---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 16 Jun 2005 to 17 Jun 2005 (#2005-166)
From: "VICTORIA automatic digest system" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, June 18, 2005 6:00 am
To: [log in to unmask]
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There are 14 messages totalling 503 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. dustmounds & foreign speculations (4)
2. How to end a serial installment (7)
3. "Kensington-Town-Hall-Subscription-Dance young lady" and American girls
4. letters of condolence (2)
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Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 03:38:12 EDT
From: Susan Hoyle <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: dustmounds & foreign speculations
In a message dated 17/06/2005 03:08:30 GMT Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
<<And, by the way, why are agricultural
dunghills so very valuable - did they, or do they,
contain anything else except manure, much like the
city's dustmounds?>>
I write as one who for nearly twenty years lived in a house built upon a
dustmound to the north of the City of London (around Newington Green to be
precise). Manure was the least of its constituents; indeed I believe
that manure
was sold, by type, rather than dumped. We teetered upon a pile of
willow-pattern plates, clay pipes and oyster shells.
Susan, now in rural bliss
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 09:09:42 +0100
From: David Finkelstein <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: How to end a serial installment
Dear Tamara,
There's a body of work by Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund that address
precisely the issues you seek answers for re serialization/serialisation.
See
Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund, The Victorian Serial, University Press of
Virginia, 1991.
See also their article
"Textual/sexual pleasure and serial publication," in John O. Jordan and
Robert L. Patten, eds., Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-century
British Publishing and Reading Practices, Cambridge University Press, 1995,
p. 143-164.
The latter begins provocatively with a statement that "the serial novel's
intrinsic form more closely approximates female than male models of
pleasure", and continues from there to draw parallels between textual and
sexual 'sites of pleasure'. Certainly thought provoking if at times
over-reaching in an effort to sustain the parallel argument.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 16:29:57 +0800
From: Tamara Wagner <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: dustmounds & foreign speculations
--- Susan Hoyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> In a message dated 17/06/2005 03:08:30 GMT Daylight
> Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
> <<And, by the way, why are agricultural
> dunghills so very valuable - did they, or do they,
> contain anything else except manure, much like the
> city's dustmounds?>>
>
> I write as one who for nearly twenty years lived in
> a house built upon a
> dustmound to the north of the City of London (around
> Newington Green to be
> precise). Manure was the least of its constituents;
> indeed I believe that manure
> was sold, by type, rather than dumped. We teetered
> upon a pile of
> willow-pattern plates, clay pipes and oyster shells.
>
> Susan, now in rural bliss
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
Send instant messages to your online friends http://asia.messenger.yahoo.com
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 08:38:15 +0100
From: Paul Woolf <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: How to end a serial installment
It's a slightly tangential answer to the original question but... In =
his autobiographical book 'Memories and Adventures,' Arthur Conan Doyle =
recounts his decision to switch from writing serialised, novel-length =
stories about Sherlock Holmes to writing short, self-contained stories =
featuring the detective. He writes:
=20
"A number of monthly magazines were coming out at that time, notable =
among which was the Strand...[It] had struck me that a single character =
running through a series, if it only engaged the attention of the =
reader, would bind that reader to that particular magazine. On the =
other hand, it had long seemed to me that the ordinary serial might be =
an impediment rather than a help to a magazine, since, sooner or later, =
one missed one number and afterwards it had lost all interest. Clearly =
the ideal compromise was a character which carried through, and yet =
instalments which were each complete in themselves, so that the =
purchaser was always sure that he could relish the whole contents of the =
magazine. I believe that I was the first to realize this and the Strand =
Magazine the first to put it into practice." (p.105)
=20
I hope that's helpful in some way.
=20
Paul Woolf
Department of American & Canadian Studies
The University of Birmingham, UK
=20
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 13:13:36 +0100
From: Christopher Pittard <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: How to end a serial installment
Dear all,
As regards secondary work on this kind of thing, I'd heartily recommend
fellow
Exeter graduate Graham Law's *Serialising Fiction in the Victorian Press*
(Palgrave, 2000). Regarding the Doyle comment on people buying monthly
magazines for the serial and reading the rest of the publication (if I've
remembered that comment correctly), it would be useful to take a look at
Deborah Wynne's *The Sensation Novel and the Victorian Family Magazine*
(Palgrave, 2001 - honestly, I don't work for Palgrave, they're just very
good.
Hello Palgrave :) ) Wynne comments on the interaction between pieces in
magazines in ways which are quite interesting when applied to the *Strand*
and
its imitators.
As for the ends of instalments; I can only speak for the serialised detective
fiction in these magazines, but I haven't found much evidence of the
cliffhanger ending, as serial novels like those of Grant Allen and L T Meade
tend to be made up of discrete adventures unified by a overarching plot. A
much more frequent closing technique is the anticipatory "What new devilish
scheme would (insert name of master criminal) concoct next?", which is having
it both ways; allowing the stories to be self-contained and so not too
alienating to readers coming in halfway, but also creating an interest for
the
reader to buy next month's issue and read an amazing adventure where the
villain has trained an army of ants to steal diplomatic papers...
