Home » Category archives: 'Editorial' (Page 3)
It was a question that had eighteenth-century, gothic and Romantic scholars and enthusiasts scratching their heads: how exactly should one celebrate the 250th birthday of Ann Radcliffe, one of the best-selling and most influential writers … Continue reading
‘British Romanticism’, writes Paul Youngquist in Race, Romanticism, and the Atlantic, ‘is white’ (p. 91). Youngquist’s volume interrogates this ideology of whiteness, critiquing its systematic erasure of the violence in and across the Black Atlantic … Continue reading
In 1802, James Hogg embarked on the first of three excursions into the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The young Border shepherd hoped to advance himself by leasing a farm and thereby joining the increasing … Continue reading
How might it be possible, ask Evan Gottlieb and Juliet Shields in the introduction to Representing Place in British Literature and Culture, to ‘tell the whole story’ of the intersections of local, regional, national and … Continue reading
Hypochondria is a highly suggestive topic for Romantic criticism, as well as for the period itself. The study of how minds and bodies might get entangled in all things psychosomatic (a coinage of Samuel Taylor … Continue reading
In the second chapter of his fascinating and ambitious study, John Gardner reproduces a piece of advice given by Thomas Carlyle to veteran radical and survivor of Peterloo, Samuel Bamford: ‘I own I had much … Continue reading
The theoretical rationale for the emergence of transatlantic literary studies has been the recognition of important missed connections under prior modes of critical study and the rectifying power of observing multiple global parties in conversation … Continue reading
The Northanger Library Project (HUM2006-03404) was a three-year state-sponsored project (2006–09) that sought to study the rise of gothic literature against the background of the ‘long’ eighteenth century in Britain. The central concern of the … Continue reading
This paper resituates Samuel Rogers’s influential work Italy within the wider context of Britain’s post-Waterloo visual–verbal culture. Rogers’s illustrated multi-generic travel book made the Italian peninsula accessible to its upwardly mobile middle-class audience through its miscellaneous nature, its poems, tales, travelogues, treatment of art, antiquarian asides and translation of key Italian authors. It was one of the nineteenth century’s best-selling texts, but it did not start out that way. Indeed, it would take Rogers over a decade in order to produce a profitable object. This article examines this process and the ways in which Rogers responded to key developments in the commercial print market, especially the growing popularity for keepsakes and annuals, in order to register the publishing market’s dependency on word-image constellations, Britain’s changing relationship with Italy, and, ultimately, the growing purchasing power of a middle-class, female audience. Continue reading
Since his rise to fame in the early nineteenth century, Byron and his work have been significant subjects for visual art, from book illustration to oil painting. This essay explores Byronic art across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, taking as a case study the treatment of his late narrative poem, Don Juan. Byron’s wide-ranging appeal was a result of both the popularity of his poetry and the public fascination with his life, but it was also determined by the multiple, fluid qualities of his work which facilitated a huge variety of readings across the centuries. Here, the visual implications of these ways of reading are considered, and the essay argues that pictorial Byronism played an important role in presenting evolving perceptions of the broader Romantic movement. Continue reading
This essay contends that Skene, Scott’s amateur-artist friend, was often used as a visual research assistant for many scenes contained within the Waverley novels. Skene became an advisor to some of the earliest illustrations of Scott’s novels that were produced beyond Scotland. In the introduction to the fourth canto of Marmion, dedicated to Skene, Scott writes: ‘The shepherd, who in summer sun, | Had something of our envy won, | As thou with pencil, I with pen, | The features traced of hill and glen’. This glimpse of Skene sketching next to Scott reveals a significant aspect to their friendship: Skene’s sketches were used as aides-memoire, visual references or even inspirations to Scott’s literary imagination for many descriptive topographical or architectural passages within his novels. Through close readings of the novels, Scott’s correspondence and Skene’s own memoir, Hill establishes that Skene contributed signgiicant visual stimuli for a number of Scott’s works. Continue reading
The first edition of Bannerman’s Tales of Superstition and Chivalry (1802) contained an erotic engraving of a naked Venus figure, which was declared ‘offensive to decency’ by Scottish audiences in the poet’s native Edinburgh. Garner’s account investigates the controversy surrounding the engraving and the puzzling disparity between it and the ballad it illustrated: the Arthurian-themed ‘Prophecy of Merlin’. Using evidence from Bannerman’s correspondence with noted Scottish male publishers and antiquarians, this essay argues that decision to include the dangerous engraving was symptomatic of current anxieties surrounding a female-authored text which threatened to encroach on antiquarian and Arthurian enquiry. Continue reading
Proposals are invited for the 2015 British Association for Romantic Studies international conference which will be held at Cardiff University, Wales (UK) on 16–19 July 2015. The theme of the interdisciplinary conference is Romantic Imprints, … Continue reading
