Artist Micro-Commissions Wordsworth Grasmere

      Comments Off on Artist Micro-Commissions Wordsworth Grasmere

Job opportunities – Wordsworth Grasmere

The closing date is Monday 6 February 2023 at 9AM (GMT). We would like to commission three artists for £1,000 each to give a creative response to William Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes.

We are very open as to what form the final piece will take: it could be a physical or digital drawing, painting, photograph, film, story, musical piece, or something else. We would like the creative piece to be accessible and enjoyed by our audiences.  Depending on their final form, we would like to display the three final pieces physically at Wordsworth Grasmere and/or online.

We envision that the project will begin in February 2023, and ask that the selected artists be in a position to complete their work by the end of March 2023. To apply you must be over 18 years old and based in the UK. We envision that the commission can be completed remotely, with the final artwork sent to us physically and/or digitally.

CFP: Jane Austen and the Making of Regency Whiteness

      Comments Off on CFP: Jane Austen and the Making of Regency Whiteness

Editors: Kerry Sinanan , University of Texas at San Antonio and Mariam Wassif, Carnegie Mellon University.  

For review with SUNY Press, Long Nineteenth Century Series 

Jane Austen and the Making of Regency Whiteness unsettles Austen criticism to re-examine her  novels’ centrality to forging whiteness in the eighteenth century. This “whiteness  project” (Gerald Horne) is reproduced by Austen cultures, afterlives, and adaptations, with global  ramifications. This volume gathers essays from scholars working at the intersections of Critical  Race and Black Studies, Indigenous methodologies, and Postcolonial theory, to argue that  Austen’s novels are fundamentally about making white, Anglo subjects of empire who are  located in a specific historical period. The Regency whiteness produced in the novels continues  to have a huge impact and desirability as Austen is exported, reproduced, and consumed globally.  The volume will show that it is specifically the making of Regency white people that has granted  Austen her global, iconic status today.  

While Edward Said and more recent postcolonial critics have long argued that Austen and  empire are interwoven, what has not yet been fully discussed is the powerful race-making work  that Austen’s novels perform and the global significance of this work in forging white  subjectivity as universal. Austen’s cultural force is part of the assimilationist, universalizing  territorial and cultural conquest of the British empire, promulgating a myth of “originality” that  enables a sweeping universal signifying of Regency whiteness as a desired norm. Jane Austen  and the Making of Regency Whiteness understands Austen as Shakespeare’s heir in this making  of the white, Anglo subject who comes to stand in for the universal human (see White People in  Shakespeare ed. Arthur Little). In Mansfield Park (1816) Henry Crawford declares,  “Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is part of an Englishman’s  constitution.” Austen draws frequently on the works of Shakespeare and Milton to create a  cultural-moral center at the heart of her works: reading shapes her heroines’ inner virtue and  social sensibilities, as well as those of her male characters. It forges them as white “English”  people. This volume focuses on how culturally and historically contextualized whiteness in the  novels has been mobilized, transhistorically and transgeographically, to signify on a global scale. 

Austen’s novels produce norms of romance, satire, and comedy which are codified and  disseminated as universal, when in fact these modes, and the morals they espouse, understood to  be central to “literature,” are coterminous with British imperial expansion and settler  colonialism. While some adaptations and fandom practices contest this whiteness, many of them  reproduce it.  

We invite a broad range of contributors from both inside and outside of the academy to  ensure that the collection has relevance for instructors, scholars, students, fans of Austen, social  media enthusiasts, and those in the heritage and adaptation industries.  

This project has been invited for review by SUNY Press for the Studies in the Long  Nineteenth Century series. Please send abstracts of 500 words by 1 April to  kerry.sinanan@utsa.ed and mwassif@andrew.cmu.edu.  

Topics may include: 

Milton and Whiteness in Austen  

Shakespeare and Whiteness in Austen  

Muslin and Cotton  

Hindutva and Austen  

Men of Empire and Austen  

Challenging whiteness in Austen in inclusive fandoms and adaptations  

White women, Romance and Austen  

Embroidery and white femininity  

Chastity and white femininity  

Women’s wit and whiteness  

Landed property as whiteness in Austen  

Classical Culture and whiteness  

Geographies of Whiteness in Austen  

Austen at the Borderlands  

Money, empire, and whiteness in Austen  

Protestantism, Austen and Empire  

Fashion, whiteness and Austen  

Art, materiality and the making of Regency whiteness  

Slavery and racial capital in making Regency whiteness  

The music of Regency whiteness in Austen  

National Trust and Heritage cultures of whiteness  

Austen and the Landed gentry  

Class and Whiteness in Austen  

Racism and Whiteness in Austen Fandoms  

Online Seminar, 18 January 2023: Literature and the Sea

      Comments Off on Online Seminar, 18 January 2023: Literature and the Sea

The University of Birmingham’s Nineteenth-Century Centre’s (19CC) Online Work-in-Progress Seminar Series

