English Language and Literature Commons^™

Message Of Greeting From The Fellowship President, Jonathan G. Ouvry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It hardly seems possible that ten years have passed since the memorial stone was laid in Westminster Abbey. For the George Eliot Fellowship the stone-laying was an end, the accomplishment of something worked for for many years. For me it was a beginning, as it marked my introduction to the Fellowship, a happy meeting which I have had much cause to be pleased about ever since. For me the Fellowship has provided new and lasting friendships, much information about and insights into George Eliot and her work, the same in respect to George Henry Lewes, the opportunity to listen to …

George Eliot's "The Spanish Gypsy", A Neglected Work, Jocelyn West-Burnham

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

"Undoubtedly much the greatest poem of any wide scope and on a plan of any magnitude, which has ever proceeded from a woman"(1) This was the critical acclaim that George Eliot's "The Spanish Gypsy" received on its publication in 1868. It was a surprise to the writer herself, who had been prepared for criticism. This is evident in a letter to a friend following the completion of the poem (2). She notes in this her belief that many people would despise her for writing a work which would bring her little in the way of financial remuneration when she could …

Debasing The Biographical Currency, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Early in 1988 I was asked by a publisher in Bristol to write a book called George Eliot: The State of the Art. It was to be largely a survey of criticism, scholarship and biography ranging from contemporary responses to the novels as they appeared right through to the middle of last year (1989), the 170th anniversary of George Eliot's birth. The joy was, however, that it took me back to the works themselves as I checked what had been said; and it took me back to the Letters in Haight's edition. But some of the secondary literature - the …

Review Of George Eliot: An Intellectual Life, Valerie A. Dodd

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The tendency to produce esoteric books is one of the less pleasing registers of our critical and scholarly time. Valerie Dodd' s book fills a gap at great length, and in doing so examines a number of intellectual lives, among them those of Mill and Carlyle. It also presents a mini-thesis on Saint-Simonianism. All this is heavy preamble to Marian Evans (63 pages to be exact) and Marian's own heavy (and often passing) preoccupations before she began to write fiction. Sources are voluminous and often cited, so that the narrative is weighed down with references which arrest its flow while …

The Triumph Of Spirit Over Law: Free Will Versus Determinism In Adam Bede, William Klein

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

One of the primary intellectual influences that shaped George Eliot's thought was positivism, or rather the various influence of positivistic philosophers such as Comte, Mill, Spencer, Feuerbach and Lewes, who each in his own way subscribed to an empiricism dictating that knowledge of anything but actual phenomena is impossible, and thus rejected any metaphysical speculation concerning ultimate causes or origins. This is a broad definition of positivism, and perhaps generalizes at the expense of the fine points of the thinkers under discussion; however, George Eliot's ultimate rejection of the notion of a God whose existence cannot be empirically demonstrated was …

Obituary: Mrs. D.E. Beamish: Vice President Of The George Eliot Fellowship

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When Eva Beamish died in March she was in her ninety-first year. Her death this year has held a particular sadness for us since she was to have been our Guest of Honour at the Wreath-laying in Nuneaton in June. As this is the Fellowship's Diamond Jubilee year, it was thought most fitting that our wreath should be laid by our oldest member - certainly in terms of the length of her membership. Indeed, when we invited her, we were under the impression that she was a founder member but, in accepting the invitation, she pointed out that her father …

The Eighteenth George Eliot Memorial Lecture: Novelists And Things: George Eliot In A Victorian Perspective, Asa Briggs

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I am privileged as a historian of Victorian England to deliver this Memorial Lecture on the occasion of the 170th anniversary of George Eliot's birth. The future Queen was born on May 24th 1819, described by her father as ' a model of strength and beauty combined': George Eliot was born at five o'clock in the morning on November 22nd. This was the year of the Massacre of Peterloo, when discontent and repression drove the Lancashire radical Samuel Bamford to ask in his poem 'The Lancashire Hymn'

'Have we not heard the infant's cry

And mark'd its mother's tear;

That …

The George Eliot Fellowship Review 1990 No. 21, Kathleen Adams, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

DESIGN ON FRONT COVER:

To mark the Diamond Jubilee of the George Eliot Fellowship the design by Jenny Quy on the front cover was submitted to Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council Parks Department and is to be executed in flowers in a public flower bed in Coton Road, Nuneaton during the summer of 1990.

