Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

George Eliot's Afterlife: Dinitia Smith's The Honeymoon And Diana Souhami's Gwendolen, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In Middlemarch, chapter 20, as Dorothea Casubon sits musing in Rome, George Eliot presents one of the most traumatic honeymoons in fiction . With decorum, but unmistakably, Dorothea's sexual confusion is conveyed: however, she will live through widowhood to fulfilment as Dorothea Ladislaw. In contrast, George Eliot denies such fulfilment to Gwendolen Grandcourt in her next novel, Daniel Deronda. Where Dorothea's acceptance of Casaubon's proposal arises from idealistic ignorance, Gwendolen's decision to marry Grandcourt is morally flawed because of her awareness of his liaison with Lydia Glasher. There is no question about the physical consummation of the Grandcourt marriage, unlike …

Opera Review: Middlemarch In Spring, A Two-Act Opera By Composer Alien Shearer, Libretto By Claudia Stevens. First Performance, San Francisco, Z Space, March 19, 2015, Delia Da Sousa Correa, Michael Halliwell

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot consistently paid meticulous attention to matters of 'voice,' typically providing precise descriptions of her characters' voices, whether speaking or singing. Dorothea Brooke's harp-like voice is, of course, one of the qualities that first transfixes Will Ladislaw. Eliot's novels also resound with allusions to the operatic repertoire, from Caterina Sarti's impassioned renditions of Gluck in 'Mr Gilfil's Love Story' through to the elaborate operatic analogies that characterize the social milieu of Daniel Deronda. Despite these deeply-threaded affinities with opera, this is the first operatic adaptation of Middlemarch.

Barbara Hardy In France, Alain Jumeau

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Barbara Hardy was a well-known figure among French Victorianists, probably because she had written on three at least of the major novelists of the period, Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, not to forget Thomas Hardy and a few others.

As far as I am concerned, when I started researching on George Eliot in the early seventies, I found her book The Novels of George Eliot: A Study in Form particularly inspiring. At that time, most critical studies dealing with George Eliot were either concerned with the problem of realism or with a purely moral approach. The notion of form, which …

Conference Report: Annual George Eliot Conference: Daniel Deronda, Institute Of English Studies, 7 November 2015, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The conference opened with a characteristically rich and incisive paper by Barbara Hardy (Birkbeck), 'Re-Reading Daniel Deronda', which, sadly, was the last she was to deliver. In 'Daniel Deronda: The Two Halves That Were Never Whole', Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck) presented a paper that will become part of her forthcoming book on Novel Politics: Democratic Imaginations and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. The 'Two Sequels to Daniel Deronda' discussed by John Rignall (Warwick) were a seven-page satirical squib in Mr Punch s Pocket-Book Jor 1877 entitled' Daniel Deronda Book IX', and a short novel, Gwendolen: or, Reclaimed: A Sequel to 'Daniel Deronda', published in …

Japanese Branch Report, Eri Satoh

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday 28 November 2015 , the Nineteenth Annual Convention of The George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Obirin University.

Barbara Hardy On Dickens, Michael Slater

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

1970, the centenary year of Dickens's death, saw a flood of books published on the novelist including several by distinguished writers and critics ranging from F .R. Leavis to J. B. Priestley. One of the best, and most ground-breaking, of these latter was Barbara Hardy's The Moral Art of Dickens, published by the Athlone Press of the University of London. A collection of essays no more than 155 pages long, this book, elegantly and lucidly written like all of Barbara's work, was followed over the years by other critical studies from her pen that were to have a profound and …

Between 'Silly Novels' And Vegetation Myths: George Eliot's Subversive Use Of The Two Suitors Convention In Middlemarch, Anna Gutowska

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Take a woman's head, stuff it with a smattering of philosophy and literature chopped small, and with false notions of society baked hard, let it hang over a desk a few hours every day, and serve up hot in feeble English, when not required . (Eliot 1992:305)

'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists', George Eliot's vitriolic overview of popular novels of the 1850s, which is the source of the mock-recipe above, was published in 1856, shortly before Eliot started writing her first work of fiction, 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton' . More than ten years then passed before …

Two Sequels To Daniel Deronda, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The two sequels of my title are a seven-page satirical squib in Mr. Punch's Pocket-Book for 1877 entitled 'Daniel Deronda, Book IX',' and a short novel or long story of around 50,000 words - much the same length as 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story' - Gwendolen: or, Reclaimed: A Sequel to Daniel Deronda published in Boston, Mass., in 1878. The novel was published anonymously but there is one edition published by William F. Gill with a variant title page giving the author as one Anna Clay Beecher/ whose identity remains a mystery.' Both these texts have been contextualized, …

An American Tribute, George Levine

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Isobel Armstrong begins her wonderful obituary for Barbara in the Guardian by noting how Barbara loved a good argument. No consideration of what Barbara Hardy has left us can get anywhere without recognition that she was a feisty woman. She was also an extraordinarily warm and inspiring one.

