Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Gathering Leadership Momentum Across Great Distances: Creating An Online Community Of Practice, Erin Dini-Davis, Danielle Theiss-White

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

At the 2007 Mountain Plains Library Association Leadership (MPLA) Institute, held in New Mexico, USA, eight academic librarians formed an online multi-state, multigenerational community of practice. MPLA is a twelve-state library association within the United States. Using Google Groups™, the members formed an online environment called the MPLA Community of Practice for continuing development of the leadership skills presented at the Institute. These early-career librarians represent diverse educational backgrounds and work in libraries serving varied populations with differing disciplinary emphases. The group meets monthly with each member preparing and facilitating online discussions, complete with personal assessments, topical readings, and questions. …

Assur Is King Of Persia: Illustrations Of The Book Of Esther In Some Nineteenth-Century Sources, Steven W. Holloway

Libraries

The marriage of archaeological referencing and picture Bibles in the nineteenth century resulted in an astonishing variety of guises worn by the court of Ahasuerus in Esther. Following the exhibition of Neo-Assyrian sculpture in the British Museum and the wide circulation of such images in various John Murray publications, British illustrators like Henry Anelay defaulted to Assyrian models for kings and rulers in the Old Testament, including the principal actors in Esther, even though authentic Achaemenid Persian art had been available for illustrative pastiche for decades. This curious adoptive choice echoed British national pride in its splendid British Museum collection …

'The Stream Of Human Thought And Deed' In 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story', Melissa Raines

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In George Eliot: The Emergent Self, Ruby Redinger explains that it was through the demands of authorship that the woman Marian Evans 'evolved into another self, her writing self', essentially becoming George Eliot. Literary biographies of George Eliot in the last few decades have all, to varying degrees, focused on this transformation of the woman into the author. When considering George Eliot's first work of fiction, I think it significant that it is during the writing of the second 'scene' of Scenes of Clerical Life, 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story', that Marian Evans first chose to write and sign a professional letter …

Scenes Of Clerical Life: George Eliot's Own Version Of Conversion, Alain Jumeau

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Before the publication of Scenes of Clerical Life, few people would have thought that Miss Evans had all the qualities for writing fiction, or, what is more, that she would become a great novelist. She was in her late thirties when she came to fiction writing, although, at the approach of middle age, most novelists have already tried their hand at it. Yet, as she confessed in her Journal, when she started writing the first story of Scenes of Clerical Life, it marked a new beginning for her, because she had always dreamt of writing fiction: 'September 1856 made a …

Orphic Variations In Scenes Of Clerical Life, Kenichi Kurata

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is from Orfeo's climactic aria, Che faro senza Euridice, in Gluck's opera, Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). That the tune may sound too graceful to suit the desperate words can be explained by Orfeo's awareness of the means he has ready to hand of being reunited with Eurydice: he can cross the river Styx again by killing himself. At the moment of this declaration, contrary to the original myth, personified Love intervenes and Orfeo recovers Eurydice for the second time.

What I would like to suggest in the following paper is that this myth of Orpheus' descent to the underworld …

Note On Contributors- 2009 Special Issue

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Rosemary Ashton is Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London. She is the author of acclaimed critical biographies of George Eliot (1996) and G. H. Lewes (1991). Her many publications on George Eliot include The Mill on the Floss: A Natural History (1990), and editions of Middlemarch (Penguin, 1994) and Selected Writings of George Eliot (World's Classics, 1992). Her most recent book is 142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London (2006).

Beryl Gray is co-editor of the Review, the author of George Eliot and Music and of numerous articles on the novelist, and she has …

' Indications That I Can Touch The Hearts Of My Fellow Men': Reading Scenes Of Clerical Life From A Kleinian Psychoanalytic Perspective, Toni Griffiths

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot tentatively reflected in her journal that she might be touching the hearts of her fellow men in Scenes aj Clerical Life. In this short paper, I explore with the aid of Kleinian psychoanalytical ideas what might be involved in such a touching of the heart and attempt in the process to indicate that, despite their evident flaws, the Scenes are powerful harbingers of the later and mature works.