The Editors do not necessarily agree with the views expressed by contributors, nor does the George Eliot Fellowship accept responsibility for such views. No part of the REVIEW may be reproduced without the permission of the Editors.

Contributions are invited for the 1991 issue. They may …

Review Of Octavia Hill, Jonathan Ouvry, Gillian Darley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I find that objectivity is difficult to achieve when considering a work by or about someone with whom I have a family relationship, however distant. In the case of Octavia Hill, my great-great-aunt, I have been aware of her all my life as a figure revered in the family. Outside the family I have been aware of her work in the field of housing through my involvement with the Housing Association that bears her name, and of her role as one of the three founders of the National Trust.

It is perhaps surprising that there has been no full length …

[Review Of] A Kwic Concordance To Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Robert A. Aken

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

David Copperfield And Great Expectations: A Comparison Of Dickens' Bildungsromane, Donald R. Price

Masters Theses

Charles Dickens wrote two autobiographical novels which are developed in the Bildungsroman genre. Although the self-formation of the two young heroes, David in David Copperfield and Pip in Great Expectations, are very similar, reflecting the struggles in Dickens' own development, there is an important and interesting difference in the forces that influence each young hero. This difference evolves from Dickens' responses to forces affecting his life at the time he wrote David Copperfield in 1849-50 and Great Expectations in 1860.

This thesis addresses the internal forces influencing David's development, contrasting them with the external forces to which Pip must …

[Review Of] An Annotated Critical Bibliography Of Thomas Hardy, Robert A. Aken

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

"For Though It Swam In France, It Might Have Sunk In England": A Comparison Of John Vanbrugh’S The Confederacy With Its French Source, Les Bourgeoises À La Mode, Diane T. Harris

Masters Theses

In the summer of 1705, as Sir John Vanbrugh was casting about for dramatic source material which might play successfully at the new Haymarket theatre, he rediscovered Florent Dancourt's Les Bourgeoises à la Mode and, in the manner of Restoration theatre playwrights, created an adapted version in many respects quite different from the original. This adaptation, known as The Confederacy, is considered by many Vanbrugh scholars to be one of the English author's best works.

This paper is essentially a comparative study of the two plays. It begins with a plot summary of the play Vanbrugh used as the …

The George Eliot Fellowship Accounts From The Year Ending

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

1989 P&L Statement and Balance sheet

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon: The Toast To The Immortal Memory- 1989, Gabriel Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Our invitation to Gabriel Woolf to propose the Toast on this annual occasion was given so that we could say thank you to him for 20 years of work on our behalf in promoting George Eliot in his own unique way. In proposing the Toast, he began by telling us about his own introduction to George Eliot. He was doing his National Service in the R.A.F. and was particularly lonely in an alien situation with people with whom he had little or nothing in common. He remembers vividly taking Romola down from an R.A.F. library shelf and being instantly captured …

A Victorian View Of Old Age: Legacy To The Twentieth Century, Maria M. Baber

Theses & Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

Charlotte Mew: An Introduction, Sandra Carol Joiner

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) published short stories, essays, and poetry between 1894 and the time of her death. She published a slim volume of poems in 1916, a few of which place her as one of the great English poets. Indeed, both Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf thought her one of the greatest living female poets. Mew is particularly interesting as a poet who was born in the Victorian period, published during the “decadent decade” of the nineties, throughout Edward’s reign, and well into the reign of George V. Although few of Mew’s poems are dated, there is a gradual yet …

Spatiality In Ulysses And Cubism, Lingchei Chen

English Theses & Dissertations

The paper is a study of James Joyce's Ulysses and Cubism in modern art. Both forms, as the paper presents, use similar techniques to establish multidimensionality in the work of art. In a spatial novel like Ulysses, because of its techniques, the reader is allowed to experience exactly what the characters experience as Joyce presents every aspect of the Dublin life simultaneously. A Cubist painting does the same. As the Cubist painter captures every side of the object and simultaneously presents these different views on the canvas, the spectator is therefore able to apprehend the object from every possible angle, …

Virginia Woolf's Keen Sensitivity To War: Its Roots And Its Impact On Her Fiction, Jane Hamovit Lauter

English Theses & Dissertations

Virginia Woolf saw the nightmare of war as a form of madness which posed a threat not only to individual human life, but to art and culture as well. Her many tragic personal experiences with death together with the fact that she lived through World War I and the beginning of World War II, caused in her a keen sensitivity to the transitory nature of life. Because Woolf saw militarism and the violence of war as blindly chauvinistic and utterly wasteful, war became for her a source of anger and contempt as well as fear.