I owe her a lot. I first met her when, as an assistant professor still very wet behind the ears, I was lucky enough to spend a research year in London. Barbara took me in as though I were a serious scholar. She helped me find my way around London, was generous …

Chairman's Annual Report For 2015, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Another successful year' is always good to report, and is expected of a chairman. But it really was a terrific year for the Fellowship. The only damper was the slow, painfully slow progress on the Visitor Centre. I start with thanks to the Fellowship Council, strengthened in March by the election of Joy Hunter, Joy Redfem and Linda Mayne as full members. The George Eliot Essay Prize was won in 2015 by Jen Davis, and her essay appeared in last year's Review. On a more positive side, we think Whitbread is still committed to helping create a Visitor Centre; and …

Editors' Note

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This year's issue of the George Eliot Review is the first for more than two decades that has not been shaped by the editorial hand of Beryl Gray. Beryl joined Graham Handley as co-editor in 1992 and continued until 2015, playing the leading role in making the Review more polished and professional. Working with Beryl was always a pleasure and an instruction, and the editors would like to mark her retirement by expressing their gratitude for, and warm appreciation of, her long service. 97

Two Sequels To Daniel Deronda, John Rignaill

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The two sequels of my title are a seven page satirical squib in Mr Punch's Pocket-Book for 1877 entitled 'Daniel Deronda, Book IX',' and a short novel or long story of around 50,000 words - much the same length as 'Mr Gilfil's Love-Story' - Gwendolen: or, Reclaimed: A Sequel to Daniel Deronda published in Boston, Mass., in 1878. The novel was published anonymously but there is one edition published by William F. Gill with a variant title page giving the author as one Anna Clay Beecher/ whose identity remains a mystery.' Both these texts have been contextualized , discussed and …

The Egyptian Sorcerer's Drop Of Ink In Adam Bede, Tapan Kumar Mukherjee

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance corner far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.

Many scholars and critics have discussed the symbolic significance of the famous opening sentence of Adam Bede and related it to …

On Writing Neo-Victorian Fiction: James Miranda Barry (1999) And Sophie And The Sibyl: A Victorian Romance (2015), Patricia Duncker

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

My first historical novel - James Miranda Barry (1999) was not born a Neo-Victorian novel, but became one. And it had a very personal link to my own life. Barry was a nineteenth-century colonial doctor and medical reformer, who had a very successful and colourful career in remote parts of the Empire. He spent an important period of his life in Jamaica, then a British colony, during the 1830s, taking care of the army garrison stationed on the island to protect the interests of the Crown and put down the numerous slave revolts. The British maintained a regiment there until …

The Radical Candidature: Harold Transome's Political Motivation In Felix Holt, David Paterson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In late 1832 Great Britain was preparing for a special General Election. A Reform Bill passed in June had extended voting rights to the middle class, and parliamentary constituencies were re-distributed to enfranchise some of the larger industrial towns. Many Tory landed gentry had - unsuccessfully - opposed the change. So, early on in Felix Halt, the Radical, it comes as a surprise to the reader as well as his family when Harold Transome, heir to the Transome estates, declares his political allegiance. Just returned from abroad where he had made his fortune in business, he does not intend to …

“Englishing” Horace: The Influence Of The Horatian Tradition On Old And Middle English Poetry, Justin A. Hastings

Dissertations

This dissertation explores the ways in which Old and Middle English poets made use of the poetic corpus of the Roman Augustan Age poet Horace (Quintus Flaccus Horatius) and the medieval commentary tradition that accrued around it. It considers especially the Late Antique commentaries of Porphyry and PseudoAcro as well as the scholia transmitted in Bern MS Bernensis 363 and Paris, BnF MS Latin 17897. The Old English elegies in the Exeter Book (Exeter Cathedral MS 3501) are the subject of the second chapter. Subsequent chapters focus on William Langland’s Piers Plowman, John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, and Geoofrey Chaucer’s Canterbury …

Queering The Spheres: Non-Normative Gender, Sexuality, And Family In Three Victorian Texts, Randi Mihajlovic

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In my thesis, I use a queer theoretical lens to consider three Victorian texts, Hesba Stretton’s “The Ghost in the Clock Room,” Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla. I apply queer theory to locate these authors’ attempts to destabilize heteronormativity by depicting non-normative gender roles, sexualities, and families in texts that emphasize the Victorian ideology of separate spheres. Many scholars imagine the separation of spheres as simply relegating women to a domestic sphere that reinforced traditional values and restricted their power. However, these works demonstrate that opportunities for power and queer possibility exist within the home …

Freakish, Feathery, And Foreign: Language Of Otherness In The Squire’S Tale, Laurel Meister

The Expositor: A Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities

No abstract provided.

Science Fiction, Lisa Yaszek, Jason W. Ellis

Publications and Research

Literary and cultural critics call science fiction the premiere story form of modernity because it relates the adventures of educated men and women who use science and technology to reshape the material world and build new, hopefully better societies. As such, it is no surprise that many authors working in this popular genre explore how educated men and women might use science and technology to reshape the physical body and build new, hopefully better versions of humanity itself. Yet, lingering even in the most optimistic imaginings of a posthuman future is the doubt that these transformations will be evenly distributed …

Hanging The Servant Girl To Hunting The Ripper: The Victorian Birth Of The True Crime Genre, Jonathan G. Brown

Masters Theses

More definitive answers about the creation and form of the modern True Crime genre narrative can be found by exploring, not the creators of True Crime narratives, but by following reader expectations and examining the social situation from which True Crime narratives were able to arise. Theorists in the genre field such as Lloyd Bitzer Carolyn Miller and Amy Devitt have introduced and refined the view of genre as a social action. In this view, genre does not come about as a set of rules imposed upon types of literature to bring order, but as a societally accepted creation constructed …