{"id":894,"date":"2015-09-29T18:47:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T18:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=894"},"modified":"2015-09-29T22:20:01","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T22:20:01","slug":"report-from-writing-lives-together-university-of-leicester-2015-lucy-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=894","title":{"rendered":"Report from Writing Lives Together (University of Leicester, 2015) – Lucy Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Alfred Tennyson with book, by Julia Margaret Cameron<\/p><\/div>\n

The 2015 Writing Lives Together: Romantic and Victorian Biography<\/em> conference was held on the 18th<\/sup> September at the University of Leicester.\u00a0 Organised by Dr Felicity James and Dr Julian North, the day provided fascinating papers and stimulating discussion (along with a fabulous lunch!).<\/p>\n

The opening keynote lecture, \u2018Adventures of an Unromantic Biographer\u2019, was delivered by Dr Daisy Hay (University of Exeter), in which she discussed the \u2018creative potential of life-writing\u2019 for women who have been \u2018erased from history\u2019.\u00a0 In this compelling lecture, Hay framed life-writing as an empowering act that can give voice and autonomy to those who might otherwise have been silenced.<\/p>\n

The first panel I attended was Women Writing Together<\/em>, and it was opened by Dr Amy Culley (University of Lincoln).\u00a0 Her paper, titled \u2018Ageing, authorship, and female friendship in the life writing of Mary Berry and Joanna Baillie\u2019, examined the life writing of Mary Berry (1763-1852) through the lens of her friendship with Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) during the two writers\u2019 later lives.\u00a0 Culley discussed the processes of supporting each other as older literary women, and provided a fascinating reading of rry\u2019s desire to leave a legacy of sorts that might inspire creative acts in other older women.\u00a0\u00a0 Culley\u2019s discussion of the \u2018gendering\u2019 of the experience of old age gave an especially interesting and unique perspective on the perhaps overlooked complexity of an older woman writer\u2019s role in eighteenth and nineteenth century literary communities.<\/p>\n

Next up was Dr Catherine Delafield (Independent), with her paper \u2018\u201cI attempt no memoir\u201d: Austen family values and the letter as life writing\u2019.\u00a0 Delafield examined the two-volume edition of the letters of Jane Austen published by her great-nephew Lord Brabourne in 1884 as an \u2018answer\u2019 to James Edward Austen-Leigh\u2019s Memoir of Jane Austen<\/em> (1870), and discussed how the two texts formed a dialogue on the \u2018ownership\u2019 of Austen as a figure.\u00a0 As Delafield demonstrated, Austen herself has been frequently marginalised in the various attempts to write her life.<\/p>\n

The final paper on this panel was delivered by Professor Valerie Sanders (University of Hull).\u00a0 In \u2018The Many Lives of Elizabeth Fry\u2019, she analysed how women write together as editors after the subject\u2019s death, and asked whether editors could be considered writers or collaborators. \u00a0Sanders looked at the vexed issue of family members editing other family members\u2019 lives through the prism of Fry\u2019s daughters\u2019 decision to write their mother\u2019s life, asking who ultimately \u2018owns\u2019 or \u2018controls\u2019 life-writing.<\/p>\n

Following the aforementioned fabulous lunch, the second round of panels took place.\u00a0 I was presenting on Collaborative Suppressions and Experiments<\/em>, which was opened by Dr Emily Paterson Morgan (Independent) with her paper, \u2018Repackaging Peacock: The Collaborative Censorship of The Life and Works of Thomas Love Peacock\u2019.\u00a0 In this compelling and diverse paper, Morgan examined Peacock\u2019s deconstruction of his own life and explored how this potentially conflicted with the \u2018repackaging\u2019 of Peacock\u2019s reputation by the friends who wrote his life.\u00a0 In particular, Morgan highlighted Peacock\u2019s antipathy towards biography, and discussed how Peacock\u2019s granddaughter\u00a0 Edith Nichols\u2019 provided a \u2018deceptively\u2019 edited version of his life.<\/p>\n

Following my own paper, Dr Jane Darcy (UCL) closed the panel with \u2018Contemporary portraits of Tennyson\u2019.\u00a0 Darcy explored the conflict between Tennyson\u2019s disregard for fame and the desire of his circle of friends who wished to record and memorialise aspects of their life with the poet.\u00a0 In particular, her paper focused on the link between Julia Margaret Cameron\u2019s portrait photographs of the poet and the \u2018biographical narratives\u2019 of Tennyson\u2019s daughter Anny Thackeray Ritchie.\u00a0 This paper was a genuine highlight for me, bringing to life the unique and vivid character of Anny Thackeray in particular, complemented by some of Cameron\u2019s stunningly intimate photographs. Darcy also drew our attention to two upcoming exhibitions of Cameron\u2019s work to mark the bicentenary of the artist\u2019s birth: Julia Margaret Cameron<\/em> at the V&A, running 28 November 2015 to 21 February 2016, and Influence and Intimacy <\/em>at the Science Museum, running 24 September 2015 to 28 March 2016.<\/p>\n

The third and final panel I attended was Women Writing Together II<\/em>, and was opened by Rebecca Shuttleworth (University of Leicester) with her paper \u2018The Domestic Politics of Life-Writing: Elizabeth Heyrick, Susanna Watts, and Rewritten Identities in Dissenting 19th<\/sup> Century Biography\u2019.\u00a0 Shuttleworth examined the various tensions inherent in how these women chose to present their identities versus how they have been depicted by Victorian biographers, and the ways in which this contrasted with how Watts and Heyrick presented themselves as activists and anti-slavery abolitionists.<\/p>\n

Next was Dr Amber Regis\u2019s (University of Sheffield) paper, \u2018Canine collaboration: memory, reflection, and human-animal voices in Lucy Thornton\u2019s The Story of a Poodle<\/em> (1889)\u2019.\u00a0 In this lovely and engaging paper, Regis examined how Thornton \u2018made didactic use of Gaston\u2019s [the poodle] life\u2019, exploring the analogy between children and animals.\u00a0 This is, Regis told us, the only example she knows of human-animal autobiography and biography, and she explored the concept of dog and mistress as \u2018literary collaborators\u2019.<\/p>\n

The third and final paper was given by Dr Rebecca Styler (University of Lincoln), \u2018Finding Vocation Through the Lives of Others: Josephine Butler\u2019s Spiritual Auto\/Biographies\u2019.\u00a0 She discussed how feminist and reformer Butler \u2018overcame her fear of \u2018unfeminine\u2019 public discourse\u2019 in order to lead the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Act that placed her in direct opposition to the establishment of the later Victorian period.<\/p>\n

The closing keynote lecture was given by Professor David Amigoni (University of Keele), and was titled \u2018Writing Lives Together in the Darwin Family, 1804-1876: gender, heredity, and authority\u2019.\u00a0 Amigoni discussed Gwen Raverat\u2019s memories of her grandfather Charles Darwin in Period Piece<\/em>, and highlighted how those writing lives on the Darwin family conceptualised sympathy as a \u2018key moral category in life writing\u2019, particularly in how it influences readers\u2019 perceptions.\u00a0 Amigoni also discussed Nora Barlow\u2019s publication of Darwin\u2019s Beagle<\/em> diary as a focal point in the construction of his afterlife persona.<\/p>\n

Many thanks to the organisers Dr James and Dr North and to all involved in making this a genuinely fantastic, friendly, and diverse day!<\/p>\n

– Lucy Johnson, University of Chester.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2015 Writing Lives Together: Romantic and Victorian Biography conference was held on the 18th September at the University of Leicester.\u00a0 Organised by Dr Felicity James and Dr Julian North,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=894"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":901,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions\/901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}