK
Keynote speakers:
Professor Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck College, University of London)
Professor Peter Bowler (Queens University, Belfast)
Professor James Chandler (University of Chicago)
Professor Annie Janowitz (QMW, University of London)
Second Call for Papers
What did people think about progress in the years 1800-1850? Did they
conceive of the changes happening in their world as improvement or
decline; did they see themselves as moving forward, or were they looking
back? Did they see themselves at the start of a new age of technological
improvement and social reform, or did they view the huge changes taking
place around them as a threat to tradition?
The great age of progress is often regarded as the period after the Great
Exhibition, but the decades before this saw a ferment of innovative
developments in fields ranging from industry to music. We invite papers
from across disciplines on aspects of early nineteenth-century
progressivism, representations of progress and reactions to progress.
We are particularly interested in submission on the following themes:
Progress in the visual arts
Nostalgia
Millenarianism
The progress of the sciences
Progress and religion
Abolitionism, emancipation and enfranchisement
Anti-progressivists
New movements in criticism
Technological advances
Abstracts on earlier themes are also welcome:
European thinking on progress and its influence in Britain
Fictions of progress
The improvement of Man
Conservation
The forward march of history
Revolutions
Proponents of the new
Popular protests against progress
The Poor Law
The progress of Empire
Female progressives
Metaphors of progress
Pessimism
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent by 8 November 2002 to
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]
Organisers:
Nicola Bown, School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, Malet
Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK.
David Clifford, Homerton College, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2PH UK.
E-mail submission is preferred, but no attachments please.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:46:45 -0400
From: Y S Lee <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Grill Park Road/dubious "hotel"
Dear VICTORIAnists,
I'm reading Thomas Burke's _The Wind and the Rain: A Book of Confessions_
and am perplexed by a reference to a "hotel" in Grill Park Road, London,
ca 1901. I've checked an 1889 map of London, the "Lost London Streets"
website and an A to Z, but can't find any mention of this road. Could
anyone suggest another way of searching for this address? Or does "Grill
Park" have any slang significance? (It's possible that the road is
fictional but far from certain.)
My second query is about the business of this hotel. Burke describes it
thus:
"This was a place no bigger than an ordinary house, and almost dark.
Nobody at the door; no carriages about; no long windows showing silver and
glass. Although its door was open, it looked as though it were shut up...
I went through the door into the little hall, which had a smell that
didn't seem to belong to a Temperance Hotel, but recalled the parlour of
'The Barge Aground' [a pub]... The hall was dark, and the doors looked
very private. There was no noise of servants or guests, or the rattle of
plates; no bells; no footsteps. And yet it was only half-past seven: too
early for everybody to be in bed. A funny hotel altogether."
Burke then describes his first night at the hotel after being hired:
"All night that hotel was filled with strange, quiet sounds. Feet went
slowly up and down its stairs. Doors clicked. Floor-boards creaked. There
were long whisperings in the passage where my bedroom was... What business
could be going on in a hotel at three o'clock in the morning? And, since
so many people were engaged in it, why the whispering and creeping? Why
were they afraid to make a noise? What were those quiet whistles for? What
was that rumbling noise? What was that husky voice saying? Who was that
_crawling_ down the passage, and making noises like being ill? What was
that rustling noise against the door? All night long these muffled sounds
persisted. Talk-talk-talk, pad-pad-pad, slither and slide, and low
laughter."
Burke is only 14 or 15 years old in this passage but he's not entirely an
innocent: he refers earlier to the "greasy murmurs" of boys having sex in
the dormitory of his boarding school. Yet he works at the hotel for 6
months without seeming to know anything more about its business and is
removed from it by a family friend who treats the Grill Park Rd address as
notorious and advises him not to mention to anyone where he has been.
I can only surmise that the "hotel" is a brothel of some kind, but the
passage seems excessively sinister. Does anyone have any other
suggestions?
Many thanks,
Ying Lee
Queen's University
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 09:44:30 -0500
From: Herbert Tucker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA
Everybody who looks will see, though not all may deplore, what
Patrick Scott points to here.
