Author Archive
2013 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,400 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.
Conference report for RLS 2013: Stevenson, Time and History (UNSW)
by Naomi Carle (Durham University)
I have to confess, I was more than a little sceptical that I would be able to identify a group of Stevensonians among the crowd gathered on the steps of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, but I needn’t have worried. Although this was to be my first Stevenson conference (well over-due), a collection of amiable and interested faces affirmed I was in the right place. Roslyn Jolly’s inspired decision to begin the conference with a tour of Stevenson’s Sydney was both convivial and informative. We viewed pictures illustrative of the ‘sham candy cane’ tropics that Stevenson strove to correct; saw an exhibition of manuscripts collated especially for the conference at the State Library and marvellously contextualised by Roger Swearingen’s extensive notes; rested in the very chair Stevenson often occupied when hiding away from his womenfolk at the Union Club (albeit now housed in a rather impressive skyscraper that would have been entirely alien to him); and wondered at his vehement hatred of the inoffensive Post Office Tower. Roslyn’s helpful revelation that one of his manuscripts was ingested by its corridors never to re-emerge went some way to explaining things. As with all good tours, ours ended in a bar – a rather marvellous institution tucked beneath the majestic sails of the Opera House, just above the harbour. By the time we began to peel off into the night, I felt like I was parting from old friends.
Union Club, Sydney
Roslyn and Chris Danta continued the spirit of the previous evening in their official warm welcome to the conference, which included a respectful acknowledgement of the indigenous peoples whose land we met on. Business began with Adrian Poole’s masterful keynote, which utilised Alan’s ‘grand memory for forgetting’ (uttered in genuine Scots) as a fruitful point of departure for a discussion of individual and collective memory as models for writing in Stevenson’s works. From a polite agreement between friends, to rats nibbling at the edges of a vicar’s sermon and fin-de-siècle preoccupations with psychology, history, points of origin and genetics, we arrived by steps and leaps at a new appreciation for Stevenson’s uneasy understanding of survivals which resonated with many subsequent discussions. There followed a day of illuminating and incredibly inter-related panels, despite their diversity in topic and approach. The many faces of Stevenson were discussed in relation to the historical novel, the anxiety of influence, the reception of his work in French literary circles and Portuguese translation, and his complex relationship with the law. These papers provoked interesting elaborations on Stevenson’s playfulness as a writer, the contention between history and fiction in his writing, and his desire to be innovative and experimental in all while remaining acutely aware of the limitations of his chosen medium. During lunch, we were treated to the book launch of Juvenilia Press’s edition of Stevenson’s Early Writings, edited by Christine Alexander and Elise McPherson. The volume contains some remarkable sketches drawn to accompany his writings, which show that an interest in the dialogue between artistic forms began at an early age.
The themes of memory and Stevenson’s unsettling ability to leave his reader with a startling pictorial impression carried through into the second day. We enjoyed panels on Stevenson’s manipulation of narrative time, his strong interest in science and medicine, the tension between tradition and modernity and his important Samoan connection. One of the most arresting of Stevenson’s characteristics to emerge was the plasticity of his approach, the immense capacity he had for seeing, and capturing oral tradition in his writing. After the day’s proceedings, we were privileged to attend the unveiling of a newly discovered Stevenson poem, ‘Birthday verses to a Lady’, at Sancta Sophia College. Roslyn Jolly delivered a wide-ranging lecture on the poem’s context in Stevenson’s oeuvre, elucidating the meaning of the find: the manuscript had been tucked away in College archives, undisturbed for years. Caroline Howlitt, one of the conference delegates, provided an authentic Scottish accent for another of Stevenson’s related verses, adding an international flavour to the evening.
The final day brought with it a further windfall of stimulating papers – spanning the sundry aspects of Stevenson’s writings from childhood, his creativity with both words and pictures, and his highly developed interest in the dynamics of process, change and movement. Alongside these panels, we were treated to some rather out of the ordinary presentations. Penny Fielding and Anthony Mandal gave us a preview of the current working format for the much-anticipated Edinburgh Edition, including a list of the anticipated dates for publication of the individual volumes. Anthony then returned after lunch to tell us about his highly innovative Jekyll 2.0 project which will bring the experience of Jekyll’s London to life for participants. Using technology that monitors cardiac and sensory responses to the simulated world, players will be guided through their own unique version of Jekyll’s experience of transforming into Hyde. Anthony shared the closing panel with Jo Henwood, who – like all the independent scholars participating in the conference – gave a refreshing and insightful portrayal of her personal engagement with Stevenson through her profession as a storyteller. In an entertaining and unscripted presentation, she took us right to the heart of Stevenson’s craft in her survey of his narrative techniques designed to exploit the power of suggestion and lure an audience in.
I left Sydney determined to contribute to Virginia 2015, and eager to return to my study and inject something of the intellectual vibrancy of the past three days into my thesis.
