Update on CSECS 2010, St. John's

Good stuff.

Strawberry Hill Online!

The Strawberry Hill Trust recently launched The Strawberry Hill House Online! to celebrate the reopening of Horace Walpole's newly-restored gothic castle! Features extensive history and updated images that showcase the interior architecture and glasswork. And the bizarro Medieval details. Walpole: what a weirdo! haha! But really though, super beautiful. Thanks SH Trust!

"It was built to please my own taste, and in some degree to realise my own visions" (Horace Walpole)

Those damn'd Romantics

In my grad seminar, "The Gothic Century," we are learning that Romantic scholars want to extend the beginning of their era from 1798 to 1750, eschewing all differences in between those dates that characterize those dates. As I take it from Susan J. Wolfson in "50-50? Phone a Friend? Ask the Audience? Speculating on a Romantic Century, 1750-1850," part of the force behind extending the Romantic era is a discipline-related issue: fewer universities hire straight-up Romantics, but instead hire specialists in the long-eighteenth century. Thus, if Romantics can force themselves into the long-eighteenth century somehow, their era (and their job) is preserved. How political. My real concern here is with statements like, "eighteenth-century scholars have as a rule been uninterested in fiction written after Fielding and Richardson" (Claudia L. Johnson, "The Novel and the Romantic Century, 1750-1850" italics mine). As a rule? That seems both exaggerated and incorrect. As an Austen scholar, Johnson's views seem oriented by Austen's position in the eighteenth-century, and while she celebrates that Austen was "(gladly) ceded back to eighteenth-century studies" (thankfully, I agree), later-century writers only wrote about "girlie things, like manners" (15). She says that Sam Johnson got the boot, and is "no longer used as a way of organizing ... the period" (15). She ends by returning to what Wolfson opened with: reformation of the era is for hiring opportunity. But, the extension of the Romantic era asks the question, does Romanticism even exist?

For me, I find it bizarre to call Austen "pre-Victorian" as much as I find it bizarre to call Thomas Warton, Oliver Goldsmith, or even Horace Walpole "pre-Romantic." If the "Romantic Century" begins in 1750, what do we make of Gray, Sterne, Boswell, Equiano, Burke, Barbauld? These writers are distinct from the project of Wordsworth and Coleridge, which has thus far been the place mark of Romanticism. I'm just not buying this whole thing. Certain preoccupations were brought to the writing table that are uniquely mid-century oriented. Yes, Gray is an early voice of the fascination with the morose, solitary, and (unknowingly) psychological, but to say he is a pre-Romantic takes him out of his context and hands him over to an era affected by Revolution, regency, industrial/scientific developments, and urbanite-occupations. Not the nostalgic, neo-classical, anxious, naive, and authorial culture to which he belongs. IF ANYTHING, we should call the Romantics post-Sensibility. If Burke's Sublime is the treatise of the era, especially in the Gothic mode, then perhaps the Romantics were looking back to mid-century to position themselves with a particular aesthetic and sociocultural agenda; Burke was not looking ahead to plain language, ghosts, and the women's right to write. Give me a break.

Sources:

Johnson, Claudia L. "The Novel and the Romantic Century, 1750-1850" European Romantic Review 1 (2000) 12-20.

Wolfson, Susan J. "50-50? Phone a Friend? Ask the Audience? Speculating on a Romantic Century, 1750-1850" European Romantic Review 1 (2000) 1-11.

Printer of the Century

Today in 1764, Robert Dodsley - famed printer, miscellaneous writer - died in Durham. His well-known editions include Johnson's Rasselas, Gray's Elegy, and The Annual Register with Edmund Burke. He oversaw some of the publication of Tristram Shandy; he retired the same year (1759) and handed over his Tully's Head, Pall Mall shop to his brother James.

Portrait above: attributed to Edward Alcock, 1760 (NPG London).