Dorothy Mermin and I strove to keep the change long, while not
disregarding canon-evolutionary change, in the Harcourt anthology
that came out a year ago and that is now pretty reasonably priced,
into the bargain. Information about it is available from the
publisher (search under Thomson Learning) or from yours truly.
-------------------
> What is very annoying about the Concise Broadview (which I am using
in
> spite of these reservations next semester) is that serious poets
(e.g.
> Clough) get seriously shortchanged to allow space for drawing-room
> versifiers. This is not the evolution of the canon, but a collapse
of
> judgment within the professional community.
> Patrick Scott
----------------------
Herbert F. Tucker
Professor of English
(University of Virginia)
NYU in London
6 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3RA
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 11:30:38 -0400
From: "T.J. Collins" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: VICTORIA
Well, maybe "drawing-room versifiers" is a bit strong. And we certainly did
not intend to totally undermine the integrity of the profession-- just a
little. Cheers, Tom Collins.
-----Original Message-----
From: VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Herbert Tucker
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 10:45 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: VICTORIA
Everybody who looks will see, though not all may deplore, what
Patrick Scott points to here.
Dorothy Mermin and I strove to keep the change long, while not
disregarding canon-evolutionary change, in the Harcourt anthology
that came out a year ago and that is now pretty reasonably priced,
into the bargain. Information about it is available from the
publisher (search under Thomson Learning) or from yours truly.
-------------------
> What is very annoying about the Concise Broadview (which I am using
in
> spite of these reservations next semester) is that serious poets
(e.g.
> Clough) get seriously shortchanged to allow space for drawing-room
> versifiers. This is not the evolution of the canon, but a collapse
of
> judgment within the professional community.
> Patrick Scott
----------------------
Herbert F. Tucker
Professor of English
(University of Virginia)
NYU in London
6 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3RA
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:32:25 -0500
From: Martin A Danahay <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Renaming Thackery (was "Thackeray")
An article in my local paper informs me that a local council has decided to
rename "Thackeray Street" (not far from Emerson Street etc) as "Thackery
Street" because it is misspelled so frequently (Thackerey etc). This seems
an eminently sensible approach to me. I teach at a University that has a
"Carlisle Hall" and students constantly confuse it with Thomas Carlyle. I
suggest we follow the eminently practical approach of the Park Cities
council and rename all Calisles/Carlyles as "Carlile" to avoid any future
confusion. If anybody has any suggestions for cleaning up the admittedly
messy state of literary names I will be happy to forward them to the council
(how about "Emersen" to make it phonetic for example?)
Martin Danahay (henceforth Dannerhey)
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:39:21 -0500
From: SUBSCRIBE VICTORIA Paul <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Books on Florence by British Tourists 1900
Hello,
I am looking for a bibliography on books and publications by British
tourists on Florence around 1900, also descriptions of the "British colony"
in Florence. Does anyone know if "Miss Lavish" in Forster's "A Room with a
View" was modelled after a particular writer?
Best Regards,
Paul
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 13:28:37 -0300
From: rnemesva <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: "Drawing-room Versifiers" (was Re: VICTORIA)
Certainly Thomas Collins doesn't require any defending by me, but just to
support a fellow Broadview editor, let's be completely clear that the term
"drawing-room versifiers" is a not particularly subtle code for
non-canonical women poets, although by this point to say that Felicia
Hermans, Letitia Landon, or Michael Field are completely outside the canon
is probably inaccurate.
As to the professional community's "collapse of judgement," I can only say
I'll take more Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, or Elizabeth Barrett
Browning over Clough any day.
Richard Nemesvari (Chair)
Associate Professor
Department of English
St. Francis Xavier University
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
----- Original Message -----
From: T.J. Collins <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: VICTORIA
Well, maybe "drawing-room versifiers" is a bit strong. And we certainly did
not intend to totally undermine the integrity of the profession-- just a
little. Cheers, Tom Collins.