Jekyll 2.0: Embodying the Gothic Text
At the end of November 2012, I was lucky enough to be part of a team that won a commission through the innovative REACT Books&Print Sandbox call for early 2013. I’ll be working as lead academic partner with Bristol-based creative company, SlingShot, to create a pervasive media experience that draws on the narrative and themes of Stevenson’s gothic masterpiece.
Humanity 2.0 is an understanding of the human condition that no longer takes the ‘normal human body’ as given. On the one hand, we’re learning more about our continuity with the rest of nature—in terms of the ecology, genetic make-up, evolutionary history. On this basis, it’s easy to conclude that being ‘human’ is overrated. But on the other hand, we’re also learning more about how to enhance the capacities that have traditionally marked us off from the rest of nature.
—Steve Fuller, Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology, Warwick.
The core of our project draws on the fundamental questions of Jekyll and Hyde: What makes us human? Do our minds control our bodies or are we shaped by our urges, compulsions and appetites? Will technology radically transform us into a new organism, ‘Humanity 2.0’? Such questions are nothing new: during the 19th century, the cultural implications of emerging theories of identity and the dominance of science were explored by numerous works of literature. Drawing on this tradition, our project transforms this reading into play, to create a pervasive gaming experience that links individuals’ bio-data with one such text, Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde (1886), in order to stimulate participants into considering the condition of their own humanity. Read the rest of this entry »
Talk on scholarly editing at the National Library of Scotland, 9 Nov 2011
Textual Editing in Principle and Practice: What Are You Reading? Lecture 2
Dr Alison Lumsden (University of Aberdeen) and Dr Anthony Mandal (Cardiff University)
National Library of Scotland, 9 November 2011, 6pm (free)
Why should you buy a book for £6.99 when you might have the same title for 1.99? Is it just the price? The quality of the paper and cover? Or might the text itself—the words you’ll be reading—be different?
Why does a research library like the NLS hold so many copies of the same title? What difference does it make to read one copy rather than another? Why are so many books even needed?
The books that we buy in bookshops or read in libraries may have the same titles, but they are often very different—they may contain different words; sometimes a crucial scene or even the ending may vary. Some editions will alert the reader to these differences—others will just print the most easily available text. In this series we will look at some famous examples of texts which have more than one version, and guide you through the choices editors make in order to produce a text for the informed reader.
In this lecture, the second of the series, scholars working on major editions of key Scottish authors will explore how modern editors set about producing an edited text. What are the principles we adhere to? What is the evidence that counts in valuing one state of the text over another? Should we prefer the author’s first or last version? How should we treat the author’s original manuscript? In the second part of the talk we will demonstrate the process of editing, in particular how we can benefit from the latest technological advances.
- Why we edit books. Dr Alison Lumsden (Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels)
- How we edit books. Dr Anthony Mandal (New Edinburgh Edition of Robert Louis Stevenson)
Part of the ‘What Are You Reading’ series of lectures and workshops. For more information download the ‘What Are You Reading’ information sheet PDF (122 KB, 2 pages).
Please book your tickets online or call the NLS directly on 0131 623 3918.
EdRLS blog now with added Twitter goodness!
You can now follow regular updates from our linked Twitter page, managed by Lesley Graham, through this blog. The Twitter feed carries updates about the project, as well as matters of interest relating to all things Stevenson and tidbits from RLS himself … all in the space of 140 characters! You can view the last five tweets on the right navigation bar of this blog and can view the full Twitter feed by clicking on the links.
You can also follow our tweets directly @ https://twitter.com/#!/RLSte.
EdRLS receives funding from Royal Society of Edinburgh
We’re delighted to announce that a bid submitted to support EdRLS earlier this year to the Royal Society of Edinburgh was successful. The bid was entered into the recently launched RSE Arts & Humanities Major Research Grants competition, which makes awards of up to £175,000 provided by the Scottish Parliament in order to support ‘investigations in Scotland that will lead to advances in creativity, intellectual insights and knowledge that are of value to the research community and of use in wider social contexts’ [RSE website].
We are grateful to the RSE, whose generous support will ensure that the EdRLS team will be able to generate a sizeable quantity of volumes in our first phase, while maintaining the highest scholarly and production standards.
CFP: Mervyn Peake Conference 2011
Mervyn Peake and the Fantasy Tradition : A Centenary Conference
An international conference hosted by the English & Creative Writing Department, University of Chichester and the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy
15–16 July 2011 Chichester, UK
Keynote Speakers include: Joanne Harris | Michael Moorcock | Peter Winnington |Colin Manlove | Farah Mendlesohn | Sebastian Peake
This conference and related events next July to mark the centenary of Peake’s birth include exhibitions of his paintings and illustrations in Chichester (Peake lived in nearby Burpham while writing the Gormenghast books, and is buried there). July 2011 is also the publication date of Titus Awakes, Maeve Gilmore’s conclusion of her husband’s Gormenghast sequence. The conference will celebrate, explore and discuss the many facets of Peake’s rich creativity, including his work as fantasy novelist, children’s writer, playwright, poet, writer of nonsense verse, artist and illustrator (both of his own books and classics such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Hunting of the Snark, the Alice books, Treasure Island and the Grimms’ Household Tales).
