St Alban’s Cathedral welcomes Dr. Elizabeth Bobbitt, Professor Dale Townshend, and award-winning writer Rosie Garland for a study day to mark the 200th anniversary of Radcliffe’s poem ‘St Alban’s Abbey; A Metrical Romance’. Get your tickets here.
About the event
Follow in the footsteps of Romantic-era poet and Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), whose St Alban’s Abbey; A Metrical Romance (1826) brings to life the opening battle of the Wars of the Roses at St Albans in 1455. Join Dr Elizabeth Bobbitt, Professor Dale Townshend and award-winning writer Rosie Garland (Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature) for a special study day marking the 200th anniversary of the poem and looking ahead to its forthcoming Cambridge University Press scholarly edition. The programme features short talks and readings, a literary tour of the cathedral, and a creative writing workshop led by Rosie Garland.
Study Day Itinerary
10 – 10.30am: Registration over tea and coffee
10.30am: Welcome and Introduction to Ann Radcliffe and St Alban’s Abbey: A Poetical Romance.
11.30am – 12.30pm: Mapping Radcliffe’s St Alban’s Abbey: A Guided Tour of St Alban’s Cathedral and Surrounding Abbey Ruins
12.30 – 1.30pm: Lunch break
1.30 – 3.30pm: ‘Locating the Spirit of Ancient Days:’ Radcliffe as Literary Tourist – Creative Writing Workshop
3.30-4pm: Share your poetry!
4pm: Closing Remarks
Please note that this event will be held in-person only and will not be livestreamed or recorded.
About the organisers
Elizabeth Bobbitt is a research associate at the University of York. Her research focuses on Ann Radcliffe’s post-1797 texts which include Radcliffe’s last published novel, Gaston de Blondeville (1826) and her fascinating variety of narrative and lyrical verse. Her publications include “Negotiating Gothic Nationalisms in Ann Radcliffe’s Post-1797 Texts: Gaston de Blondeville and St Alban’s Abbey” in Women’s Authorship and the Early Gothic for University of Wales Press (2020) and “Ann Radcliffe’s Post-1797 Works: Edwy; a Poem, in Three Parts and the Topographical Gothic” in Essays in Romanticism for University of Liverpool Press (2022). She is thrilled to be co-editing Radcliffe’s posthumously-published works with Dale Townshend for Cambridge University Press.
Dale Townshend is Professor of Gothic Literature in the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. His most recent publications include Gothic Antiquity: History, Romance, and the Architectural Imagination, 1760–1840 (OUP, 2019); the three-volume The Cambridge History of the Gothic (co-edited with Angela Wright and Catherine Spooner; CUP, 2020–21); and Matthew Gregory Lewis: The Gothic and Romantic Literary Culture (UWP, 2024). With Elizabeth Bobbitt, he is editing Ann Radcliffe’s posthumous works for the Cambridge edition.
Rosie Garland has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries. She writes poetry, long and short fiction and sings with post-punk band The March Violets. She is the author of The Palace of Curiosities (which won the Mslexia Novel Competition and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize), Vixen and The Night Brother, which was described by The Times as “a delight…with shades of Angela Carter.” Her new novel, The Fates (Quercus) is a retelling of the Greek myth of the Fates. Her latest poetry collection, What Girls do in the Dark (Nine Arches Press), was shortlisted for the 2021 Polari Prize. Val McDermid has named her one of the most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today. In 2018-2019 she was inaugural Writer-in-Residence at The John Rylands Library, Manchester, and in 2023 was made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.
—
Dr Rosie Whitcombe