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Date: 10 October 2003 00:00 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 8 Oct 2003 to 9 Oct 2003 (#2003-72)
There are 20 messages totalling 603 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. request for information on illegitimate pregnancies (3)
2. Bleak House/Rouncewell (2)
3. The Novel Sublime (4)
4. More info on Rouncewell (2)
5. Dioramas
6. Tourists and Literary Sites
7. reviews by Andrew Lang and Hjalmar Boyeson
8. Female Detective Novels (3)
9. Victorian Banks
10. re. sublime novel
11. Julia Margaret Cameron events in the U.S.
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Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 14:46:58 +1000
From: Ellen Jordan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: request for information on illegitimate pregnancies
Two real life examples of children being absorbed into existing families. =
The children's writer E. Nesbit allowed it to be assumed that her =
husband's illegitimate children by her friend/housekeeper were hers.=20
=20
Victoria Glendinning implies in her life of Trollope that Trollope's =
brother's first wife, whose supposed mother was sixty when she was born, =
was probably the daughter of her supposed half-sister by her mother's =
first marriage.
Compton Mackenzie's Sinister Street has a picture of a household where two =
illegitimate children are being brought up, visited briefly by the mother =
who spends most of her time with her lover. A real-life ambiguous =
household dating from the same time (and the same place -Kensington) is =
described in the autobiography of the popular 1920s novelist Ernest =
Raymond. He grew up in it.
=20
=20
=20
Ellen Jordan
University of Newcastle
Australia
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 09:41:15 +0100
From: Chris Willis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Bleak House/Rouncewell
Hi
SueAnn wrote:
> In Ch. 28 of _Bleak House_, Sir Dedlock is upset that Mr. Rouncewell "has
> been invited to go into Parliament." Does this indicate that he will sit
> in the House of Lords? Would he also get a title with this?
"Invited" probably means someone in the party has asked him to stand as a
candidate for a particular constituency. It doesn't necessarily mean that he
actually will become the candidate or be elected.
The expression's still in use today. One of several potential Labour
candidates in my constituency told a meeting of party activists that he'd
been "invited" to stand as the Labour candidate and was indignant when they
asked him "Who invited you?"
All the best
Chris
================================================================
Chris Willis
[log in to unmask]
www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/
Campaign Against Compulsory ID Cards
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/issues/id-cards.shtml
The human cost of war
www.iraqbodycount.org
================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 10:55:05 +0100
From: lee field <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Novel Sublime
They're not novels, and one of them isn't even in your period, but I would
have thought that any novelistic treatment of epiphanic moments would be
informed by Wordworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality (which
describes how the wadding of stupidity is acquired), and by Ruskin's Modern
Painters. Elizabeth K Helsinger's Ruskin and the Art of the Beholder is
very good on Ruskin and the sublime.
Simon Poë.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 14:18:05 +0800
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Tamara=20Wagner?= <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: request for information on illegitimate pregnancies
The discussion of _Bleak House_ in a different strand
has brought Esther Summerson's childhood to my mind.
Her unhappy home with her "godmother" shows that being
passed off as somebody's child or an orphan can have
its drawbacks, or rather, open up opportunities for
abuse. Esther's mother apparently trusted her sister,
who attended the child's birth and then took it away
with her secretly after it had been discarded for dead
(attempted infanticide by the midwife perhaps?)to
raise Esther as an orphaned goddaughter who has to be
continuously reminded of her "shame". Both of Esther's
parents actually die only after she has attained
adulthood, which makes her one of the many Victorian
"orphans" in fiction who are actually not really
orphans. (see Hochman and Wachs's tellingly titled
_Dickens: The Orphan Condition_). Arthur Clennam in
_Little Dorrit_ of course shares a similar situation:
Mrs Clennam took the offspring of her husband's
illicit affair in the house and raised him as her own
son. Her treatment of the child pinpoints the
hypocrisies of such "charity".
On the other end of the spectrum and hundred years
earlier, Tom Jones is extremely lucky in being passed
off as someone else's _illegitimate_ child and then
taking in as a foundling by the mother's brother.
Victorian foundlings are perhaps more like Sloppy in
_Bleak House_ ...
