Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Review Of Women Reviewing Women In Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Critical Reception Of Lane Austen, Charlotte Bronte And George Eliot, Joanne Wilkes

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The subtitle of Joanne Wilkes' elegant and meticulous monograph is somewhat misleading. Although Austen, Bronte and Eliot make regular appearances, as one would expect the three major female literary figures of the nineteenth century to do, the work does not seek to investigate their critical histories - something which Wilkes has already done in a compelling essay published in Joanne Shattock's collection Women and Literature in Britain, 1800-1900 (2001). Instead, Wilkes' attention here is firmly directed at the careers of the critics who, for the most part, remain on the margins of Victorian studies: Maria Jane Jewsbury, Sara Coleridge, Hannah …

'Hetty Had Never Read A Novel': Adam Bede And Realism, Rachel Bowlby

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is not just the famous Chapter 17, 'In Which the Story Pauses a Little’, which makes George Eliot's Adam Bede one of the first candidates for any discussion of the tenets and aims of nineteenth-century literary realism. The question is opened in the very first paragraph of the novel - so very prominently, perhaps, and in so many dimensions, that we may miss its compacted meanings as we read on or rush on, past the beginning, to enter the narrative. Much of its meaning, of course, is not immediately available without the understandings that subsequent chapters will add, including …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 22 November 2009- The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

2009 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of two works of fiction by George Eliot. As no one here could fail to know, throughout the year there have been all kinds of celebrations of her first - and wonderful- novel, Adam Bede (and the word has spread even to London of great Adam Bede happenings in these parts). On the other hand, I've heard of nothing commemorating 'The Lifted Veil', which appeared in the same year as the novel. While this strange, supernatural tale of an acutely sensitive, unproductive poet whose clairvoyance alienates him from his fellow mortals is …

Japanese Branch Report- 2009, Yohko Nagai

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Overlooking the meandering Edo River and the panoramic view of the Tokyo skyline, the thirteenth annual convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at the scenic campus of Wayo Women's University on Saturday, 28 November 2009.

After an opening remark by Mizue Aida of Nihon University, a welcome address was made by Midori Uematsu, a professor of Wayo Women's University. This year we had the privilege of listening to four papers in the morning session. The first two papers were chaired by Akiko Kimura, of Waseda University and the last two papers by Itsuyo Shimizu of Kinki …

The Art Of Conduct, The Conduct Of Art And The 'Mixed Science' Of Eliot's Ethics: ' Sympathetic Impulse' And 'The Scientific Point Of View' In The Mill On The Floss, Simon Calder

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Mill on the Floss is full of keys and clues. Most famously, Maggie Tolliver, following her father's bankruptcy, 'wanted some key that would enable her to understand and, in understanding, endure, the heavy weight that had fallen on her young heart.' 1 In chapter three of Book Four of Eliot's novel, Maggie believes herself to have found just such a key in Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation of Christ (MF, 298):

Here, then, was a secret of life that would enable her to renounce all other secrets ... [F]or the first time she saw the possibility of shifting the …

Editor's Note - 2010

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

1. The articles in this issue by Dinah Birch, Rachel Bowlby, Barbara Hardy, and Josephine McDonagh were originally delivered as papers at the Adam Bede conference held at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, on 7 November 2009.

George Eliot As Historian: The Case Of Mr. Crewe And Hugh Hughes, David Paterson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Historians look for as many different sources of evidence as they can to describe and interpret the past. How far is fiction a valid source? Great fiction may reveal great truths but is this only in a general sense? George Eliot herself seems to suggest above that reliance on 'descriptions of novelists' may be a perilous route to an accurate portrait: but what about relying on descriptions of those in her own books? Despite one specific denial, some of her 'portraits of clergymen' contain valuable historical elements.