Please join us online at 5pm on Wednesday 18th January for a work-in-progress seminar focused on literature at sea. Our two speakers will explore questions of migration, belonging, and rootedness as they examine the flora and fauna of the deep. This session will be of particular interest to anyone working in literature and ecology, oceanic studies, and the environmental humanities. Titles and abstracts are below; to join the session simply follow the link. Attendees will be placed in a waiting room and admitted just before the start of the session; they’ll be muted on entry.

Topic: 19CC Work-in-Progress Seminar

Time: Jan 18, 2023, 5:00 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting

https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/82844250608?pwd=ZkM3VWc4QVFxYWxhUDVVTTJiOEFmdz09

Meeting ID: 828 4425 0608

Passcode: 317166

Michael Malay (University of Bristol), ‘Rooted cosmopolitans?: Eels and the question of home’

Eels are wayfarers: in order to reach Europe from the Sargasso Sea, they travel no less than 3,000 miles. At the same time, they are lovers of place: when eels reach ‘home ground’ — it could be an estuary, river, lake, ditch or pond — many remain there for most of their adult lives. Where, then, do eels ‘belong’ — are they fish of the ocean or creatures of freshwater? In this paper, I explore the relationship between dislocation and rootedness in relation to the eel. Along the way, I also engage with political questions around migration, citizenship and belonging.

Jimmy Packham (University of Birmingham), ‘Melville & the oozy weeds’

The article-in-progress explores the role of seaweed in Herman Melville’s writing, with a particular focus on its presence in his poetry, paratexts, and mss. I am especially interested in those moments where Melville imagines humans as a kind of seaweed, and the ways in which he uses the drifting nature of plants like gulf-weed (sargassum) as a means of imagining forms of community that are not rooted, but predicated on generative forms of drift and dislocation.

Call for Papers: Women, Money and Markets (1600-1950)

      Comments Off on Call for Papers: Women, Money and Markets (1600-1950)

Sheffield Hallam University, June 12-14th 2023

This annually-held conference addresses the role of women in consumerism, shopping, global trade, domestic trade, markets (literary and otherwise), currency, and varying practices of exchange. The conference is interdisciplinary in nature, bridging literature, material culture, gender studies, theatre and economic history, and aims to relate the debates of the period to modern-day issues about the presence and position of women in the economy, the market and the media.

This year we are holding the conference in Sheffield, at Sheffield Hallam University, and welcome contributions in the form of individual papers or panels and roundtable on:

  • Varying practices of women associated with currency, global and/or domestic markets and marketability
  • Material practices associated with value, exchange and/or female creativity
  • Women as producers and/or consumers in the literary or other marketplaces (including, but not limited to, food, clothing, agriculture and raw materials)
  • Representations of women at work or women’s involvement in:
    • Trade, business and industry
    • Professional services (e.g. law, finance, hospitality and the media)
    • Domestic service
    • The rural economy
    • The stock market and speculation
    • The literary marketplace (past and present)

In recognition of Sheffield’s key role in early industrialisation, and the political activism that it created and inspired, this year we are featuring two special areas of interest and welcome contributions on these topics:

  1. Women and industry
  2. Women, work and protest

We particularly welcome cross-cultural considerations of the above issues. To enable contributions on early 20thC work, activism and its representation, we have this year extended the time period covered by the conference to 1950.

Guide for submissions:

Please send 250 – 300 word abstracts to: Dr Sarah Dredge: s.dredge@shu.ac.uk, Dr Pete Collinge: p.collinge@keele.ac.uk, and Dr Emma Newport e.newport@sussex.ac.uk). Please include a covering email outlining briefly your proposed format (individual paper, panel, roundtable, etc.). If you are submitting a proposal for a panel, please include an abstract for each paper in your panel (up to 300 words each).