-----Original Message-----
From: VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society
[mailto:[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> ]On Behalf Of
Herbert Tucker
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 10:45 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: VICTORIA
Everybody who looks will see, though not all may deplore, what
Patrick Scott points to here.
Dorothy Mermin and I strove to keep the change long, while not
disregarding canon-evolutionary change, in the Harcourt anthology
that came out a year ago and that is now pretty reasonably priced,
into the bargain. Information about it is available from the
publisher (search under Thomson Learning) or from yours truly.
-------------------
> What is very annoying about the Concise Broadview (which I am using
in
> spite of these reservations next semester) is that serious poets
(e.g.
> Clough) get seriously shortchanged to allow space for drawing-room
> versifiers. This is not the evolution of the canon, but a collapse
of
> judgment within the professional community.
> Patrick Scott
----------------------
Herbert F. Tucker
Professor of English
(University of Virginia)
NYU in London
6 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3RA
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 12:41:48 -0400
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Literary Approaches to Poverty
Dear Suzanne,
I find that many of the texts I would suggest are also
out of print, such as Victorian Short Stories 2: The
Trials of Love, which has Arthur Morrison's "A Poor
Stick" (grim urban poverty, including a runaway wife
and a battered husband) and George's Moore's "A
Faithful Heart (prostitute becomes a mistress of a
terrible gentleman, who keeps her and their child in
grinding poverty)." Could you put together a packet
of stories, perhaps?
Almost anything by Hardy would be good; if the novels
are too long, all the stories are in print. The
students in my Victorian short story course love "The
Withered Arm," a tale about agricultural poverty that
is suffused with folk witchcraft. I know that
everything by Hesba Stretton is out of print, or I
would suggest her many Religious Tract Society novels
and stories as terse, harrowing depictions of late
Victorian poverty. But perhaps other RTS novels are
in print? Scottish Temperance Society novels are also
a possibility, as they depict the evils besetting the
drinking poor. I don't know if anything by Charlotte
Elizabeth Tonna is in print, but Helen Fleetwood
haunts me still, many years after reading its graphic
descriptions of men, women, and children running to
keep up with the machines. Finally, what of Frances
Trollope's Michael Armstrong, Factory Boy? Too long?
Good luck. The course sounds very good.
Deborah Denenholz Morse
The College of William and Mary
Quoting Suzanne Keen <[log in to unmask]>:
> Dear Collegaues on the list:
>
> I turn to you after making the dispiriting
> discovery that Arthur
> Morrison's _Child of the Jago_ (or indeed any
> other Morrison) is
> unavailable for order. I am planning a course
> for sophomores on
> Literary Approaches to Poverty, and my scheme
> was to assemble a
> month-long unit of reading from Victorian
> literature. Now I find that
> enormous Gaskell novels are the only thing in
> print. Given that I have
> only about a month, length matters. Do you have
> any suggestions? Any
> genre, so long as it's available and in some way
> or another "literary."
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Suzanne Keen
> Professor of English
> Washington and Lee University
> Lexington, VA 24450
>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 17:43:35 +0100
From: Jill Grey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Grill Park Road/dubious "hotel"
Have you tried the 1901 Census? It's currently accessible on-at
www.census.pro.gov.uk/ .
Jill
[log in to unmask]
> I'm reading Thomas Burke's _The Wind and the Rain:
> A Book of Confessions_ and am perplexed by a reference
> to a "hotel" in Grill Park Road, London, ca 1901. I've
> checked an 1889 map of London, the "Lost London Streets"
> website and an A to Z, but can't find any mention of
> this road. Could anyone suggest another way of searching
> for this address? .......................
> Ying Lee
> Queen's University
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 12:01:41 -0500
From: Patrick Leary <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: auto-quoting on VICTORIA
Just a quick reminder to all of us that any message posted to VICTORIA
should *not* have other, "auto-quoted" messages trailing from it. Many
email systems are set up so that when you use "reply," the message replied
to is appended in this way, but on a discussion list this practice makes
for enormously wasteful clutter, both in our mailboxes and in the list
archives. So, please, as a courtesy to your onlist colleagues, take a
moment before you send your message to VICTORIA and delete this material
from the bottom of your posting.
