News
Chawton House Conference
CALL FOR PAPERS Anna Letitia Barbauld in Twenty Hundred and Twelve: New Perspectives A conference at Chawton House Library 11-12 May 2012
Keynote speaker: William McCarthy, Barbauld's biographer and editor
The 200th anniversary of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, Barbauld's most powerful and controversial poem seems an ideal moment for a reappraisal of her life and works. Over the past two decades, the publication by William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft of a compete edition of her Poems (1994) and a paperback of Selected Poetry and Prose (2002), followed by Professor McCarthy's internationally acclaimed biography (2008) has stimulated a wealth of new research on her activities as poet, essayist, educationalist, editor, devotional writer and advocate of religious freedom, the abolition of the slave trade, and social reform, in a career that began with éclat in 1773 and endured until shortly before her death in 1825. We invite scholars to Chawton House Library, a rare books collection dedicated to early women's writing, to celebrate Barbauld's achievements and to debate her historical significance and the continuing relevance of many of her themes, not least the economic crisis and dysfunctional war policy which were the occasion of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven and led to its warning, apocalyptic vision of a nation in terminal decline.
Speakers include Isobel Armstrong, Emma Clery, David Fallon, Isobel Grundy, Felicity James and Orianne Smith.
Proposals for papers are invited on these or other Barbauld-related topics:
Dissenters and dissent
Feminisms, bluestocking and otherwise
Education
War
Slavery and the abolition movement
Women and politics
Barbauld's male allies and associates, including John Aikin, Joseph Johnson, William Enfield, Joseph Priestley, William Roscoe.
Science and Art
The Monthly Magazine and the liberal press
Barbauld's genres: poetry, biography, reviews, children's literature
Reactionary reviews and Romantic responses to women's writing
Memoirs and biographies of Barbauld
The conference is co-hosted by Chawton House Library, the University of Leicester, and the University of Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SCECS). Please send abstracts of 200-500 words for the attention of the conference organisers Gillian Dow, Felicity James and Olivia Murphy to Sandy White: sw17@soton.ac.uk The deadline for abstracts is the 30th of January 2012.
Sex, politics and all that: new publication by Fiona Price
For the first time since 1808, Sarah Green’s novel The Private History of the Court of England is back in print in an edition for Pickering and Chatto edited by Dr Fiona Price. Part of the prestigious Chawton House Library series, Green’s volume is a political satire, ‘secret history’ and sexual exposé. As Price explains, Green paints a cutting portrait of the greed, scandal and decadence that surrounded the Prince of Wales (later King George IV) at the end of the eighteenth century, mocking the Prince’s descent from romantic hero to debauchee.
Fictions of History, 1680-1830
2nd July 2010
The symposium investigated the nature, origins, and development of historical fiction in the long eighteenth century. A large and diverse range of historical fiction was published in these years and this currently under-researched body of work raises important questions about national identity, Britain’s relationship with Europe and the colonial world, the nature of modernity, and the role of culture. The conference promotoed a detailed examination of this form of writing, and examined links between ideas of the fictional and the historical in the period between 1680 and 1830.
University of Chichester
One-day Postgraduate Forum, 'Women, History and Sexuality'
1st April
| THis one-day postgraduate forum on 'Women, History and Sexuality' was held at the University of Chichester on April 1st 2009. The conference was interdisciplinary and the theme a 'light' one that speakers approached in a variety of ways, although the aim was to examine women's often troubled relationship with the discourses of history and and sexuality. Plenary speakers were: Dr Sue Morgan (Chichester), editor of The Feminist History Reader; and Dr Nina Power (Roehampton), author of One Dimensional Women (2009), who spoke on issues in contemporary femininsm. |
William Blake and the Bard of Eartham: A Chichester Friendship – Dr Diana Barsham of the University of Chichester presents an illustrated talk on William Hayley.
As part of the annual Chichester Festivities Dr Diana Barsham, Head of English and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester presented the first South Coast Eighteenth-century and Romantic Research Group public event. Her illustrated talk on the extraordinary life of the Chichester poet, dramatist and biographer, William Hayley took place at the University of Chichester on 4th July.
The work of Hayley has been ignored for the last 200 years but in the late Eighteenth Century he was one of the most popular poets of his day and his poem ‘The Triumphs of Temper’ was a best seller. Hayley created the heroine of this poem as a role model for women, advising them on how to respond cheerfully to the trials of marriage, especially when their partners were unfaithful. Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, and Nelson’s mistress, Lady Hamilton were both avid readers! Georgiana claimed the poem saved her marriage.
By the late 1790s Hayley was a famous and successful poet. It was at this time that a number 
of tragedies in his life led him to form a strong but ill-fated friendship with the artist, mystic and poet, William Blake. As the friendship grew closer, Blake was persuaded to leave his native London to join Hayley in the village of Felpham near Bognor Regis. Hayley was the direct inspiration for Blake’s last two prophetic works, Milton and Jerusalem.
Dr Barsham argues: “As well as being a poet, a scholar and a model gentleman, Hayley was very much a man of the heart, benevolent and generous. Friendship meant everything to him and the rift with Blake darkened his life. For the past 200 years Hayley has been mostly ignored and forgotten. I want to bring back to life this once prominent and interesting man and re-evaluate his literary career.”
Dr Barsham is currently researching the life of William Hayley. Her last book was a critical biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She has previously published lives of some pioneering but little known Victorian women writers.