Important dates:

Deadline for submissions: February 28th

Notification of acceptance by: March 15th

Organising committee:
Chairs: Dr. Sarah Dredge and Dr. Peter Collinge

Committee members: Dr.  Emma Newport, Dr Joyce Goggin

The conference is grateful for support from the Humanities Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University.

For any enquiries regarding the conference, please contact: s.dredge@shu.ac.uk or p.collinge@keele.ac.uk

Byron Society PhD Bursary

      Comments Off on Byron Society PhD Bursary

The Byron Society invites applications for a PhD bursary of up to £5,000 per year. FULL DETAILS HERE.

Applications are open to new and existing full-time PhD students enrolled at a UK university and working on a thesis addressing any aspect of the life, work and /or influence of the poet Lord Byron. Applications are also welcomed from those studying multiple poets or authors, including Byron.

Each bursary covers just one year, however multiple applications can be made and postgraduates whose research focuses solely on Byron can receive up to three annual bursaries. (Those who study Byron alongside other poets and authors can only be awarded one bursary).

Applications can be made by students with additional sources of funding, but please list these in your application. The applications should also include a summary of the applicant’s academic record, an outline of his / her proposed research and the names of two referees who may be contacted. Please also state what year of study you are in.

Please download and fill out the Application Form at the bottom of this page, and notify your chosen referee that we will be in touch to request a reference. In addition to the questions below, please state what other funding you have been awarded (if any). 

Applications should be sent by email to Dr Emily Paterson-Morgan, Director of the Byron Society, at contact@thebyronsociety.com. The application process for 2023/2024 is now open. It will close on 31st May 2023. 

DETAILS HERE.

BARS President’s Fellowship 2023 awarded to Ifemu Yaa Omari

      Comments Off on BARS President’s Fellowship 2023 awarded to Ifemu Yaa Omari

In June 2020, the British Association for Romantic Studies announced its unequivocal support of the Black community, its condemnation of all forms of racism and its commitment to practical action. In response to the enduring and systemic damage caused by racism, the BARS Executive commenced a programme of initiatives focused on the histories and literatures of People of Colour. Among these initiatives is the BARS President’s Fellowship, which was officially announced at last summer’s virtual conference, Romantic Disconnections/Reconnections 2021.

We are delighted to announce that the recipient of the first President’s Fellowship is Ifemu Yaa Omari, who is based at the University of Wolverhampton. Ifemu’s proposed project will culminate in the production of an online resource focused on the texts and paratextual materials included in Mary Prince’s The History of Mary, A West Indian Slave (1831).

The President’s Fellowship is open to scholars from Black, indigenous and other minority ethnic backgrounds working on any aspect of Romantic Studies to support research, teaching and/or public outreach expenses up to £1500. Expenses may include, but are not limited to, costs emerging from: travel and accommodation for research-focused or archival visits; photocopying and digitisation; caring commitments; producing and circulating teaching resources; organising and delivering public outreach activities; setting up and running networks or collaborations; set-up and maintenance costs for online platforms such as blogs and websites.

Applicants to the scheme should be members of BARS at the time of the award, and the competition is open to postgraduate, early career and independent scholars. Awards are made on the significance and relevance of the project rather than on the career status or affiliation of the applicant. After the completion of the award, fellows are asked to submit a written report for publication on the BARS blog.

Daniel Cook

BARS Bursary Officer

16 December 2022

Romantic Reimaginings: Polar Gothic – Dan Simmons’s The Terror (2007) as Ancient Mariner Narrative

      Comments Off on Romantic Reimaginings: Polar Gothic – Dan Simmons’s The Terror (2007) as Ancient Mariner Narrative

Trigger Warning: body gore/violence, suicide

In this, our latest Romantic Reimaginings post, Molly Watson discusses the ways in which Dan Simmons’s novel The Terror reflects and refracts Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere. If you would like to write for the BARS Blog, please get in touch!