I have elsewhere detailed my argument that a literary text will evoke a strong emotional response in the reader in those cases where the powerful and contradictory sensations of the …

Idlers And Collaborators: Enter The Dog, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Both George Eliot and her older contemporary, Charles Dickens, introduced dogs into their fiction before introducing any into their homes. By the time Dickens was given the first of his many dogs he had invented Ponto, the sagacious pointer described by Jingle in The Pickwick Papers; Bull's-eye for Oliver Twist; and Jerry's performing dogs for The Old Curiosity Shop. Before George Eliot received her first dog - the Pug presented to her by her grateful publisher John Blackwood - the narrator of her first story, 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', had justified in the following terms the …

How George Eliot Came To Write Fiction, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

We are celebrating one hundred and fifty years since the publication in volume form of George Eliot's first work of fiction, Scenes of Clerical Life, three stories printed first in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine between January and November 1857, and then in two volumes in January 1858. I will tell the story of how George Eliot came to write fiction by moving backwards from the Scenes themselves, via George Eliot's journal entry of 6 December 1857, 'How I Came to Write Fiction', to her literary criticism in the Westminster Review in the earlier 1850s, and finally to two letters, of 1849 …

Editors' Note- 2009 Special Issue

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Conference on 'George Eliot's Beginnings' at the Institute of English Studies on 1 November 2008 was organized by Rosemary Ashton, Beryl Gray and Barbara Hardy. The publication in volume form of Scenes of Clerical Life in 1858 was the point at which Mary Ann Evans became 'George Eliot' and we think it appropriate to mark this event by publishing the proceedings of the Conference as a Special Issue.

Death And Recollection: The Elegiac Dimension Of Scenes Of Clerical Life, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Perversely, though perhaps appropriately for a paper on death, I want to begin at the end. George Eliot's last novel, Daniel Deronda, ends with a good death: that of Ezra Mordecai, dying with the arms of Mirah and Deronda around him, and feeling 'an ocean of peace beneath him'. The deaths that immediately precede it in her fiction, Grandcourt's drowning in the same novel, or the deaths of Featherstone, Casaubon and Raffles in Middlemarch are of a different order: those figures go more or less unlamented to their graves, and their passing may even be a form of liberation for …

Conference Report George Eliot's Beginnings: Scenes Of Clerical Life Celebrated, Juliette Atkinson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Over three dozen people from around the United Kingdom and beyond gathered on Saturday 1 November 2008 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication, in volume form, of George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life. Barbara Hardy warmly welcomed the audience and presented the day's alluring programme. The conference promised to be both a celebration of the three short stories that marked Mary Ann Evans's fictional debut and an exploration of the personal and artistic influences that prompted her to change direction at the age of thirty-seven

Echoing the words of Eliot's famous journal entry with the title 'How George …

George Eliot And The Female Tradition: A Little-Known Source, Lorna J. Clark

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In an essay published in the Westminster Review in 1856, George Eliot delivered a scathing indictment of 'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists' which (she claimed) lack verisimilitude, 'intellectual power' and 'moral qualities'. The skill of such a writer 'is in inverse proportion to her confident eloquence'; the picture of life that she draws is 'totally false'. Her motivation is merely 'the foolish vanity of wishing to appear in print' or 'busy idleness'. Finally, these hapless female novelists are likened to La Fontaine's ass. Not surprisingly, faced with such a sweeping condemnation, critics have found Eliot's relationship with gender issues and …

The Thirty-Seventh George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2008- George Eliot's Dorothea? 'That Fair Bright Useful Woman': Mrs. Nassau Senior In George Eliot's Life And Writing, Sybil Oldfield

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Who was Jeanie Senior before Octavia Hill introduced her to George Eliot in October 1866? Born Jeanie Hughes in 1828, the cherished daughter and only sister of seven brothers, she had started life as a happier Maggie Tulliver - keenly alive, with a questioning intelligence and an intense capacity for feeling. She could bum with indignation as well as overflow with impulsive generosity. Tall, golden haired and blue-eyed, she was also an exceptionally gifted musician with a marvellous singing voice, so it would have seemed that born into an affectionate, lively, well-to-do Squire's family, she had been allotted almost too …

A New George Eliot Holograph Letter, Jonathan Ouvry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The letter reproduced above was written by George Eliot, then Mary Ann Evans, to Martha lackson and has been made available to The George Eliot Review by its present owner, Matthew Wilson, who inherited it from his mother, Shirley Wilson, who worked in publishing. Amongst her collection of autographs, letters and rare books were letters originally in the possession of the collector Henry Cunliffe, including this one. Large extracts from it were first printed in The Bookman, 3 (January 1893), and reprinted by Gordon Haight in the Yale edition of the George Eliot Letters, 1954 (I, 188-9)