Proposals are invited for papers, presentations and panels on any aspect of Peake’s work. We especially welcome proposals relating Peake to the broader traditions of fairy tales, fantasy and children’s literature.Relevant topics might include:
- thematic explorations of Peake’s oeuvre
- textual / linguistic / rhetorical analyses
- issues of genre (e.g. in what sense is Peake’s work ‘fantasy’?)
- issues of race and/or gender and/or class in Peake’s oeuvre
- questions of ‘applicability’ (in Tolkien’s sense)
- the relation of image and text in narrative (both in Peake’s own books and in those he illustrated)
- adaptations of Peake’s work
- Peake’s literary precursors and sources, for example in (Gothic) fantasy, children’s literature and nonsense verse
- Peake’s influence (from Moorcock and Miéville to mannerpunk)
- creative responses to Peake’s work in both literature and the visual arts
It is planned to publish a selection of the conference papers.
Please submit abstracts (max. 300 words) for papers not exceeding 20 minutes (with 10 minutes for discussion). For other kinds of presentation, for example creative responses to Peake’s work (both visual and literary), please send a sample, rather than an abstract. All proposals must be received by 14 January 2011.
For further details, including the proposal submission form, please see the conference website at: http://www.chiuni.ac.uk/english/MervynPeakeConference.cfm.
There are some fascinating connections between Mervyn Peake and Stevenson. Sebastian Peake has noted that ‘Treasure Island was the first book my father read, and loved, given him by his father.’ Some of Peake’s best illustrations are of Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; these are to be shown at the exhibitions accompanying the conference.
An editor’s trinity: Oxford Writers’ Reference « Cardiff Book History
Having done a fair bit of editing over the last decade, of myself, of others’ contributions and of scholarly editions, it was with unalloyed delight that I recently discovered a trio of invaluable reference books that make the job of handling scholarly writing a great deal easier. These three works—New Hart’s Rules, the New Oxford Spelling Dictionary and the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors—are an absolute treasure trove of useful pointers, guidelines and clarifications. Quite a few years ago, I had already encountered the Dictionary for Writers and Editors in an earlier incarnation, and it had served me well as a trustworthy companion in my various encounters with academic prose.
This new set of three books, first published in 2005, represent a leap forward from these beginnings. Each of the volumes complements the others perfectly, so that writers and editors have at their disposal a plethora of abbreviations, tips on style and disambiguations of the most troublesome spellings. Moreover, considering that so much information is packed into each book, they are uniformly formatted to a handy ‘pocket’ size (roughly, 18cm x 12cm), and are minimalistically but elegantly packaged. published by such an august firm as OUP, each of the volumes has also received the seal of recommendation from the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. All three books can be purchased individually or as part of a set (as The Oxford Writers’ Reference Pack) for about £30 online.
@ The Victorians Institute Conference 2010
Next week, Anthony Mandal will be discussing the New Edinburgh Edition at the Victorians Institute Conference 2010, By the Numbers, which is taking at the University of Virginia on 1–3 October 2010.
He will be participating on a plenary session on the morning of the 2nd, entitled ‘On Scholarly Publishing’, along with Penny Kaiserlian (University of Virginia Press) and Shana Kimball (University of Michigan Press), and chaired by fellow General Editor, Steve Arata. The aim of the session will be to consider the state of play for scholarly editions in today’s academic climate, the challenges facing university presses, and the opportunities and threats offered by the digital revolution.
Preceding this session, a panel on ‘Stevenson’s Calculations’ will take place, with offerings from Kathryn Kruger, Emily A. Bernhard Jackson and Robert-Louis Abrahamson, chaired by Anthony Mandal.
More information is available from the conference website @ http://www.nines.org/VIC2010.
Edinburgh Companion to RLS published this month
Later this month, the Edinburgh Companion to Robert Louis Stevenson will be published, edited by Penny Fielding, one of the General Editors of the New Edinburgh Edition. This wide-ranging collection of essays is the first to set Stevenson in detailed social, political and literary contexts, taking account of both Stevenson’s extraordinary thematic and generic diversity and his geographical range. The chapters explore his relation to late-19th-century publishing, psychology, travel, the colonial world and the emergence of modernism in prose and poetry. Through the pivotal figure of Stevenson, the collection explores how literary publishing and cultural life changed across the second half of the 19th century. Stevenson emerges as a complex writer, author both of hugely popular boys’ stories and of seminally important adult novels, as well as the literary figure who debated with Henry James the theory of fiction and the nature of realism. The collection shows how interest in the unconscious and changes in the conception of childhood demand that we re-evaluate our ideas of his writing. Individual essays by international experts trace Stevenson’s literary contexts from Scotland to the South Pacific, and show him to be one of the key writers for understanding the growing sense of globalisation and cultural heterogeneity in the late 19th century.
EdRLS 