In a review of Captain Sir George Back’s Narrative of an Expedition in H.M.S. Terror (1838), the Literary Gazette commends the sheer force of Back’s descriptions of the Arctic, “the effect of which upon our minds has been something like that of Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’”. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (1798) had been written at the end of the previous century, and yet its story of a mariner whose impulsive murder of an albatross unleashes a curse upon his voyage spoke to the dangers of polar exploration in the nineteenth century.[1]

A decade after Back’s Narrative, Captain Sir John Franklin commanded HMS Terror and HMS Erebus on an expedition to find the Northwest Passage (a sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans) never to return. The mystery that shrouds the Franklin expedition—new evidence was discovered as late as 2016—informs Dan Simmons’s historical horror novel The Terror (2007), which reimagines the fate of the Franklin crew. Like Coleridge’s mariner, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus embark on a cursed journey across the ghostly polar regions.[2]

The term “Polar Gothic” is used to describe works that present the Arctic/Antarctic as “beyond experience, knowledge, or even expression”: remote, totally unfamiliar and unknowable, the polar landscape has an eerily spectral feel to it.[3] Coleridge’s mariner describes how the Antarctic disoriented his crew:

                            And thro’ the drifts the snowy clifts

                             Did send a dismal sheen:

                             Ne shapes of men ne beasts we ken—

                             The Ice was all between.

                             The Ice was here, the Ice was there,

                             The Ice was all around:

                             It crack’d and growl’d, and roar’d and howl’d—

                             Like noises of a swound.

The mariner and his crew see nothing but a sheet of white. The albatross is also white, but this is symbolic of its spiritual purity: it guides the crew through the fog and as such they “hailed it in God’s name”. When the mariner crucifies the albatross he consigns the voyage to doom: with the albatross dead, the ship becomes lost at sea, and one by one “The many men so beautiful/And they all dead did lie!”.[4] Though by this point the mariner is withered and barely alive, the Antarctic endures: the ice frequently cracks and groans against the ship, and so comes to life.

A picture containing nature Description automatically generated

Gustave Doré’s illustration for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1876) © Wikimedia Commons

In The Terror, the Franklin crew also unleash a curse upon the voyage. Captain Crozier of HMS Terror and his ice master Mr Blanky voice concern about a harsh winter, but Sir John scorns them. Come spring there is no thaw and a rescue party is sent in search of open water. During a storm one of the party shoots and kills an Inuit shaman, provoking the wrath of Tuunbaq, a polar bear spirit that violently slaughters the Franklin crew (men are decapitated, disembowelled, and have their limbs torn off). Only Crozier understands that,

…the Devil trying to kill them up here in the Devil’s Kingdom was not just the white-furred thing killing and eating them one by one, but everything here—the unrelenting cold, the squeezing ice, the electrical storms, the uncanny lack of seals and whales and birds and walruses and land animals, the endless encroachment of the pack ice, the bergs that plowed their way through the solid white sea not even leaving a single ship’s length lee of open water behind them, the sudden white-earthquake up-eruption of pressure ridges, the dancing stars, the shoddily tinned cans of food now turned to poison, the summers that did not come, the leads that did not open—everything. The monster on the ice was just another manifestation of a Devil that wanted them dead. And that wanted them to suffer.[5]

Manproposesgoddisposes.jpg

Man Proposes, God Disposes by Edwin Landseer (1864), inspired by the lost Franklin expedition. The painting is said to be haunted (spooky!) © Wikimedia Commons

The Franklin crew pay sorely for their arrogant conviction that the Arctic could be conquered. If the “unrelenting cold” does not kill them, everything else will: men drown in the ice, succumb to TB and lead poisoning, are butchered and eaten by (mutinous) crewmates, commit suicide, or have the unfortunate privilege of being Tuunbaq’s supper. As the men try to destroy Tuunbaq and find refuge from the cold, more of them die. Crozier remains, like Coleridge’s mariner, a “slimy thing” that “Liv’d on”.[6]

Both Crozier and the mariner undergo a spiritual transformation while marooned in the polar regions. In his 1817 gloss to the poem, Coleridge explains that the mariner initially “despiseth the creatures of the calm”, but as he begins to see the beauty of such “slimy things”, he “beholdeth God’s creatures of the great calm”, unburdening him of the guilt of the dead albatross.[7] Crozier’s spiritual transformation, meanwhile, is facilitated by Tuunbaq. With all his men dead, Crozier joins an Inuit village and starts a family with Silna (the daughter of the shaman). The shamans have had their tongues ripped out by Tuunbaq, and Crozier realizes that this ritual is key to his spiritual rebirth: “[f]ur dripping like a priest’s wet and clinging white vestments”, Tuunbaq comes to Crozier, who “extends his tongue” as he did for Holy Communion.[8] By offering his tongue to Tuunbaq, Crozier gains a new spiritual understanding and becomes assimilated into Inuit life. Crozier also has a vision that Tuunbaq will “sicken and die” upon the arrival of the kabloona (white people). He and Silna have an ecological epiphany in which they see that “[w]hen the Tuunbaq dies because of the kabloona sickness…the white domain will begin to heat and melt and thaw”: as such, the Polar Gothic comes to symbolize the terror of climate change. Even though Tuunbaq dies, its spirit still lives on: the curse is transferred from Tuunbaq and the Arctic landscape to the Terror, which Crozier burns because “[w]hatever had taken possession of the ship was as virulent as the plague”.[9] 