Christopher Pittard
[log in to unmask]
Christopher Pittard
9 Queen's Building
School of English
University of Exeter
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 09:00:23 EDT
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: How to end a serial installment
Arthur Conan Doyle provides a pretty snazzy way to end a serial installment.
This is how the first installment ended (a combined chapters 1 and 2):
"Footprints?"
"Footprints."
"A man's or a woman's?"
Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank
almost to a whisper as he answered:
"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"
Matt
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 08:30:29 -0500
From: "Phegley, Jennifer" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: How to end a serial installment
I have successfully used the following texts to introduce serial fiction =
to undergraduates as they are very accessible and provide an overview of =
how serials function:
the Introduction to John Butt and Kathleen Tillotsen's Dickens at Work
the first few chapters of Archibald Coolidge's Dickens as a Serial =
Novelist
At the graduate level I use the following texts to lay the groundwork =
for students because they offer more complex interpretations of the form =
and function of serials:
J. Don Vann, Introduction to Victorian Novels in Serial=20
Linda Hughes and Michael Lund, =93Textual/Sexual Pleasure and Serial =
Publication=94
Best,
Jennifer
Jennifer Phegley
Department of English
106 Cockefair Hall
University of Missouri-Kansas City
Kansas City, MO 64110-2499
-----Original Message-----
From: VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society on behalf of =
Kerryn Goldsworthy
Sent: Thu 6/16/2005 10:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: How to end a serial installment
=20
Could anyone with answers to Suzanne Falck-Yi's wonderful question=20
about form and meaning in monthly fiction instalments please reply to=20
the list rather than privately? I would love to hear other people's=20
ideas/theories/knowledge about this, and I'm sure lots of other=20
listmembers would too.
Thanks
Kerryn
Dr Kerryn Goldsworthy
[log in to unmask]
93 Spring Street, Queenstown, SA 5014
(0)8 8341 0224 or (0)402 052 198
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 12:37:02 -0400
From: Andrea Kaston Tange <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: How to end a serial installment
Hi Suzanne,
I can only offer an anecdotal response, rather than a reference to an
article, but I've taught several Dickens novels serially in different
courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Having also
taught those novels in non-serial form, I have found students reading
them serially pick up (perhaps not surprisingly) on very different
things, many of which have to do with what you refer to as the "rhythm
of supense" in the book. Most recently, teaching *Hard Times*, my
students noted that Dickens seemed quite purposefully to move from one
subplot to the next, each contained within different installments (we
used the original installment breaks)--now focusing on Louisa's unhappy
marriage, then moving to the condition of factory workers in Coketown,
etc. It became clear to students that there were stragtegic pauses to
keep them invested in the story: installments ended with cliffhangers
that kept them speculating for a whole week about the outcome of
difficult choices characters were making, and sometimes those questions
were not answered by the next week's installment, which focused on a
different aspect of the novel. This maintained suspense even over
smaller events throughout, rather than focusing them all on the larger
question of "how will it end?"
And in terms of consuming the content differently, the installment
format also forced them to focus carefully even on subplots within the
story that they found less interesting. When several chapters on
Coketown factory life interrupted the lovestory plot, they had to slow
down and consider the relationship between these elements of the novel.
Unlike prior student readers who had access to the whole book at once,
who seemed simply to skim the parts they found more "boring" and come to
class ready to discuss the bits they liked better, my students HAD to
spend a week here or there talking about the industrial reform portions
of the novel and really thinking about that aspect of the novel because
that was the only thing in the installments for those weeks. They also
commented more than once that it had been "a long time since..." In
this way, they seemed to get a better handle on the overall form of the
book; recognizing how much "air time" different characters and plots
were getting helped them keep the various plot lines in perspective and
helped them come up with some very astute observations about how Dickens
developed social commentary. (And, as an aside, they actually found
this reading process an easier way to keep characters straight in their
heads, since they were consuming them more slowly and had more time to
discuss them in detail before moving on.)
I don't know if this is the kind of information you're looking for, but
I hope it may help. If you want more "data" from reading responses,
I've surveyed my students every time I teach a novel serially, and I'd
be glad to give you more information if it's useful. Just email me
privately.
Andrea Kaston Tange
Eastern Michigan University
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 09:43:47 -0700
From: Sheldon Goldfarb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: How to end a serial installment
Besides the works by Michael Lund already mentioned, there's an earlier book
by him called *Reading Thackeray* (1988), which collects articles he wrote
in the 80's on serialization specifically in Thackeray.
One of those articles discusses the last, unfinished novels of Thackeray,
Trollope, and Dickens, noting how Victorian readers speculated on how those
would have ended, something they were used to doing because they would
typically speculate on what the next serial installment would bring.
In general, Lund talks of the interaction of writer, reader, and character
produced by the serial form, and says the meetings and partings in *The
Newcomes* are experienced not only by the characters but by the readers who
read the novel in installments. In other words, he sees part of the meaning
of the works, at least for Victorian readers, as residing in the serial form
itself, or more precisely in the act of reading a novel a few chapters at a
time once a month.