=====
Tamara S. Wagner
http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/staff/home/ELLTSW/
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
A free party for the most "shiok" photo!
http://sg.yahoo.com/shiok
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 09:13:02 -0400
From: Sally Mitchell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Bleak House/Rouncewell
Incidentally, after posting my original answer I thought of the additional
point: Sir Leicester Dedlock is a baronet, so he does not himself sit in
the House of Lords; he could enter Parliament himself only by being
elected to the House of Commons. Even if we assume the novel is fully
contemporary (i.e., 1852-53) I do not believe that ANY industrialist had
been raised to the aristocracy until much later in the period. And though
successful, I don't have the impression that Rouncewell is among the
giants of industry. However, being in the Commons would put him in
virtually the same political status as Dedlock himself.
(How do I know Dedlock is a baronet? Because he's "Sir Leicester," not
"Lord Dedlock.")
Sally Mitchell, English Department, Temple University: [log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 09:36:06 -0400
From: Sally Mitchell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: More info on Rouncewell
Processing software: please notice that this is an additional message on
the topic of Rouncewell, not the same one I posted yesterday. (Sorry
folks, the message I added today was bounced with an automatic message
saying it was duplicate!)
Now to resend the bounced message:
An additional thought: We should also notice that Sir Leicester Dedlock is
not himself in the House of Lords -- he's a Baronet, and thus would have
to be elected to the Commons if he wanted to sit in Parliament. There's no
sign he has ever stood (or sat); thus if he had stood and been elected,
Rouncewell have become one of Dedlock's *political* superiors, even if not
a member of the landed classes (yet).
If we assume the novel is contemporary -- that is, with its publication in
1852-53 -- I think it's out of the question for Rouncewell to (yet) be
offered a title: industrialists were raised to the peerage later in the
century, but not in the mid-century years.
How do I know Dedlock is a baronet? He's "Sir Leicester" and not "Lord
Dedlock."
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2003 12:54:18 -0400
From: "George H. Thomson" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Dioramas
Given the Victorian liking for Dioramas, Cycloramas, Panoramas and
Stereoramas, Lee and others may be interested in the following account from
The Guardian (Manchester), 21 January 1998, 14, records the death at age 86
of John Kenneth Stafford Poole:
Known as Jim, he was the last in the male line of a remarkable dynasty of
showmen whose outstanding contribution to the popular visual culture of the
19th century was 'Poole's Myrioramas'. A forerunner of the cinema, hugely
popular with Victorians, the Myriorama was an elaboration of an earlier
19th century show, the 'moving panorama'. This consisted of a long painted
canvas--some were claimed, no doubt mendaciously, to be three or four miles
in length--passed from one roller to another, so that the pictures appeared
in endless succession in a proscenium opening, giving much the effect of an
extended panning shot in a film.
The Pooles elaborated this with models and special effects. In The
Battle of Algiers, for instance, charges of gun-cotton and gunpowder were
let off from miniature painted naval guns --with only occasional serious
accidents. The shows were further enlivened with orchestras, singers,
comedians and magniloquent lecturers. Generally the Myriorama offered a
Trip Around the World, but topical events like the Transvaal War. . .
would merit special presentations.
The dynasty was founded by Charles and George W. Poole, who started
out as musicians with the touring panorama of Moses Gompertz, and set up on
their own in the 1870s. They were succeeded by their five nephews, who by
1900 were touring seven shows between them for 40 weeks of every year.
Poole's father, John Reginald, was the son of the dominant sibling,
Charles William, and from him inherited management of the business.
George Thomson
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 08:54:21 -0500
From: "Doris H. Meriwether" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Tourists and Literary Sites
I don't know if Hazlitt's "My Firat Acquaintance with Poets" would fit
your criteria. I'm somewhat uncertain as to your requirements. But he
does describe his travel to meet Wordworth and Coleridge on their home
turf after hearing Coleridge "preach" in his father's church in
Shrewsbury.
Doris Meriwether
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 09:06:58 -0600
From: Kirsten MacLeod <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: reviews by Andrew Lang and Hjalmar Boyeson
Boyesen wrote for many, many magazines from the 1870s on. In "A History of
American Magazines," Mott says that Boyesen was "a writer for the best
magazines." He was associated with Forum and Dial but he was also a
contibutor to Scribner's, Harper's, the Literary World, and Lippincott's.
Kirsten MacLeod
_______________
Kirsten MacLeod
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB
T6G 2E5
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 10:11:11 -0700
From: Leslie Bailey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: More info on Rouncewell
on 10/9/03 6:36 AM, Sally Mitchell at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> How do I know Dedlock is a baronet? He's "Sir Leicester" and not "Lord
> Dedlock."
