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Call To Register: Oxford English Graduate Conference “The Famed and The Forgotten”

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Registration is now open for The Famed and The Forgotten, taking place on 10th June in Oxford University’s English Faculty.

45 student speakers from Oxford and around the UK will be delivering papers on the concepts of ‘famed’ and ‘forgotten’, interrogated in the broadest possible terms across genres and periods encompassing Old English to the literature of the present day.

A panel discussion on “The Future of Reading” featuring representatives from Oxford University Press, SHM Productions consultancy and the Oxford English Faculty will take place, and we will hear a keynote address from Booker Prize winner Penelope Lively.

The £15 attendance fee covers lunch, snacks and all conference materials. Please register via our website – http://graduate-conference.english.ox.ac.uk/ – or with an email to claire [dot] waters [at] ell [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk.

Then, confirm your place by sending a cheque or postal order for £15 made out to the University of Oxford to Claire Waters, St Catherine’s College, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UJ.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Eleanor Marx, George Bernard Shaw & Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

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Eleanor Marx

Eleanor Marx

Before its June 1889 premiere at the Novelty Theatre, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was twice staged in the capital; once in 1885, and once in 1886. In 1886, it was given  in a private performance in a Bloomsbury lodging-house, with George Bernard Shaw as Krogstad, and ELEANOR MARX as Nora. ELEANOR MARX (interesting 2005 article here from the Socialist Worker). Can you imagine? How wonderful to have been there.

My, but there’s a lot to be said for reading your tutor’s book. I love theatre history. The 1889 premiere of A Doll’s House starred Janet Achurch as Nora, Herbert Waring as Torvald and Achurch’s husband, Charles Charrington, as Dr. Rank. Achurch gave a famous interview in the midst of the critical furore which followed (Clement Scott, predictably, managed to get nearly as angry about Nora as he would about Hedda two years later – and he called Hedda the most ‘morally repulsive woman to appear on stage’), saying that Nora was ‘perfectly right’ to leave her husband, as she famously does at the end of the play (also notable, but less positive, was Achurch’s morphine addiction, following a disastrous labour and stillbirth, which eventually killed her). She even defended Nora’s abandoning her children, which the Daily Telegraph critic said ‘no women breathing’ would have done. Other reading delights today have included Alan’s Wife by Elizabeth Robins (my new obsession – apparently late Victorian & Edwardian Britain was full of awesome feminist playwrights), wherein woman kills disabled child. In, you know, 1893. If you have Muse access, Katherine E. Kelly has a really interesting article here.

Linkspam

  • The ‘British Wildcats‘, the group massing behind the ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ union-rejected strikes, is BNP-affiliated, as revealed by The Ministry Of Truth. Proof? here.
  • Wednesday’s Front Row on Radio 4 had an interesting item on the history of Sex Education films. There are some hilarious examples of teen information films on YouTube (I love What To Do On A Date, from 1950), as well as a parody from Colbert, Dinello & Sedaris, How To Be Popular.
  • And, finally, Clamorous Voice has been listed on WordPress’s Feb 02 list of Growing Blogs! Okay, so it’s small, but I’m still pleased. I love watching where people are coming from (bizarrely, a lot of people seem to find this blog by searching for ‘Michelle Obama’… fortunately the other popular search terms, like ‘bodleian’ or, er, ‘david tennant’ make a lot more sense), it’s sort of addictive.


England in ‘cannot cope with snow’ shock.

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4.5 members of our seminar group (Sam, Michael, Lisa, Lisa’s-boyfriend-who-has-a-reader’s-card and myself) are in the Bodleian. Through the windows, we can see snow falling on the Rad Cam, the New Bodleian, and the colleges beyond Broad Street.

The power has gone out.

And, this morning, the age-old editor’s dilemma: do I send my reviewer to London in semi-blizzard conditions, knowing that the buses are delayed and there are at least fourteen closures/disruptions on the Underground?

Yes. Yes I do. (‘Look, you’re only doing Notting Hill to Sloane Square, and there are plenty of people you can stay with…’).

If she dies in a snowbank, I’m going to feel terrible (1,000 words!).

Oxfordshire Snow Linkspam

  • As ever, the meterological freakery that is Oxford gets BBC attention!
  • Carfax webcam; the dome in the top left corner is one we can see from our window.
  • Keble mathmo posts this beautiful picture of Pusey Quad. I haven’t been over to my college yet today (I’m in this evening), will try and get some photos.

Back to reading A Doll’s House (1879) (the only play I ever saw that made me worried I’d stand up and shout at the stage. I remember digging my nails into the armrests).