An examination of one part of Scenes of Clerical Life shows George Eliot's …

The Representation Of Place In Middlemarch, Adam Wright

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Critics in the past have tended to refer to the rootedness of characters in George Eliot's novels. This is particularly true of Adam Bede, where the naturalistic roots of characters are often explicitly stated, such as when Dinah affirms 'I'm not free to leave Snowfield, where I was first planted, and have grown deep into it, like the small grass on the hill-top'.1 Catherine Middleton, in her essay 'Roots and Rootlessness', when analysing Middlemarch refers to seven different types of roots in just four pages (,emotional', 'physical', 'moral', 'affective', 'social', 'intellectual' ,and 'local').2 These terms not only complicate our understanding …

Notes On Middlemarch And Romola, Rodney Stenning Edgecombe

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Rereading Middlemarch and Romola recently, 1 was struck by some unrecorded musical and literary parallels, none of them substantial enough (or indeed sufficiently interconnected) to be woven into an integrated article, but having, 1 hope, enough intrinsic interest to warrant my presenting them here as so many Casaubonic 'leavings' that might or might not be incorporated into future work on the author.

A Schubertian Moment in Middlemarch

George Eliot's enthusiasm for the Lieder of Schubert is attested by a letter written in October, 1859 - 'Schubert's songs, 1 especially delight in' (Letters, Ill: 178) - and our knowledge of that …

'Good Teaching': Adam Bede And Education, Dinah Birch

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's commitment to teaching motivates her writing from the first. Like many of those whose thinking was shaped by early nineteenth-century evangelicalism, she saw education as a vital responsibility. In 1847, when she was twenty-eight years old, she remarked to Sara Hennell that she thought '''Live and Teach" should be a proverb as well as "Live and Learn"'.1 Eliot's persistent interest in teaching and learning was a reason for her turning to fiction as her primary medium as a writer - not the only reason, but an important one. She had no inclination whatsoever to become a professional teacher, …

Annual Report 2009, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I am pleased to report that last year was a successful one. There are things we might have done better, or differently, but I think we can say that 2009 was marked by events which provided huge pleasure and satisfaction for our members, and for a much wider audience beyond our membership.

The AGM last year heard a request from Liz Mellor for some sabbatical time whilst she dealt with health problems and members agreed to that request. We then held a discussion about the Fellowship and what we hoped to see develop in the future. Members enjoyed the chance …

Expressive Things In Adam Bede, Barabar Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A drop of ink is the first thing in the first sentence of George Eliot's first novel: 'With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance corner farreaching visions of the past.' Like many objects in Adam Bede, this one is more complicated than first appears. In its generalized imaging of magical creation, ritual and prophesy, it is an invocation, introducing and solemnizing the other object with which it is twinned and compared, the real drop of ink at the end of the author's pen which has actually written this sorcerer's …

Review Of Daniel Deronda

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A dramatized version of Daniel Deranda scripted by John Cooper was produced by the Traffic of the Stage Company at the Upstairs at the Gatehouse Theatre in Highgate in May. Directed by Harry Meacher, it had a cast of seventeen actors who between them played forty-one different parts. The audience sat on three sides of the acting area (the floor of which was patterned like a giant roulette wheel) and the actors, when not directly engaged in the action, moved to the edges of this space where they would, when appropriate (i.e., when the scene was a party or some …

Superior Domesticity: Two George Eliot Cats, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Persian cat, Hafiz, appears in two scenes in Daniel Deronda (1876) .1 The first of these appearances occurs in chapter 18, which introduces the compact, creative little Meyrick women - mother and three daughters - just as they are about to become Mirah Lapidoth's hospitable benefactresses, though she is as yet unknown to them. They are gathered harmoniously together in the evening lamp- and candle-lit, miniature double parlour of their narrow riverside house. 'All four, if they had been wax-work, might have been packed easily in a fashionable lady's travelling trunk.'2 Their corporeal diminutiveness is …

Review Of George Eliot's Intellectual Life, Avrom Fleishman

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Avrom Fleishman's study of George Eliot as a Victorian intellectual comes late in a distinguished career of scholarly publication that stretches over more than forty years. The book primarily concerns itself with some large questions: What were Eliot's central ideas and how were they modified over the course of her development? How did they overlap or differ from those of her contemporaries? In working out his answers, Fleishman creates an admiring and admirable account of 'a mighty mind' (2) interested in others' theoretical systems but always independent of them, forging its own deeply ethical and ultimately tragic versions of humanism, …