Martha (or Patty) …

George Eliot's Middlemarch As A Translation Of Spinoza's Ethics, Miriam Henson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In 1846 John Chapman of Newgate Street published a translation of David Strauss's Das Leben Jesu. Although no translator was accredited, this book was the result of two years' arduous work by Mary Ann Evans, the woman who would later achieve renown as George Eliot. Strauss's presentation of Jesus is that of a historical figure; he denies his divine status, and suggests that the miracles written about in the Gospels are mythic in nature. Although Mary Ann was distressed by Strauss's destruction of all the 'miraculous and highly improbable' elements of the Gospel, she too had, for some time, been …

J.W. Cross Defends G.H. Lewes, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Early in 1881, John Cross, widowed after only seven months of married life, set about the task of preparing a biography of his famous wife. He faced a number of challenges. The most daunting were the various sensitivities inherent in the life story of the woman best known as George Eliot. Two events were particularly confronting: Mary Ann Evans's loss of faith in the 1840s, and Marian Evans's decision in 1854 to live with George Henry Lewes although they could not marry. For Cross, in effect George Eliot's second husband, the treatment of Lewes and her relationship with him was …

Japanese Branch Report- 2008, Miwa Ota

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday 29 November 2008, the twelfth Annual Convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Kinki University.

The morning session began with an opening remark by Yosie Abe (Shoin University), followed by a welcome address by Itsuyo Shimizu (Kinki University). In the morning, we had three papers presented. The first two papers were introduced and commented upon by Chizuko Watari (Kanasai Gaidai University), and the third by Keiji Yata (Tokyo Kasei University). The first paper was 'Maggie's Struggle in The Mill on the Floss' by Muneaki Shinoda (the Graduate School of Osaka City University). He drew …

Margaret Wolfit (1929-2008), Lucy Amis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

My Mum, Margaret Wolfit (Amis) passed away on 20th September. I wanted to write to reassure everyone that she didn't suffer for long and that 2008 was a decent year in many ways. As you may know, she'd been treated for breast cancer thirteen years ago and came through well for over twelve years, but in August 2007 was re-diagnosed, this time affecting her chest. At the time (August 2007) she had some fluid drained from her lungs and was more or less fine within about forty-eight hours - indeed she was performing only a few days later. The doctors …

Notes On Contributors - 2009

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Lucy Amis is the daughter of Margaret Wolfit and currently works at the International Business Leaders Forum, a London-based educational charity which focuses on how global companies can conduct their business in ways that demonstrate respect for their workers and nearby communities.

Juliette Atkinson currently teaches at the Open University. Forthcoming works include the monograph Victorian Biography Reconsidered: a Study of Nineteenth-Century 'Hidden' Lives (OUP) and an edition of critical responses to George Eliot's novels that will appear as a volume in the series Bloom s Classic Critical Views (Facts on File, 2009).

Josie Billington teaches at the University of …

Orchestrating Society: The Merging Of Language And Voice To Create Social Bonds In Romola, Jennifer Diann Jones

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's Romola (1863) reflects her interest in using musical metaphor to explain how relationships are formed. She explores more fully than she has done before this point in her career how language and the human voice function as music; she theorizes the function of voice more explicitly than she had done before as she examines how it can possess the listener and incite people to action.

There are very few scenes of actual musical performance in Romola and in George Eliot and Music, Beryl Gray correctly observes that the few musical scenes we are given are unsatisfying. It is …

Review Of Eliot's Middlemarch: Reader's Guide, Josie Billington

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This new 'Reader's Guide' successfully complements two preceding works that were written for the same purpose of providing information and interpretation for readers of Middlemarch in a compact form: those by Karen Chase for Cambridge University Press's 'Landmarks of World Literature' series, and by T. R. Wright for Harvester Weatsheaf, both published in 1991. The book is closer to Chase's in terms of the order and structure of the argument. After giving a brief biography of George Eliot and introducing the historical contexts of the novel in the first chapter (Contexts'), Billington goes on to provide close readings of passages …