Plus the fact that Dickens's narrator often addresses him as "Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet."
Les Bailey
English Department
Saint Martin's College
Olympia, Washington 98503
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 11:33:38 -0400
From: Herbert Tucker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Novel Sublime
I presume, with previous respondents, that by "novel" in the subject line a
genre restriction is imposed. If not, the cover is blown off and scores of
Victorian poems flood the question. Perhaps the inquirer will grant an
indulgence to long narrative poems, but even there the sublime,
transcendent, phanic or epiphanic moment will be found in nearly all of
them as a structural entailment. This may best be seen with reference to a
work that forswears that moment but in order to do so must make that
renunciation just about the whole point: I mean Clough's *Amours de Voyage*.
Secondary literature on the 19th-century epiphany or privileged moment
(Pater's phrase) should turn up a sort of prose canon of these, with some
participant autobiographies. Of these I'd mention Ruskin's *Praeterita* as
unusually interesting for its combination of purple passages with a genuine
irresolution as to what they may all have meant, pointed or added up to.
> Crudely stated, I am shaping my project around what I have decided,
> for the sake of ease, to term "moments of sublimity"
> Are there any
> authors during the period, in addition to Eliot, that commented on
> or wrote about the kind of ethical consciousness that Eliot touches
> on in the lines quoted above? Is there any good critical material
> out there that explores this question or related questions in a
> productive way?
Herbert F. Tucker
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of English
219 Bryan Hall
University of Virginia 22904-4121
[log in to unmask]
434 / 924-6677
FAX: 434 / 924-1478
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 11:15:52 -0400
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Female Detective Novels
Greetings all!
I am currently researching detective novels written by women, particularly
those from the 1860s and 1870s. I was hoping that the list could point me
towards some useful examples and scholarship beyond the work done on
sensation novels. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Margee Husemann
University of South Carolina
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 15:11:29 EDT
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Female Detective Novels
Joseph Kestner's _Sherlock's Sisters_, forthcoming from Ashgate next month,
sounds immediately relevant.
MEB
Prof. Miriam Elizabeth Burstein
Dept. of English
SUNY Brockport
Brockport NY 14420
http://www.itss.brockport.edu/~mburstei
[log in to unmask] OR [log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 15:45:03 EDT
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: request for information on illegitimate pregnancies
In a message dated 10/9/03 12:04:08 AM Central Daylight Time, Sally
Mitchell < [log in to unmask]> writes:
> Though I can't answer the detailed questions, a six-months residence in
> France or Switzerland "for her health" is commonplace enough in sensation
> novels that one soon recognizes that an adult child will appear seeking
> recognition in twenty years or so.
Yonge satirizes a similar idea in _That Stick_ (1892), in which a
novel-reading young woman assumes that her wealthy relative has faked the
birth of an heir, by taking his wife to a remote village and coming back
with a baby and a wet-nurse in tow.
Helen Schinske
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 16:39:59 -0500
From: "Felluga, Dino" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Novel Sublime
> ----------
> From: Herbert Tucker
>
> Perhaps the inquirer will grant an indulgence to long narrative poems, but
> even there the sublime, transcendent, phanic or epiphanic moment will be
> found in nearly all of them as a structural entailment. This may best be
> seen with reference to a
> work that forswears that moment but in order to do so must make that
> renunciation just about the whole point: I mean Clough's *Amours de
> Voyage*.
>
Indeed, and the other Victorian verse novels are worth examining for the
same reason, both the generic need they feel to avoid transcendent moments
because of the generic exigencies of the novel and those moments that,
therefore, cannot help but remind us of the fact of the poetic tradition of
transcendence. Consider, for example, the strange extra-generic,
extra-diegetic dead centers of Meredith's _Modern Love_ and EBB's _Aurora
Leigh_ or the ring and the book that opens and closes Browning's own novel
in verse.