Unlike the mariner, who passes his story “like night, from land to land”, Crozier does not return home because he does not want to carry tales “to frighten the ghoulish citizens of England and to spur Mr. Dickens or Mr. Tennyson on to new heights of maudlin eloquence”.[10] He is also fearful that the curse of the Terror would follow the search parties from England back home. It is twenty-first century readers of The Terror, rather than Crozier’s contemporaries, who learn about the fate of the voyage—no matter how fictionalized Simmons’s account may be.

Molly Watson

Molly Watson is a PhD student at the University of Nottingham researching Motherhood, Children and Loss in the Works of Mary Shelley and Sara Coleridge, 1820-44. She has previously completed an MRes dissertation on Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Gothic Fiction at the University of Huddersfield. Molly is interested in second generation and ‘late’ Romanticism (1820s-50s), the Juvenile Library, literary legacies, and the Gothic. Her PhD is funded by the Midlands4Cities DTP (AHRC).

[1] The Literary Gazette, review of Narrative of an Expedition in H.M.S. Terror by Captain Sir George Back, 14 July 1838, p. 433. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Literary_Gazette_and_Journal_of_Belles_L/1KPHtO3mpLAC?hl=en&gbpv=0 . See also Siobhan Carroll, An Empire of Air and Water: Uncolonizable Space in the British Imagination, 1750-1850 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), p. 213, n76

[2] Royal Museums Greenwich, “What happened to HMS Erebus and Terror?” https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/what-happened-to-erebus-terror-crew-true-story. For more on the Franklin expedition, see Michael Palin, Erebus: The Story of a Ship (London: Cornerstone, 2018); Shane McCorristine, The Spectral Arctic: A History of Dreams and Ghosts in Polar Exploration (London: UCL Press, 2018); and Adriana Craciun, Writing Arctic Disaster: Authorship and Exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016)

[3] Katherine Bowers, “Haunted Ice, Fearful Sounds, and the Arctic Sublime: Exploring Nineteenth-Century Polar Gothic Space”, Gothic Studies, 19 (2017), 71-84 (p. 72)

[4] Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere in Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Complete Poems, ed. by William Keach (London: Penguin, 1997), pp. 148-9, 154 (lns. 53-60, 228-9); for the Marinere as Christian parable, see Malcolm Guite, Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London, Hodder, 2018)

[5] Dan Simmons, The Terror (New York: Back Bay Books, 2007), p. 189

[6] Marinere, p. 154 (lns. 230-1)

[7] Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834) in Collected Poems, pp. 175-6

[8] The Terror, p. 746

[9] Ibid., p. 710, pp. 764-5; see also Maria Lindgren Leavenworth, “The Times of Men, Mysteries and Monsters: The Terror and Franklin’s Last Expedition”, in Arctic Discourses, ed. by Anka Ryall, Johan Schimanski and Henning Howlid Wærp (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), pp. 199-217 (p. 214)

[10] Marinere, p. 166 (ln. 619); The Terror, p. 764

The BARS Examiner: Interview with Sarah Doyle, author of Something so wild and new in this feeling

      Comments Off on The BARS Examiner: Interview with Sarah Doyle, author of Something so wild and new in this feeling

In this The BARS Examiner piece, Adam Neikirk interviews the poet, Sarah Doyle. If you would like to conduct an interview or review a theatre production, film, podcast, or exhibition for the new blog series, The BARS Examiner, drop us an email!

Sarah Doyle is the Poet-in-Residence at the Pre-Raphaelite Society, the former winner of the William Blake Poetry Prize and the Wolverhampton Literature Festival poetry competition, and the author of a pamphlet entitled Something so wild and new in this feeling (V Press), which appeared in 2021. Something so wild and new in this feeling comprises a series of “collage poems” based on the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. I was lucky enough to interview Sarah about this work for The BARS Examiner blog series; my questions and her responses appear below.

Adam Neikirk: Talk about your inspiration for Something so wild and new in this feeling. When did you first decide to write, or rather construct, these “collage poems” (as you call them)? Was it different from writing that you have published in the past?