Many thanks,
Patrick
______________
Patrick Leary
listowner, VICTORIA
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 12:14:41 -0500
From: David Havird <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Drawing-room Versifiers" (was Re: VICTORIA)
rnemesva wrote:
> As to the professional community's "collapse of judgement," I can only say
> I'll take more Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, or Elizabeth Barrett
> Browning over Clough any day.
But E. Bronte and C. Rossetti and EBB are not "drawing-room versifiers." I
doubt that Patrick had these poets in mind.
DH
--
David Havird
Associate Dean of the College
Department of English
Centenary College of Louisiana
Shreveport, LA 71134-1188
http://personal.centenary.edu/~dhavird/
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 13:24:25 -0400
From: David Latane <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: VICTORIA
T.J. Collins wrote:
> Well, maybe "drawing-room versifiers" is a bit strong. And we certainly
> did not intend to totally undermine the integrity of the profession--
> just a little. Cheers, Tom Collins.
>
Me, I just regret the absence of punch-drinking billingsgate-spewing
rhymsters to balance the drawing-room versifiers!
David Latane
>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:26:34 -0700
From: "Peter H. Wood" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Renaming Thackery (was "Thackeray")
Martin Danahay/Dannerhey's comments will certainly meet with the
unqualified approval of those who, like myself, are enthusiastic readers of
Sir Arthur Conan Doil and his creations Shurlok Homes and Dr. Jon Wotson.
May this latest attempt to reform English spelling meet with the same fate
as those of the great Victorian playwright George Bernard Shaw (or Shor).
Do any list-members know when the Society for Simplified Spelling was
originally founded?
Peter Wood
<[log in to unmask]>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 14:30:05 -0300
From: Michael Manson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Concise Edition
Others may have problems with Collins and Rundle's selections. I find the
book very useful for my purposes, teaching a full year course at a small
institution to undergraduates many of whom do not have the ability to read
and think critically, unlike what I assume those at larger schools would
have. And the price is certainly better for my students almost all of whom
live in severly economically depressed communities near the university.
As for the collapse of judgement within the academic community, we ought to
remember that artists and scholars vilify each other for their loss of
judgement all the time and have been for centuries. Almost always, the
collapse of judgement seems to mean that there is disagreement with my
judgement, not that there is an absolute standard which has been breached.
Enough already.
Michael Manson, English
[log in to unmask]
English
University College of Cape Breton
Box 5300
Sydney, Nova Scotia B1P 6L2
(902) 563-1244
FAX (902) 562-0119
Stand the Gaffe
************************** NOTICE ***************************
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software and were found to be free from any known virus infections.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 13:40:48 -0400
From: David Latane <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Drawing-room Versifiers" (was Re: VICTORIA)
Richard Nemesvari
wrote:
> Certainly Thomas Collins doesn't require any defending by me, but just to
> support a fellow Broadview editor, let's be completely clear that the term
> "drawing-room versifiers" is a not particularly subtle code for
> non-canonical women poets, although by this point to say that Felicia
> Hermans, Letitia Landon, or Michael Field are completely outside the canon
> is probably inaccurate.
>
> As to the professional community's "collapse of judgement," I can only say
> I'll take more Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, or Elizabeth Barrett
> Browning over Clough any day.
>
>
Since nobody would ever put Bronte or Christina Rossetti (and few EBB)
in the DRV category, I don't think that's a valid choice.
Let's talk Eliza "The Old Arm-Chair" Cook instead of Clough, because I
think that's what Patrick was getting at.
And I might point out that there are plenty of male DRV, but they rarely
(never?) get anthologized. Anyone up for the later poetry of David "Casa
Wappy" Moir? (And speaking of him, all these anthologies are light on
Scottish, Irish, and Welsh poets).