Dino Felluga
Purdue University
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 22:30:17 +0100
From: Paul Lewis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Victorian Banks
Anyone struggling to read the name of a Victorian bank in a Victorian MS
may be helped by this page from the British Bankers Association
containing the names of old banks, when they were taken over and by
whom.
http://www.bba.org.uk/public/consumers/590/2297?version=1
best wishes
Paul
Paul Lewis
Mobile 07836 217 311
Web www.paullewis.co.uk
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 15:26:45 -0700
From: Stephanie Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: re. sublime novel
My suggestions for critical texts dance around your question a bit because
as has been stated already, work on prose and epiphany in the 19th century
is limited. First, you might find Ashton Nichols' _The Poetics of Epiphany_
helpful for its tracing of the epiphanic tradition from Wordsworth into the
20th century; he does not consider prose. In addition, Morris Beja's
_Epiphany in the Modern Novel_ considers Joyce, Woolf, etc, so his approach
and argument might help you as you think about the previous century.
Certainly you've hit upon the clear example in Eliot, but it seems to me
that those kind of moments are few and far between in 1830-1870 prose
fiction (although still quite important to poetry). Perhaps _Wuthering
Heights_ or other Gothic texts have potential? What ethic is at work in
those texts, then, becomes another question.
Best,
Stephanie Johnson
Dept. of English
University of Puget Sound
[log in to unmask]
Crudely stated, I am shaping my project around what I have decided,
for the sake of ease, to term "moments of sublimity"
Are there any
authors during the period, in addition to Eliot, that commented on
or wrote about the kind of ethical consciousness that Eliot touches
on in the lines quoted above? Is there any good critical material
out there that explores this question or related questions in a
productive way?
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 10:24:02 +0800
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Tamara=20Wagner?= <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Novel Sublime
Studies of Victorian theories of mesmerism might be of
interest since many potential epiphanies tend to be
explained away, as it were, by references to possible
scientific (or pseudoscientific) conceptualisations.
In _Dickens and Mesmerism_, Fred Kaplan argues that
the description of some of Oliver Twist's insights
closely replicates mesmeric experiments.
A. Winter's _Mesmerised_ is a more recent study of the
formation of the pseudo-sciences in Victorian culture.
There is also a reference to the controversies about
Oliver's mesmeric experiences in one of J.
Sutherland's essays (either in _Can Jane Eyre be
Happy_ or the one with Heathcliff in the title -
apologies for the vagueness, but some of my books are
still sitting in a friend's cellar in Girton).
Many other essays and books on mesmerism, the new
(domestic) Gothic of the sensation novel, &c. have
similar references to the potentials of mysterious,
supernatural, metaphysical insights and the ways in
which they are either reaffirmed or disproved through
the invocation of current scientific theories.
(keep checking - I hope I've got an article
forthcoming on Wilkie Collins's _The Two Destinies_).
Best wishes,
Tamara
=====
Tamara S. Wagner
http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/staff/home/ELLTSW/
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
A free party for the most "shiok" photo!
http://sg.yahoo.com/shiok
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 19:36:33 -0400
From: Vicki Lynch <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Female Detective Novels
Anna Katherine Green's detective novel The Leavenworth Case was pub. in
1878. She wrote many detective novels and short stories through the
latter part of the 19th and early 20th c., and Agatha Christie and Mary
R. Rhinehart credited her as their inspiration.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 22:06:38 -0400
From: Victoria Olsen <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Julia Margaret Cameron events in the U.S.
Hello all,
Some of you may be interested to know, if you don't know already, that the
big Julia Margaret Cameron exhibition that began in England early this year
is finally opening in the United States on October 21 at the Getty Center in
Los Angeles.
This is occasioning various Cameron-related events that may also be of
interest to listmembers:
Colin Ford, curator of the exhibit and co-author of the new catalogue
raisonne, will be giving a lecture and reception at the Boston Athenaeum on
October 25 at 2PM. For reservations or more information, contact Karen
Hilliard at 617-277-9375 or [log in to unmask]
The event is sponsored by The Victorian Society and The Friends of the Julia
Margaret Cameron Trust, an American organization devoted to fundraising for
the preservation of Cameron's house on the Isle of Wight.
The Getty is organizing its own events, including a performance of
"Freshwater," Virginia Woolf's play about her great-aunt's circle on the
Isle of Wight. You can find details on the Getty's website:
http://www.getty.edu/news/press/exhibit/cameron.html
If there are other events scheduled that I don't know about in other
locations, I'd very much appreciate a private email. My own new biography
of Cameron, entitled "From Life: Julia Margaret Cameron and Victorian
Photography," was published in the UK last winter and will be out in the
U.S. this month. It's been a wonderful year for Cameron....
Thanks,
Victoria Olsen
------------------------------
End of VICTORIA Digest - 8 Oct 2003 to 9 Oct 2003 (#2003-72)
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