Sarah Doyle: I’m researching a PhD in the poetics of meteorology at Birmingham City University, and in 2019 I turned to Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals as a means of gaining insight into and context for some of William Wordsworth’s poetry. 

I was bowled over by Dorothy’s writing, by her evocation of place and her almost sororal sympathy with landscape, plants, and animals. Of greatest interest to me initially, however, was Dorothy’s meteorological engagement. Many of her journal entries are scaffolded with remarks on the weather at both the beginning and the end of day, with weather conditions playing a significant role in the life and activities of Dorothy and her associates. Being a complete weather obsessive, I felt a great sense of affinity!

The forming of these poems was more demanding in some ways than writing poems from scratch – there are, after all, finite opportunities for expression when working from a pre-existing manuscript – but the creative potential of almost limitless permutations was thrilling to me.

AN: You mention in the introduction to your book that “all the poems here are comprised entirely of phrases … mined from Dorothy’s writing.” Did you find it difficult to preserve this phraseological fidelity? Were you ever tempted to include original writing?

SD: I’ve used found text from different sources in some of my other poetry, where it has been rewarding to create a conversation between my voice and that of another speaker. Here, though, I decided very early on not to include my own writing; I wanted Dorothy’s voice to sing out. The poems are woven through with my own sensibilities – which ally closely with Dorothy’s – but I wanted to tread lightly, and have even preserved Dorothy’s spellings as a means of acknowledging the source text. I was also wary of ventriloquism in these poems, so it was equally important to me to honour Dorothy’s character; to create new narratives which celebrated rather than corrupted her legacy.

AN: What qualities of Dorothy Wordsworth’s personality and writing do you hope readers will notice (or feel) when they read these poems?

SD: First and foremost, I think that Dorothy’s sympathy with the natural world shines through in her journals, and I hoped very much to illuminate that in these poems. Although she is a keen-eyed recorder of natural phenomena such as weather and seasons, Dorothy’s writing transcends observation to become vividly experiential, and I wanted to convey that immediacy in poems that were immersive and sensory – at times, even intimate. I perceive a sense of rootedness in Dorothy’s writing, a communion of human and non-human, which I have attempted to explore and articulate in the extracts I’ve used and the conjunctions I’ve created. Dorothy is a gifted writer, with the ability to express a sense of wonder in the mirror she holds up to the world. Her writing is rich in colour, texture, sound, temperature, light and shade, with a gaze ranging from the panoramic to the microscopic, and I hope that readers will get a strong sense of Dorothy’s curiosity and intellect, her energy and compassion.

AN: This collection contains what we might call direct allusions to famous poems by
Wordsworth (“I wandered lonely as a cloud”) and Coleridge (“Dejection: An Ode”), and
DW’s journals naturally contain many references to the poets. Yet they are conspicuously
absent from these new poems. What was your thinking behind this?

SD: My intention was always to spotlight Dorothy as the star of this collection, rather than situate her within the relegated context of sister or friend. I made a conscious decision to exclude any directly named references to either William or Coleridge, and to ensure any instances of ‘we’ were non-specific. The reader might infer the presence of either (or both!) of the poets – and perhaps even of others – in the interactions described, but these poems are deliberately Dorothy-centric. 

To elevate her further, I’ve included Dorothy’s account of the siblings’ famous daffodil encounter, extracting the text in its entirety and shaping it on the page to highlight her amazing sensitivity to rhyme. As an illustration, here is the first stanza, where I’ve boldened a series of rhymed (and even repeated) words embedded within the prose:

When we were in the woods beyond
Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils
close to the water-side. We fancied
that the sea had floated the seeds ashore,
and that the little colony had so sprung up.
But as we went along there were more
and yet more;

and at last, under the boughs
of the trees, we saw that there was a long
belt of them along the shore, about
the breadth of a country turnpike road.
I never saw daffodils so beautiful.

Later on in the passage/poem, there are several pairs of rhymed words and repeated phrases, which provide another quite extraordinary exhibition of Dorothy’s facility for phrasing.

AN: What is your favorite poem in the collection, and why?

SD: Oh gosh, if I answer this, please don’t tell the other poems! I had enormous fun shaping
‘beautiful to see’ as a small sailboat on the page. I love the drenching repetition of ‘rain’ in
‘When the rain’, along with Dorothy’s imaginative observations of the night sky in ‘All the
Heavens’. However, my two favourites are ‘A heart unequally divided’ and ‘Lights and
Shadows’. Both poems attempt explorations of Dorothy’s interior life, and give, I hope, a
sense of the woman behind the journals: her passion, her depth, and her humanity.