by Brian Wall Before delving into how, as I suggested in my first post, law and literature can enhance our understanding of key nineteenth-century transatlantic texts, I think it is worthwhile to briefly review what … Continue reading
It is striking that the turn of the nineteenth century saw the earliest use—and swift adoption—of both autobiography and biology and their cognates in European languages. [1] Two very different disciplines of ‘life-writing’ that took … Continue reading
A reliable treatment of the work of ‘Robert des ruines’ (Hubert Robert, 1733–1808) has been wanting for many years, and Nina Dubin’s Futures and Ruins will amply meet this need for a considerable time. It … Continue reading
Anna Seward: A Constructed Life is the first biography of the ‘Swan of Lichfield’ since Margaret Ashmun’s 1931 account of the writer and her famous literary friends. However, this critical biography is more than just … Continue reading
by Sarah Sharp, University of Edinburgh The tercentenary of the Hanoverian succession of 1714 has provided the stimulus for an exciting and highly visual exhibition at the British Library, which traces the changes in British … Continue reading
I know, I know, this isn’t Christmassy. But it is timely. And, I promise, there will be poetry – oodles of the stuff – in the new year. In fact, if you read to the … Continue reading
This essay offers a historical and generic account of the inter-cultural British and Irish nexus of imitation surrounding Thomas Moore’s first published volume of verse, his remarkably successful Odes of Anacreon, Translated into English Verse, with Notes (1800). I situate Moore’s volume, imitative of the sixth-century BC poet Anacreon’s lyrics of wine, women and song, within the dual Irish and British contexts of Anacreontic verse published in Ireland in the eighteenth century, in the contemporary cultural milieu of glee clubs, bodies such as the Hibernian Catch Club, the Beefsteak Club, the Humbug Club and the tellingly named Anacreontic Society, whose members frequently performed Anacreontic sentimental and drinking songs, and in the Cockney School Romanticism of Leigh Hunt and John Keats. In doing so, the paper repositions Moore, in his role of Anacreontic versifier as a formative presence at the genesis of British Romanticism as the turn of the nineteenth century, in ways that allow a deeper understanding of the culturally complex formation of Four Nations Romanticism. Continue reading
Following an extended delay after migrating to a new platform, Issue 21 of Romantic Textualities offers the first of two special issues dealing with ‘Romantic Visual Cultures’, which will continue into Issue 22. These twin … Continue reading
The House of John Murray was well known as one of the principal British publishers in the field of travel and exploratory literature throughout much of the nineteenth century. The titles that were published under the proprietorship of John Murray II (1778–1843) and John Murray III (1808–92) read like a who’s who of nineteenth-century travel writing. The John Murray Archive offers one of the richest archival sources for publishing history, providing unequalled insight into the way that a prominent London publisher dealt with its authors in the age of colonial expansion. This article examines the processes through which Murray’s works came to make their way from manuscript to publication over several decades. It will conclude with a discussion of authorial self-presentation, examining ways in which some of Murray’s travel writers fashioned themselves, through various discursive strategies, in accordance with their position within this new literary economy. Continue reading
by Katie Garner On Saturday 7 December, members of the Eighteenth-Century Literature Research Network in Ireland gathered at St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra, just north of Dublin city centre, for the network’s 11th annual symposium. … Continue reading
By Jo Taylor Let me set the scene. Chawton, Hampshire, sometime in the 1810s. A modest, well-kept house in the centre of the village, lavender outside the window waving in the breeze. Someone playing the … Continue reading
In this report, I want to float what I consider to be a distinct possibility: that Ann Radcliffe did not cease publication after The Italian (1797), but published two anonymous novels for the circulating library … Continue reading
With the recent publication of the RCUK revised guidelines on Open Access publication of publicly funded research, set amidst the broader (and often polemical) debates surrounding open access in general, I thought it would be … Continue reading
The essay looks at the masculine sporting culture that flourished in the 1820s, revolving in particular around the boxing world dubbed ‘The Fancy’. Focusing on the 1821 prizefight between Tom Hickman and Bill Neate, Snowdon examines the ways in which the event was depicted by the pens of William Hazlitt, Pierce Egan, and John Badcock. An extended discussion of the popular Boxiana series, which was first written by Egan, and then taken up by Badcock, before legal proceedings allowed Egan to publish once again under the Boxiana imprint. Continue reading
Did Ireland experience Romanticism? Certainly not in the uncomplicated way that scholarship assumes England, Germany and other countries did. In Romanticism in National Context (1988), Tom Dunne’s contribution eschews the standard chapter title form—‘Romanticism in … Continue reading
If Romantic women poets, as Paula Feldman says, have ‘appeared in literary history at best as footnotes’, Maria Pickersgill has been a footnote to a footnote, and undeservedly so. [1] Her husband, Henry William Pickersgill, … Continue reading