David Latane
Victorians Institute: http://www.people.vcu.edu/~dlatane/VI.html
Stand Magazine: http://www.people.vcu.edu/~dlatane/stand.html
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 14:51:20 -0300
From: rnemesva <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Drawing-room Versifiers" (was Re: VICTORIA)
I couldn't agree with you more, but certainly for a time E.B.B. was
described largely as a purveyor of pretty little love ditties. I can
certainly remember anthologies in which Bronte, C. Rossetti, and Barrett
Browning were either absent altogether, or represented by only a few poems,
so that we could all enjoy large chunks of Clough. The Houghton and Stange
edition is a good example. My point is that we may come to experience a
much greater appreciation of authors who were widely dismissed as less
important than more "significant" figures, but only if they are available to
be experienced at all. I think this is an adequate response to David
Latane's comment on my original posting as well.
And my apologies to Patrick Leary for an earlier post in which I allowed too
many previous posts to remain attached.
Richard Nemesvari (Chair)
Associate Professor
Department of English
St. Francis Xavier University
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
An my apologies
----- Original Message -----
From: David <mailto:[log in to unmask]> Havird
To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 2:14 PM
Subject: Re: "Drawing-room Versifiers" (was Re: VICTORIA)
rnemesva wrote:
> As to the professional community's "collapse of judgement," I can only say
> I'll take more Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti, or Elizabeth Barrett
> Browning over Clough any day.
But E. Bronte and C. Rossetti and EBB are not "drawing-room versifiers." I
doubt that Patrick had these poets in mind.
DH
--
David Havird
Associate Dean of the College
Department of English
Centenary College of Louisiana
Shreveport, LA 71134-1188
http://personal.centenary.edu/~dhavird/
<http://personal.centenary.edu/~dhavird/>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 14:55:18 -0400
From: Patrick Scott <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: "Drawing-room Versifiers" (was Re: VICTORIA)
But Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Bronte, and Christina Rossetti
were in the teaching canon long ago (certainly thirty odd years ago,
when I had to check I'd got in what was then expected, for a textbook).
All Victorian poets are uneven (and some of what is now added from EBB
isn't particularly good, even if she's a good poet in other works): but
Clough in Amours de Voyage was a serious poet in a way that some of the
other additions (not EBB, EB, and CR) don't seem obviously to be. The
additions are arguably interesting in cultural ways, but then so is
almost anything, properly interpreted. It seems to me unarguable that
there is a broad fringe of blandness around recent assertions by
Victorianists about literary quality, and that many good poets are
getting superannuated in this blandness.
Patrick
Patrick Scott
Associate University Librarian for Special Collections
& Professor of English,
Rare Books & Special Collections,
Thomas Cooper Library,
University of South Carolina,
Columbia, SC 29208, USA.
Tel: 803-777-1275
Fax: 803-777-4661, attn Dr Scott
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 12:32:28 -0700
From: Sheldon Goldfarb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Renaming Thackery (was "Thackeray")
Perhaps the local council should adopt one of Thackeray's more easily
spelled pseudonyms rather than using the author's real name.
I suggest Titmarsh.
Alternatively, the council could rename all of its streets Smith.
Sheldon Goldfarb
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 20:41:18 +0100
From: Chris Willis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Choosing Editions od 19C texts
Hi!
I wondered if any list members would like to comment on what factors make
them recommend particular editions of 19C texts to their students (e.g.
critical apparatus, price, availability, guarantee of staying in print, use
of illustrations, or whatever)? Is there any general consensus of opinion
on what makes a really good (or really bad!) edition of a 19C text?
Thanks in advance for your help.
All the best
Chris
================================================================
Chris Willis - London Metropolitan University
[log in to unmask]
http://www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/
"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius
of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953
================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 20:11:11 +0100
From: Ayako YOSHINO <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Walter Scott imitators
Dear List members,
I am wondering if any of you can come up with some titles that are directly
inspired by Scott's _Kenilworth_ (and written in the 19c)?