For more information, or to purchase a signed copy of Something so wild and new in this
feeling (V. Press, 2021), Sarah can be contacted here:
https://www.sarahdoyle.co.uk/contact.php

Interview conducted by Adam Neikirk

Dr Adam Neikirk holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Essex. His dissertation, entitled Your Very Own Ecstasy: A Life in Verse of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, comprised a verse biography of the poet Coleridge together with a critical commentary. Adam’s critical and creative writings have appeared in the Coleridge Bulletin and Charles Lamb Bulletin, and in Creel: an anthology of creative writing. His second book of poetry, entitled Itchy, will be available from Muscaliet Press in early 2023. Adam is Communications Officer for the Charles Lamb Society.

Call for Applications: BARS/BAVS Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship 2023-2024

      Comments Off on Call for Applications: BARS/BAVS Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship 2023-2024

1 June 2023 to 1 June 2024, University of Glasgow

Outline

Nineteenth-Century Matters is an initiative jointly run by the British Association for Romantic Studies and the British Association for Victorian Studies. Now in its seventh year, it is aimed at postdoctoral researchers who have completed their PhD, but who are not currently employed in a full-time academic post. Nineteenth-Century Matters offers unaffiliated early career researchers a platform from which to organise professionalisation workshops and research seminars on a theme related to nineteenth-century studies, and relevant to the host institution’s specialisms. The focus should be on the nineteenth century, rather than on Romanticism or Victorianism.

For the coming year, the Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship will provide the successful applicant with affiliation at the University of Glasgow. The fellowship will run for one year from 1 June 2023 to 1 June 2024. Glasgow’s School of Critical Studies is a major centre for nineteenth-century scholarship, with specialists working in fields including textual editing, travel writing, medical and scientific humanities, periodical culture, authorship, book history, reception studies, and place-based approaches. Glasgow’s Archives and Special Collections are rich in Romantic-period and Victorian material, including a wide range of print brought in under the 1710 Copyright Act, extensive holdings of illustrated works (including William Blake illuminated books), rich collections of nineteenth-century novels, and extensive archives relating to industry, shipping, retail, education, and publishing.

In addition to intellectual exchange and collaboration, the successful fellow will benefit from:

  • Access to University of Glasgow library resources, both physical and digital, and including Archives and Special Collections, for the duration of the fellowship.
  • A mentor from the School of Critical Studies who can advise on research, careers, and public engagement.
  • Access to University of Glasgow events and research community.
  • Free access to the BARS Early Career and Postgraduate Conference held at the University of Edinburgh from 15-16 June 2023 (with the potential to assist with organisation, if desired).
  • Access to the University of Glasgow webinar function to host online events, if desired.
  • Access to room bookings to host in-person events, if desired.

There is no requirement for the Fellow to live in the Glasgow area and accommodation will not be provided as part of the fellowship. The primary purpose of the fellowship is to enable the successful applicant to continue with an affiliation and remain part of the academic community. It is a non-stipendiary post, and the fellow will need to support themselves financially. The fellow will, however, be financially supported by BARS and BAVS to organise a research or professionalization event on a theme relevant to their own and/or the University of Glasgow’s interests, with a contribution of £1,500 towards the fellow’s expenses and event costs incurred. It is also expected that the fellow will acknowledge BARS, BAVS, and the University of Glasgow in any publications that arise from their position.

Application Process

Applicants should submit a CV with a two-page proposal describing their research topic and proposed event, and explaining why they would benefit from the fellowship. Applicants can propose research on any aspect of the nineteenth century; we are keen to encourage interdisciplinary proposals which might include, but are not limited to: literature, history, art history, theatre, periodical culture, medical humanities and 19th-century legacies. Applications should be sent to Briony Wickes (Briony.Wickes@rhul.ac.uk) and Amanda Blake Davis (a.davis2@derby.ac.uk). The deadline for applications is Monday 30 January 2023 (23:59 GMT).

On This Day in 1822 – The Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society Was Founded

      Comments Off on On This Day in 1822 – The Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society Was Founded

The BARS ‘On This Day’ Blog series celebrates the 200th anniversary of literary and historical events of the Romantic period. Want to contribute a future post? Get in touch.