Adam Bede And Emigration, Josephine Mcdonagh

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Although emigration to settler colonies was a widespread phenomenon in mid nineteenth century Britain, it is a theme to which George Eliot appears to give very little attention. Of all the works, Adam Bede is the novel which seems especially home-bound. Characters who go abroad do so in penitence: Hetty is transported to Australia, where she dies; and Arthur goes to the East to make up for having committed 'the sort of wrong that can never be made up for' ('Epilogue'). In so far as it is discussed in the novel, migration is the chimera of the mistaken Mr. Gedge, …

J. A. Leo Lemay (1935–2008), A Remembrance, Kevin J. Hayes

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

My first semester in graduate school at the University of Delaware I took J. A. Leo Lemay’s Edgar Allan Poe seminar. Writing a seminar paper on the subject of Poe’s use of frontier imagery in his short fiction, I happened to read Prof. Lemay’s essay “The Frontiersman from Lout to Hero” (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 88 [1978]: 187-223). In terms of its breadth of knowledge and depth of insight, I found this essay astonishing. As an undergraduate I had read much about the American frontier, a special interest of mine, but Prof. Lemay’s essay was the single best …

Documentary Editing: Journal Of The Association For Documentary Editing--Front Matter

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

Front matter: Officers--Editorial Staff--Table of Content

The Gilbert & Sullivan Critical Edition And The Full Scores That Never Were, Ronald Broude

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

The critical edition of the “Savoy Operas” of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan provides a useful example of the ways in which scholarly editions of performing works can alter important elements of the sources on which they are based. The accepted form for the presentation of a critical edition of an opera is the “full score,” but for no Savoy Opera did a real full score ever exist—nor was one ever intended. The sources closest to full scores were the copying masters that Sullivan prepared for use by copyists extracting parts for performers, but these are skeletons into which …

Recent Editions, Margaret A. Hogan

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

This annual bibliography of documentary editions recently published in the fields of American and British history, literature, and culture is generally restricted to scholarly first editions of English-language works. In addition to the bibliographical references, Internet addresses are provided for the editorial project or the publisher.

A New Approach To Thoreau’S “Indian Books”, Jessie Bray

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

Thoreau’s unpublished Indian Books depict a similar consideration of these cultural vectors that cuts across the chronology of his career, which places them at the forefront of his most serious and ambitious research. In order to track Thoreau’s evolution as a writer and thinker, a re-evaluation of this text is necessary. In the 147 years since his death, comparatively little work has been done to bring the value of this remarkable text to light. Yet the advantages of our present digital age provide perhaps the most useful, but heretofore inaccessible, solution to the problem of discussing the Indian Books. In …

Contributors

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

Contributors to Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing, Volume 31: 2010

Matthew J. Bruccoli (1931–2008), Joel Myerson

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

Matt Bruccoli joined the English department at the University of South Carolina in 1969, and retired in 2005 as the Emily Brown Jefferies Distinguished Professor of English. As his obituary in the New York Times noted, he “continued to cut a dash on campus, instantly recognizable by his vintage red Mercedes convertible, Brooks Brothers suits, Groucho mustache and bristling crew cut that dated to his Yale days. His untamed Bronx accent also set him apart.” As a scholar, Matt published widely on James Gould Cozzens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, and John O’Hara. Matt knew more about F. …

Massachusetts Historical Society, “The Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive”- Review Of My Dearest Friend: Letters Of Abigail And John Adams. Edited By Margaret A. Hogan And C. James Taylor, John P. Kaminski