Whether this means that modern readers who read such novels all at one go
are reading a different novel is an interesting question.
The most famous ending to a Thackerayan installment, commented on by at
least one critic (alas, I cannot remember who), is the conclusion to
Installment 9 of *Vanity Fair* (the end of Chapter 32), which appeared in
September 1847. At the end of this installment, Thackeray's narrator
describes the last moments of the Battle of Waterloo, where George Osborne
is engaged in the fighting while his wife Amelia waits nervously for him in
Brussels.
Here are the closing lines of the installment: "Darkness came down on the
field and city: and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his
face, dead with a bullet through his heart."
The critic I referred to notes how Thackeray here refuses the easy suspense
of the cliffhanger and instead tells us precisely what happens to George,
yet in a way raising a host of questions which no doubt prompted readers to
await the next installment impatiently.
Sheldon Goldfarb
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 11:23:45 -0400
From: "M.Mendelssohn" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: "Kensington-Town-Hall-Subscription-Dance young lady" and American
girls
In his 1895 history of Punch, M.H. Spielmann writes that the illustrator
George
Du Maurier thought of the American girl as “as a sort of
Kensington-Town-Hall-Subscription-Dance young lady, a little more outrée and
free and slangy and vulgar”.
What general association and/or meaning would have been attached to being a
"Kensington-Town-Hall-Subscription-Dance young lady" in this period?
Is this something like a 19th c. version of a "Valley girl"?!
I'd also be glad to know if anyone has a list of Du Maurier's caricatures of
American girls and women.
With many thanks,
Michèle
********************************
Dr. Michèle Mendelssohn
Department of English Literature
The University of Edinburgh
********************************
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 15:42:26 EDT
From: Robert Lapides <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: dustmounds & foreign speculations
Tamara Wagner asks if in there is any evidence that in
_Can You Forgive Her?_ Trollope drew on or wished to satirise
Dickens's plot and use of dustheaps in _Our Mutual Friend_.
Jerome Meckier's *Hidden Rivalries in Victorian Fiction*
doesn't deal specifically with this particular pairing, but it
argues very successfully that this kind of covert commentary
and competition happened routinely, not only back and forth
between Trollope and Dickens but with all of Dickens's important
rivals.
Meckier's book is eye-opening, and is one reason I began
wondering about the close reading of Victorian novels and their
subtexts.
Bob Lapides
bmcc, cuny
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 20:25:51 -0400
From: mary millar <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: letters of condolence
Does anyone have information on the timing of letters of condolence =
after a death in Victorian times? I ask because we have noticed that =
Disraeli seems to wait a few weeks (in some cases as much as six weeks) =
after the death to send a letter of condolence, and even then to seem to =
apologise for doing so. Was it customary to leave the bereaved family in =
seclusion even for letters, and if so, for how long? The books on =
etiquette are not helpful on this point.
Mary S. Millar
Co-Editor
Disraeli Project
Queen's University
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 20:45:19 -0400
From: Katherine Grenier <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: dustmounds & foreign speculations
I don't know any specifics about the contents of 19th c. dungheaps. But I
do know that in pre-industrial societies, dung was often the main
fertilizer, and thus vitally important. Before the agricultural revolution
of the 18th c., many farmers had difficulty producing enough crops to feed
their families well, and to feed animals sufficient food to produce much
manure, so a large dungheap would be a sign of prosperity. It may well
have continued to serve that purpose in the 19th c.
Kathy Haldane Grenier
[log in to unmask]
History Dept., The Citadel
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 22:47:50 -0400
From: Terry Meyers <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: letters of condolence
Swinburne's father died March 4, 1877 (the announcement in The Times
appeared March 7). Benjamin Jowett's letter of condolences is dated
March 6, the Rev. Edward Coleridge's March 7, Lord Houghton's March 9,
Sir Walter Trevelyan's March 9, John Nichol's March 10, William Michael
Rossetti's March 22 ("I hope your known friendship will excuse mine if
I have been remiss in expressing the sorrow I cd not fail to feel in
hearing of your loss. I only heard of it some days after the event, &
have ever since been meaning to write"), Ford Madox Brown's March 28
(the news was not certain: "I hope you will not think me wanting in
feeling to you in writing so late to condole with you"), and Emilie
Venturi's April 5 ("I had written a letter some time back, but just
when I was closing it, I heard of your father's death, & then had not
the heart to send it, for I know how trivial & poor all other
sympathies or affections seem at such a time, and how unwilling one is
to be led away from the one thought") (see my Uncollected Letters of
ACS, II, 112-120). By March 13, Swinburne mentions, he'd also heard
from Mrs. Greville and Mrs. Proctor (See Cecil Lang, The Swinburne
Letters, III, 298).
On Jun 17, 2005, at 8:25 PM, mary millar wrote:
> Does anyone have information on the timing of letters of condolence
> after a death in Victorian times?
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------------------
Terry L. Meyers phone and voicemail: 757 221 3932
English Department fax: 757 221 1844
College of William and Mary
Williamsburg VA 23187
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End of VICTORIA Digest - 16 Jun 2005 to 17 Jun 2005 (#2005-166)
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