Edward Hardiman celebrates the 200 year anniversary of the founding of the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society by discussing the relationship that these societies have with Romanticism.

The 12th of December marks the bicentenary of the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society. The inaugural meeting at Cutler’s Hall was presided over by Dr. Arnold Knight wherein the opening resolutions were passed: ‘The present advanced state of society renders it highly desirable that every populous district should contain some Public Institution, dedicated to the cultivation and advancement of literature and science.’

The foundation of the society was not just a matter of local importance, instead it was one aspect of a much larger movement within forms of urban sociability. The 12th of December did not mark the establishment of the first Literary and Philosophical Society (Lit Phil) nor did it even mark Sheffield’s first attempt. The first Lit Phil was founded in Manchester (1781) by a few gentlemen who had a ‘taste for Literature and Philosophy’ and had decided to form themselves into a kind of ‘weekly club’ to discuss their interests.[1] With the exception of the Newcastle (1793) and Liverpool Lit Phil (1811) there were no further societies that lasted more than a year, Sheffield’s original Lit Phil disbanded the year it was established in 1805. A lack of funding and membership, combined with the political suppression of voluntary associations during the Coalition Wars (1792-1815), made it extremely difficult to sustain a complex network of learned institutions.[2]

Despite this, the persistence of local communities eventually resulted in the formation of more stable learned societies. Beginning again in Leeds (1819) Lit Phils became more permanent fixtures of provincial club life. The establishment of the Sheffield society marked a high point in their intellectual and cultural purchase, particularly within the north of England. Lit Phils served as ‘institutional nodes’ across the transpennine region, allowing for the exchange of useful information through lectures, conversation, and the circulation of print.[3] This phenomenon was not lost on its members either, speeches and print matter were acutely aware of the unprecedented increase of these societies.

Although Lit Phils were administratively independent from one other, they shared a broad collection of rules and guidelines. A hierarchy of membership, elected officers, and a prohibition on political or religious subject matters during meetings were all featured in each society’s code of laws. Beyond logistical or administrative similarities, the emphasis on all of forms of useful knowledge (literary and philosophical) was certainly unique. What constituted “useful” was therefore not limited to practical knowledge. Lit Phils predated the breakup of knowledge into distinct disciplines which are now ubiquitous in modern academic institutions. Prolific poet and newspaper proprietor James Montgomery justified the constitution of the society within his opening address by listing a number of Sheffield’s most important learned men.[4] Montgomery went further by turning Byron’s mocking remark about ‘classical Sheffield’ on its head, using the title sincerely. Although Lit Phils were not inherently opposed to certain aspects of Romanticism, the emphasis on moral improvement and useful knowledge meant there was little room for the appreciation of passion and the display of emotion. There are a number of rather stuffy letters and lectures complaining about speakers being too emotive, or warning against a ‘love of display’.[5]

However, Lit Phils and Romanticism were in complete opposition. One important point of overlap can be found within William Godwin’s ideas about conversation and the creation of knowledge. Unlike public lectures, papers delivered in monthly meetings were shorter and followed by a discussion. In this context, the speaker would serve as a chair for debate, rather than strict figure of authority. In doing so, ‘the constant collision of minds’ could be facilitated, ‘the action and re-action of thought upon thought, the transmission of truth from individual to individual’ could take place. Conversation as a means of creating knowledge was an idea developed not just by Godwin, but also Joseph Priestley and Isaac Watts.[6]

Returning to the 12th of December, the foundation of the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society served as an important addition to the growing network of learned societies in England. They were no longer a small gentlemen’s club, but a vast web of societies intent on the circulation and creation of knowledge. 

[1] Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, Vol. 1 (Warrington: W. Eyres, 1785), vii.

[2] Emsley, “‘Terror’ and the Rule of Law in England during the Decade of the French Revolution.”, 802-3. 

[3] Jon Mee and Jennifer Wilkes, Transpennine Enlightenment: The Literary and Philosophical Societies and Knowledge Networks in the North, 1781-1830.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Vol. 38, Issue, 4. (2015), 1.

[4] Specifically the sculptor Francis Chantrey, botanist Jonathan Salt, and antiquarian Joseph Hunter.

[5] C. T. Thackrah, An Introductory Discourse, Delivered to Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, April 6 1821, (Leeds: W. Gawtrees and co., 1821) 46-7.

[6] Fourth Report of the Council, on the General State of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society (Leeds: Robinson and Hernaman, 1824), 11-12.