I keep being told by so many books that the novel had many imitators, but I
do not know much about historical novels. Any suggestions would be
appreciated.
yours,
Ayako YOSHINO
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 15:07:49 -0500
From: Michael Flowers <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Books on Florence by British Tourists 1900
Hello Paul,
According to Nicola Beauman's biography of Forster (p.105), Miss Lavish was
partly based on the obscure novelist Miss Spender, whom EMF and his mother
encountered at Perugia.
Hope this helps
Best Wishes
Michael
www.mrshenrywood.co.uk
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 13:35:52 -0700
From: "Margot K. Louis" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Poetry anthologies/Versifiers
Like Kristine Garrigan, I use the full-sized _Broadview Anthology of
Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory_ (which pleasingly includes the whole
_Amours de Voyage_, _Hunting of the Snark_, and _Atalanta in Calydon_ as
well as a very respectable number of women poets). I am, however,
impatiently awaiting a revised edition with the too frequent typos removed.
Also I find I have to supplement with photocopies for a number of poems,
especially the ones on same-sex love, a topic not much covered in the
anthology. Still it's a good selection, and develops upper-body strength.
I had written thus far when I had to pause, and since then the
"drawing-room versifiers" thread has appeared. In the (otherwise
excellent) undergraduate course in Victorian Poetry that I took in 1973 at
Smith College, no woman but Christina Rossetti received serious attention;
Barrett Browning was represented by "The Cry of the Children" and "How do I
love thee," hardly her most aesthetically impressive works; Emily Bronte,
"Michael Field," Landon and Hemans did not appear at all (nor did Clough,
come to think of it). The nature of literary quality was so defined at the
time as to exclude virtually all women poets of the period, and also most
working-class poets and poets in the tradition of reform literature (Hood's
"Song of the Shirt" and "Bridge of Sighs" were read aloud derisively, as
mere samples of Victorian slop, with no acknowledgement of their
significance). Without wishing to defend Eliza Cook on armchairs, I do
think it is desirable to include a wide range of material, to allow for the
possibility that our present canons are inadequate in unsuspected ways, as
the canons of 1972 certainly were. I do not think there has been a
"collapse of literary judgment"; I think our approach to evaluative
criticism has become valuably humbler and less prejudiced.
It is also true that the increased emphasis these days on the
socio-historical context necessarily increases the relevance and importance
of popular Victorian poetry. It is also true that by the standards of
modern Creative Writing departments Victorian poetry at its best is so
explicit, so grotesquely and overtly emotional (all those "O!"s and "Ah"s),
and so inclined to "poetic diction" that _none_ of it (except, maybe,
Hopkins at his gloomiest or Clough at his most satirical) would be
considered "good." Yet by exposing students to Victorian poetry we allow
them to discover kinds of literary excellence which differ from the norm
now; similarly, when feminist critics/anthologists started exposing us to
women's literature, and Marxists to working-class literature, we began to
discover more kinds of literary excellence than the New Critics had been
inclined to accept.
A not irrelevant postscript: for the first time this year, I am
requiring students in my Victorian Poetry class to come in to my office and
read aloud 10 or more lines from any poem on the syllabus that they choose;
I mark this on an Honours/Pass/Fail basis. So far I am pleasantly
surprised by the results, and I think some of them have absorbed the point
that Victorian poetry _needs_ to be read aloud; yesterday one young man
read "Come into the garden, Maud" as well (allowing for a few hesitations)
as perhaps Tennyson himself could have done, feelingly and delicately. I,
who have never been exactly carried away by that particular section of
_Maud_ (which till that moment I'd thought oversweet and strained), found
this reading a revelation. There are all sorts of modes of Victorian
beauty yet for us to reveal to one another.
Margot K. Louis
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 17:49:14 -0300
From: rnemesva <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Blandness and Drawing-Room Versifiers
I suppose my example of an author (or in this case authors) who has begun to
appear in anthologies where he/she/they would never have before, and who is
the antithesis of blandness, is Michael Field (referred to hereafter in the
singular). That all Victorian poets are uneven can't be denied, but the
question of "major" or "serious" or "significant" has to be a value
judgement. I should note that I am not insisting on absolute relativity in
artistic matters, and I take the point that male DRVs (now that we've coined
an acronym) don't receive the same exposure as their female counterparts.