Following an unexpected and protracted delay, the current issue of Romantic Textualities brings into focus further interactions between Romantic literature and contemporary print culture. The two articles and one report offer illuminating explorations into the … Continue reading
Circulating-Library Catalogues, 1800–1829: Checklist Entries employ the following conventions. Entries are grouped by year, and then by a reference number which corresponds to that given in The English Novel, 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose … Continue reading
The fiction of the early nineteenth century is well known as a minefield for author attribution. According to data compiled for a new Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles, in two … Continue reading
I James Henderson’s article ‘The Gothic Novel in Wales (1790–1820)’ provides a useful starting point for a study of Wales-related fiction of the romantic period. [1] Examining the extent to which Wales was used as … Continue reading
I This paper seeks to consider the influence of Ann Radcliffe’s fiction on the literary scene at the end of the eighteenth century. It will examine two very different responses to the Radcliffean paradigm, through … Continue reading
Scott’s strategy from the commencement of the Waverley Novels, it might be argued, was to create a ‘superior’ kind of fiction, pitched in such a way as to draw back a male book-buying audience as … Continue reading
This paper examines the turn of the eighteenth century, when the dichotomy between books as products and books as artistic outputs emerged and deals with three different components: novels, circulating libraries, and readers. The aim of the paper is to draw attention to some of the underlying factors that conditioned that split between high and low which came about at this time and also to pinpoint some of the actors that were involved in this process, focused in particular on the works of August Lafontaine and the translation of his works into Swedish. Continue reading
I ‘An acknowledged novel-writer is, perhaps, one of the most difficult names to support with credit and reputation’. -ELIZABETH SARAH VILLA-REAL GOOCH, Preface to Sherwood Forest (1804). The early nineteenth century saw a ‘sharply rising … Continue reading
This essay provides an overview of patterns of reception and production of Irish fiction published between 1800 and 1829, with particular discussion of the fiction of Maria Edgeworth and Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan). The essay is followed by a bibliographical checklist of 114 works of fiction published during the survey period. Continue reading
I ‘Few poetic careers can have been more thoroughly devoted to the construction of national identity than was that of Felicia Hemans’s, writes Tricia Lootens, in her contribution to Angela Leighton’s Victorian Women Poets: A … Continue reading
The second stage of our Database of Fiction 1800-29 project is focused towards the acquisition of contemporary materials which will provide a more comprehensive context for the primary bibliographical data already available. Since her appointment … Continue reading
Eaton Stannard Barrett’s The Heroine has traditionally been read as a reactionary text. In problematizing this received status, however, we are not simply aiming to recuperate Barrett’s novel into a more politically correct framework by … Continue reading
Attention has repeatedly been drawn to literary anticipations of a change in taste which was to mark English garden design in the eighteenth century. One of the earliest voices to give expression to their dissatisfaction … Continue reading
This project report relates to The English Novel, 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey Published in the British Isles, edd. Peter Garside, James Raven, and Rainer Schöwerling, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 2000). In particular, it offers fresh … Continue reading
This project report is a summary of data collected from various anecdotal sources for inclusion in our Database of British Fiction, 1800-29. The material provided below was gathered between February 2000 and May 2001, from … Continue reading
Part way through Frances Burney’s massive third novel, Camilla, the heroine’s father laments the difficulties he has encountered in educating his daughters. ‘[T]he proper education of a female’, he proclaims miserably, ‘either for use or … Continue reading
A woman who is unhappy-and truly unhappy-cries and doesn’t move you at all: it’s worse, it’s that any slight feature that disfigures her makes you laugh: it’s that an accent which is ordinary for her … Continue reading
Published annually to cover the years 1801–09, The Flowers of Literature consisted primarily of extracts from what were perceived to be the year’s most popular publications. The extracts were drawn from a range of genres, … Continue reading
The years 1760-1820 mark a turning point in the history of historiography. Methods for studying the past changed rapidly during this period, as did the forms in which historical knowledge was displayed. Hume famously called … Continue reading
The two volumes of The English Novel 1770-1829 document the large number of men and women involved in the production of fiction in the Romantic period. [1] Of this number, biographical data are presently available … Continue reading
The interlude between the decline of Jacobin leadership at the end of the eighteenth century, and emergence of Chartism in the 1830s occupies an interesting place in the history of the English working classes. It … Continue reading