Woolf's response to war had …

Thinking Of England, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Shaun O'Connell, in "Thinking of England," examines the current state of "purely English" literature and concludes that "there will be worthy books on the critical, if not terminal, condition of England."

The works discussed in this article include: Latecomers, by Anita Brookner; A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers, by Hugh Kenner; Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin; The Russia House, by John le Carre; The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing; Nice Work, by David Lodge; and Out of the Shelter, by David Lodge.

Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Gardens, Nuneaton- 1989, Beryl Kerby

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I felt greatly honoured when I was invited to lay the Fellowship's wreath at today's ceremony. It was much later, when considering this address, that I realised I had studied none of George Eliot's works and had read very few.

However, I did know something of her. My parents and their friends all seem to have been involved, in some way, with the George Eliot Centenary celebrations in 1919 and very early on I was given a copy of Scenes of Clerical Life. How easy it is at Arbury Hall to look at the painting of Sir Roger Newdigate but …

Unwitnessed By Answering Deeds: 'The Destiny Of Nations' And Coleridge's Sibylline Leaves, Gary Dyer

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Treasurer's Report- A.G.M.

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I agreed to take over the post of Treasurer to the George Eliot Fellowship two years ago, and have thoroughly enjoyed this experience and I have learned a great deal about the art of book-keeping.

However, my commitments at school, in an ever changing world of education, are such that I felt that I must hand over the treasurer's position to someone who, hopefully, has a little more time to look after your accounts.

You will see from the Statement of Income and Expenditure that the finances of the Fellowship are in a satisfactory position.

The High Income Bond matured, …

Orts 16, 1989, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

1. MacDonald and Blake. Adrian Thomas has come up with the answer to our query in ORTS 15 about William Blake. The quotation is from Plate 77 of Jerusalem, and was printed thus: Plate 77 To the Christians Devils are False religions “Saul, Saul, “Why persecutest thou me?” I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate Built in Jerusalem’s wall.

Orts 17, 1989, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

1. Our next AGM will be on Friday 24 November at 7.30 pm. It will be held at 58a Westbourne Park Villas, LONDON W2. All members are welcome. **************************************************************************

2. Things afoot 1. The committee is thinking of arranging a three-day tour of Huntly and district in autumn 1990. The event would include lectures on MacDonald and visits to places connected with him and his family. Participants would stay at a local hotel and transport would be by bus. Guest lectures would be included, possibly a memorial service and a celebration dinner – and perhaps the unveiling of a plaque …

Orts 18, 1989, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

1. The Society held its AGM on November 24, and the Committee were confirmed in office. We hope to carry a fuller report in “Orts” 19.

2. The Society still has tentative plans for a gathering in Huntly at the end of September 1990. Costs are estimated at £120 for a shared room, £140 for a single room and £70 if you want to follow the day programme only. (Events would extend from a Monday evening dinner and welcome to a Friday departure.) Further details should reach members soon. In the meantime it is good to report that enquiries regarding …

Orts 15, 1989, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

1. Annual General Meeting. A dozen people attended the AGM of the Society, held at 58a Westbourne Park Villas, London, on Friday November 18th. The evening fell into two parts, with business first followed by Rachel Johnson’s talk on the MacDonald family and Pilgrim’s Progress. The business section resolved to have a joint meeting with the Lewis Carroll Society in the coming year, and noted that North Wind had cost slightly less than last year to produce. The treasurer told the meeting that the Society now had £177.78 in its account. Tony Richardson, the architect, gave an update on the …

Shakespeare’S King Lear: “Points Of Light” For A Dark World, Michael J. Collins

Studies in English, New Series

No abstract provided.

Augusta Geraldine Almeda: Emily Bronte’S Gothic Anti-Heroine, B. G. Till

Studies in English, New Series

No abstract provided.

Patterning, Time And Nietzsche’S “Spirit Of Revenge" In Beowulf And The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Gillian R. Overing

Studies in English, New Series

No abstract provided.