Perhaps they should, although I suppose the decision on who fits the
category is part of what we're talking about. Still, I believe there is a
retroactive case to be made "against" the amount of space usually given to
Clough, who in Houghton Strang gets forty-five pages, and in favour of
someone like Field, who of course is nowhere to be found in that anthology.
It's unfortunate that someone has to "decline" as someone else "gains," but
that seems to be the Darwinian reality of canons and anthologies.
And as far as I'm concerned, Emily Bronte is still not getting her due. In
Christopher Ricks' *Victorian Verse* (1990) she gets nine pages, while
Barrett Browning gets fifteen, Field gets exactly one, and Clough gets -
forty-two. I realize counting up pages like this is a very crude measure of
anything, but on the whole the times they didn't seem to be a-changin' all
that much, even a decade or so ago. Until, of course, you get to the
Broadview Concise, which started all this, where suddenly Clough plummets to
two pages, which gives him fewer than practically anyone, including Field.
I can understand Patrick's unhappiness with the precipitancy of such a
plunge, but I'm still not sure it symbolizes a complete collapse of
judgement within the profession. Obviously my own lack of appreciation for
Clough has something to do with all this, so perhaps the most honest thing
for me to do is just leave it alone.
Richard Nemesvari (Chair)
Associate Professor
Department of English
St. Francis Xavier University
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 21:37:25 +0100
From: K Eldron <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Renaming Thackery (was "Thackeray")
Those whose only language is Estuary English must have problems with streets
named after at least one early 19c writer: Jane Os'n (author of Em).
K Eldron
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 17:25:15 -0400
From: David Latane <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Blandness and Drawing-Room Versifiers
rnemesva wrote:
>
> Perhaps they should, although I suppose the decision on who fits the
> category is part of what we're talking about. Still, I believe there is a
> retroactive case to be made "against" the amount of space usually given to
> Clough, who in Houghton Strang gets forty-five pages, and in favour of
> someone like Field, who of course is nowhere to be found in that
> anthology.
>
It should perhaps be mentioned, in defense of Houghton and Stange, that
their anthology is heavily weighted toward poetry 1832-1870. There is
very little poetry of any kind from Field's day. (1832-1901 is really
quite a wallop -- which is why the more inclusive anthologies run over
100 poets.)
I think the aesthetic taste of the editor is the only rational basis for
an anthology, and has been the basis of all the great anthologies that
people actually read (rather than just teach from). Rick's anthology is
one that was meant for the common reader -- most of the ones brought out
by textbook companies, it seems to me, have one eye on whether the folks
are Victoria are going to get in a huff because someone or something or
t'other is over- or under-represented.
David Latane
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 20:38:36 -0300
From: Beth Sutton-Ramspeck <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Poetry anthologies
I too use the full-size Broadview, in part because I like to include
women writers and poetry that deals with class issues, and among the
available anthologies the Broadview offers the widest selection of this
kind of material--along with the complete _In Memoriam_. At the same
time, I'm sensitive to issues of "quality," and indeed I devote most of
one class meeting to the issue. Since my Victorian poetry course begins
with discussions of Victorian aesthetics and ends with the political
poetry, this discussion allows me to bring the course 'round in
something of a full circle. I find that students are surprisingly
interested in the problems of judging poetry's quality, and that they
debate strenuously and intelligently.
To return to the original query (which anthology to use), I do think
that deciding on a basic course design before examining the anthologies
is a useful strategy. My only major objections to the Broadview are
that it omits Housman and that it has much less "apparatus" than most.
For my fairly unprepared students, full introductions and generous
footnotes are helpful; I recognize that for another group, a "cleaner"
text is an advantage.
Beth Sutton-Ramspeck
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
End of VICTORIA Digest - 1 Oct 2002 to 2 Oct 2002 (#2002-271)
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