Review Of George Eliot. Novelist, Lover, Wife, Brenda Maddox

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The distorted cover-image of George Eliot with a strange pen and a very small writing book. and the mind-reading at the beginning which tells us that one glance at the newborn Mary Ann, already possessed of a 'large drooping nose, long chin, prominent jaw', told her parents that 'she would find it hard to fulfil a girl's primary task - to find a husband, she would have to make her own way in life' , are not ingratiating, and there are signs that Brenda Maddox is not exactly inward with the novels, but she has done something no other scholar …

Review Of Private Sphere To World Stage From Austen To Eliot, Elizabeth Sabiston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Elizabeth Sabiston's Private Sphere to World Stage from Austen to Eliot is a somewhat perplexing book. Ostensibly, Sabiston sets out to contribute to ongoing discussions about the difficulties faced by nineteenth-century women writers, who 'were confronted with the dilemma of effecting an elision of public and private spheres' (2). The first three chapters, on Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, lane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights, argue that the central protagonist of each novel offers an image of confident female authorship. Anne Elliot is presented as a heroine who 'against all odds ... strives for autonomy' (36), Jane Eyre moves from making amateur …

Review Of Victorian Turns, Neovictorian Returns: Essays On Fiction And Culture, Penny Gay, Judith Johnston, Catherine Waters

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The inside of this volume offers exactly the pleasurable variety and range of interest promised by its outside (the beautifully reproduced cover image is Ernest Dudley Heath's Piccadilly Circus at Night, 1893). As its title suggests, the volume, divided into two sections, seeks to capture, in Part One, the diverse ways in which the Victorians explored in fiction the multiple 'turns' in new directions the age was taking, and, in Part Two, the imaginative updatings of these fictions, in literature, film and theatre, as well as in scholarship, in the burgeoning afterlife of Victorianism.

The editors note in their introduction …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 23 November 2008- The Toast To The Immortal Memory, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I have attended several birthday luncheons over the years and I am very pleased and honoured to have been invited this year to propose the toast. The fact that this is a birthday celebration has prompted me to wonder how George Eliot herself was wont to celebrate her own birthday, and from the evidence of the letters and the journals the answer to my wondering question seems to be that she was not inclined to celebrate it at all. Indeed, she was barely inclined even to acknowledge it. There is a revealing early letter to Maria Lewis, written she claims …

The Fidelity Of The Fruit: A Psychology Of Adam’S Fall In Milton’S Paradise Lost, Bradford Vezina

Undergraduate Review

The passage above provides an apt image, with all its symbolic overtones, of Adam’s reaction to Eve’s mortal transgression—that is, her eating from the Forbidden Tree. The circular nature of the garland signifies perfection and permanence; the roses convey the delicacy, vitality, and bloom of life. The garland not only represents the perfection of a paradisal world, but the union between Adam and Eve. But Eve’s careless and wanton act shatters such a union. This leaves Adam with a choice: to eat the fruit thereby upholding his bond with and love for Eve (an act in defiance of God), or …

Celebrity And The Spectacle Of Nation, Jason N. Goldsmith

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

A decidedly promiscuous brand of renown, celebrity has a bad reputation. That reputation was characterised by Daniel Boorstin, who coined what has become a near-axiomatic definition of the celebrity as 'a person who is known for his well-knowness'.¹The tautological bent of Boorstin's definition seems to suggest the meretricious nature of celebrities, famous not because they have done anything to merit acclaim, but because their images have been widely publicised and promoted. According to this logic, celebrities are superficial personalities, bold-faced names, air-brushed faces; they are slick images manufactured for the moment. Celebrities signify all that is shallow about …

A. Bristow And The Maniac: A Bio-Critical Essay, Katherine D. Harris

Faculty Publications, English and Comparative Literature

No abstract provided.

Performing Masculinity In Paradise Lost, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

"In Female Masculinities, Judith Halberstam objects that critical and theoretical approaches to sex/gender systems have paid too much attention to anatomy. In particular, she faults studies of masculinity for focusing almost exclusively on the white male body and its effects. By delimiting masculinity in this way, Halberstam argues, we counterproductively confine ourselves to those manifestations of masculinity with which we are already intimately familiar. Urging an ampler vision, Halberstam calls for the examination of alternative masculinities, particularly those performed by agents who are not male by birth or biology.

When we read Milton with Halberstam in mind, we realize something …