BARS extends our thanks to Liz Wan who has put together this wonderful conference report for us regarding 2024's Biennial Conference held in Glasgow!
Thanks to the titanic efforts by the conference team (led by Professor Matthew Sangster), this year’s BARS Conference, themed as “Romantic Making and Unmaking”, materialised as a gargantuan success. The in-person sessions took place at the University of Glasgow from 23rd July to 25th July 2024, but they were bookended by the pre-conference Byron Society Annual Scotland Lecture and Reception on the 22nd and post-conference day trip to New Lanark on the 26th. With over 250 on-site delegates, one can imagine the challenges in organisation, but the committee and helpers, who were all smiles throughout, ensured the smooth running of each component of the conference. As there were four plenary talks or roundtables and nine parallel sessions with eight to nine panels each, participants had an abundance of choices. While the papers centred on the conference theme, creativity abounded in the topics, which ranged from material and print cultures, literary and physical extraction of materials, innovation, science, travel and landscapes, preternatural realms, corporeality and mentation, artistic media, translation, politics, and beyond in the Romantic world. It is my honour and pleasure to proffer a smorgasbord of my experience there.
The plenaries were all eye-opening. Professor Michelle Levy gave the first one, “Women Writers Making the Printed Book”. Starting with the question of whether books were “not written but made”, she took us through a journey of bookmaking, contending how authors were separated from the book manufacturing process, and showing numerous examples of letters between female writers and publishers which helped reconstruct the outlook of book production. We were directed to a rich resource, The Women’s Print History Project, for more.
On the second day, we were treated to the “Textual Editing Plenary Roundtable”, during which each seasoned editor (with Professor Alison Lumsden in absentia) shared their unique stories and insights on scholarly editing. Dr Elizabeth Edwards introduced her work of critical advocacy, including her project Curious Travellers: Thomas Pennant and the Welsh and Scottish Tour (1760-1820). Professor Tim Fulford engagingly and humorously narrated his editing journey as a “Gothic romance” of detective work; stressed the importance of collaboration with numerous examples of his projects including those on Robert Southey, Thomas Beddoes, Henry Kirke White, and Humphry Davy; and enthused about writing footnotes: “It’s an addiction”. Dr Craig Lamont highlighted some of his experience of editing Robert Burns, and presented an impressive horizontal bar graph depicting the lengths of time taken to produce scholarly editions of authors such as James Boswell, Tobias Smollett, and Thomas and Jane Carlyle. Together, the panellists demonstrated how editing is a labour of love and perseverance, but they all finished, especially during the Q&A, on a positive note to encourage everyone to go for it and learn on the job.
Later that afternoon, Professor John Gardner gave an astounding plenary, “Remains, Reuse & Reinventing”, which fused his passions for both engineering and literature. He first discussed the connections between the Industrial Revolution and Romanticism and how writers responded to the iron gun wars and Anglo-Chinese war. Professor Gardner then metaphorized literature as machines or engines, drawing on the relationship among machines, power, and oppression. His rich talk also covered four major Romantic machines, Percy Shelley’s design of a steamship, his engagement with and reconstruction of a nail from the Crystal Palace, and his recommendation of collaborating with museums for more discoveries.
Professor Fiona Stafford’s talk, “‘To Sing and Build the Lofty Rhyme’: A Keynote on Keystanes’”, drew the conference towards its close on a high note. Ruminating on metaphorical making and unmaking, she discussed Yeats’s “Adam’s Curse”, Charles Lamb’s shock at seeing the manuscript of Milton’s “Lycidas”, and Charlotte Smith’s allusion to Milton in “To the Shade of Burns”, to elucidate how poetic lines can be changeable, before moving to Burn’s (crafted) spontaneity in “Tam o’ Shanter”. Through close reading, particularly of rhymes, pauses, and metaphors, Professor Stafford examined Burns as a “maker”, a user of masonry language, and a master of wordplay. By posing the daunting questions of whether the metaphorical or physical experience is more powerful, and what is real and unreal in the poem, Professor Stafford showed how Burns’s poetry can transcend time and space, and how the poet draws connections only to dismantle or release them again.
The parallel panels were no less captivating than the plenaries, only it was painful pleasure/ pleasurable pain to have to pick only one at a time. Due to similar time and space constraints, it is regrettably impossible to report on all that I attended. As a Mary Wollstonecraft enthusiast, “Editing Wollstonecraft” was an absolute favourite. Dr Laura Kirkley argued for the inclusion of Wollstonecraft’s translation of Jacques Necker’s Of the Importance of Religious Opinions in the feminist’s works because it shows her ideological intervention and reflects her ideas on sentiment, cognition, and imagination. Professor Mary Fairclough unravelled the story of the attribution of The Female Reader to Wollstonecraft and how the anthology revealed the treatment of religion based on Anna Barbauld’s Devotional Pieces. Professor Emma Clery championed for a new edition of Wollstonecraft’s letters, asserting that it should be disentangled from William Godwin’s narrative, assuring us that there are existing holographs that yet to be published, and sharing news about her current re-editing of the letters with techniques to date and decipher the letters. Professor Lisa Vargo delineated her process of editing Wollstonecraft’s contributions for the Analytical Review, remarking the intertextuality in her book reviews and how they disseminated cultural capital. She then mentioned some challenges regarding the attribution of Wollstonecraft’s essays and solutions such as scrutinising the initials, comparing the diction, and using stylometry. I will never forget how my heart raced from the excitement.
Other than the stimulating papers, we were treated to various synaesthetic experiences. A lunchtime exhibition of William Blake’s artwork by the Special Collections of the University Library on the first day, three sets of Romantic Scottish violin duets after the Conference Dinner at the atmospheric Òran Mór (a church that has been converted to a multi-purpose venue) on the second day, and a musical performance of Robert Burns’s The Jolly Beggars at the University Chapel on the last day, etc., all contributed to making Romantic literature come alive and concocting unforgettable memories.
Overall, BARS 2024 was a special conference to remember. I would like to thank the brilliant committee members and volunteers for all their thoughtful work, my fellow delegates for the intellectual inspiration and conviviality, and BARS for their generous Bursary for Postgraduate and Early Career Speakers, which has enabled me to participate in this meaningful event.
Liz Wan is a DPhil candidate in English Literature at Mansfield College, Oxford. Her thesis explores dreams as a narrative strategy in the novels of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, and Mary Shelley; other interests include the Enlightenment, (coastal) Gothicism, translation, and comparative literature. Her Twitter/ X handle is @lizyywan.