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

My Dearest Friend contains 289 letters “selected from the entire corpus” of the Adams letters from 1762 to 1801 and “is meant to show both the consistency of their relationship and the evolution of the family through the entire founding era.” A three-page epilogue on the death of Abigail consists of a short headnote and two letters exchanged between John and John Quincy Adams. All but three of the letters in My Dearest Friend are in the Adams Family manuscript collection given by the Adams family to the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) in 1956. The letters were all microfilmed on …

Review Of The Papers Of Joseph Henry, Volume 11: January 1866–May 1878: The Smithsonianbyears. Edited By Marc Rothenberg; Kathleen W. Dorman, Associate Editor; Frank R. Millikan, Assistant Editor; Deborah Y. Jeffries And Sarah Shoenfeld, Research Assistants., Julie R. Newell

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

This volume brings to an end a forty-year project that is both a tremendous contribution to the content and practice of the history of American science and a monument to the talents, commitment, and perseverance of its editors. The list of sponsoring institutions provides some indication of the perceived value of this project across a range of academic disciplines: the Smithsonian Institution, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. Twelve volumes in all including the index, the series traces the life of Joseph Henry (1797–1878) from his education and early academic employment in Albany, New York, through …

Lyman H. Butterfield Award For 2009 Presented To Gregg L. Lint, Mary Jo Kline

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

Now I will begin leaking details that will enable you to confirm your suspicions, for by now many of you will have guessed that this year’s recipient of the Lyman H. Butterfield Award is Gregg L. Lint. The project where he has spent his entire career as an editor is, of course, the Adams Papers, whose staff he joined in the fall of 1975. He recently completed work on the fifteenth volume of The Papers of John Adams, the series with which he has been most closely identified. He has been the “lead editor” responsible for volumes in that series …

Association For Documentary Editing Business Meeting, 15 October 2009, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

Local Arrangements Committee--President’s Report--Secretary’s Report--Treasurer’s Report--Publications Committee Report--E-newsletter--Meetings Committee Report--Federal Policy Committee Report--New Business

Models Of Digital Documentation: The 19th-Century Concord Digital Archive, Amy E. Earhart

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

As with many digital archives, The 19th-Century Digital Concord Archive (CDA) started as a website utilizing simple technology and has evolved to a more technologically advanced scholarly site. The CDA joins an interdisciplinary team from the Department of English, Texas A&M University; the Digital Humanities Initiative, the College of Liberal Arts, Texas A&M University; the Map and GIS Collections and Services, Texas A&M University Libraries; and the Concord Free Public Library, Concord, Massachusetts, in the development of infrastructures that allow the entities to share metadata easily, develop innovative, visually-based search functions, and make visible and accessible the cultural record of …

Documentary Editing: Journal Of The Association For Documentary Editing, Volume 31: 2010

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

Volume 31, 2010 *The Association for Documentary Editing is pleased to announce that with Volume 31 (2010) Documentary Editing, formerly a quarterly publication, becomes an annual journal.*

Articles

• Experiencing Women’s History as a Documentary Editor, Ann D. Gordon
• The Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson: A Scholarly Digital Edition, Noelle A. Baker and Sandra Harbert Petrulionis
• “Dangerous Thoughts”: Margaret Sanger’s World Trip Journal, Japan, 1922, Peter C. Engelman
• Models of Digital Documentation: The Nineteenth-Century Concord Digital Archive, Amy E. Earhart

Boydston Prize Winner

• The Gilbert & Sullivan Critical Edition and the Full Scores that Never Were, Robert Broude

Review Essay

• Dearest …

Editing Sophia Peabody’S Cuba Journal: Travel, Recovery, And Interpretation, Jana L. Argersinger, Cheryl J. Fish

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

Some collaborations are born out of chance encounters. For us, it happened at a recent conference of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. Having briefly met before on the common ground of studies in nineteenth- century American literature, we said “Hello” and discovered in the space of a five-minute conversation that both of us had our eyes on the early nineteenth- century journal-account of a young New Englander’s rest cure in Cuba. The traveler who authored the journal was Sophia Amelia Peabody (1809–1871), an accomplished visual artist, writer, member of a family that was vitally involved in …