Seen below is the frontispiece to Volume I of Tristram Shandy, complete with woodcut by Hogarth showing Trim reading the sermon, "The Abuses of Conscience Considered," to Uncle Toby and Walter. Trim's body follows Hogarth's "line of beauty" - the serpentine. This particular edition is a reprint from 1782, but clearly printed for "J.Dodsley" in London.



See: Solomon, Harry S. The Rise of Robert Dodsley (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1996). Online.

What a weirdo.

Coming soon: the online launch of Horace Walpole's gothic castle renovations! from the Friends of Strawberry Hill. "I am going to build a little Gothic castle at Strawberry Hill" (Walpole).



More on Strawberry Hill from the Twickenham Museum.

Albert Moore

A Quartet, A Painter's Tribute ... AD 1868

Albert Joseph Moore was born in York in 1841, and died in London in 1893. A Quartet represents, as Elizabeth Prettejohn writes, the classical spirit of his art and the linear grid underplaying the scene: "the figures and objects alike take their places in obedience to the abstract pattern of the grid" (120). The golden hair of the woman on the right is balanced by the golden flower and golden sash on the left, for instance. The angles of the bows and the placement of the instruments also functions within Moore's linearity. To see a higher quality version of this image, please visit Peter Nahum @ The Leister Galleries.

Reference.

For Sale!

Looking to downsize? This modest home outside of Paris has 27 rooms to suit your needs. With just under 9,000 sqaure feet of living space, this cozy property offers an easy transition for recent empty-nesters or "do-it your-selfers". Settle in with your very own maid and groundskeeper. Built in 1783, this French Revolution-era home is anything but rebellious. The grand salon, pigeonier, wooded park, and bibliotheque will make waking up in this south-facing cottage a delight. Take an afternoon dip in one of the swimming pools, or relax on one of the many patios. In-laws coming for a visit? The enfilad, an attached 3 bedroom maison, is perfect for those family get-togethers. Plenty of storage in the vaulted cave.

Don't miss this chance to enjoy rustic living in an intimate setting.

Asking Price: $4 million EUR.

Portraiture

In The Art of Thomas Gainsborough (1999), Michael Rosenthal writes that the interest of the very popular portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds "lay in the person represented" (12), including the 1760 portrait of Laurence Sterne. It was then re-engraved in 1761 by Edward Fisher for commercial sale, "meant to capitalize on Sterne's [also] amazing popularity" (12). Collecting images of those "in fashion" was common during this period.

18th Century Society

I'm presenting an essay at the Canadian Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Annual Conference at Memorial University in Newfoundland this October. The essay is titled, "Sterne's Darling Maid: Charting the Influence of Laurence Sterne on Jane Austen". I went to the CSECS/NEASECS Conference in Ottawa last year, which was great, and I am very excited to attend this year's conference because Pat Rogers is scheduled to be a plenary speaker, who I met at BSECS 2008. He's worked on Sterne in the past. WATCH OUT NEWFOUNDLAND! Anyway, now I am revising, revising, revising the essay, which is good. I think people only listen in conferences about 60% of the time anyway; it's a lot to retain in a short time, plus some people are naturally boring.

Life is too short to be long about the forms of it.

Just a little update regarding this website managed by Ken Roberts. He has been collecting queries and evidence regarding Sterne and Austen, and I noticed that his website lacked a few helpful articles and references. Thus, I sent an email to him, and received a reply soon after, and shortly after that, I appeared on his website! It is an offshoot of the Republic of Pemberley, dedicated to Austania, and features links of independent scholars with various areas of interest in Austen. This is the only dedicated page to these two literary figures and I contributed to it! Anyway, I also sent the reference to Sterne in Northanger Abbey, but am featured regarding article by Park Honan. There was another helpful article by Celia A. Easton but I don't think the proprietor of the website could get that article. I had a hard time finding it myself. So, I am excited about this little inclusion on a website directly related to my interests now.