THE BUSINESS OF A WOMAN S LIFE

Transcription

1 Department of English Literature THE BUSINESS OF A WOMAN S LIFE female authorship, celebrity and fandom in the long nineteenth century March 26 th 2018 Museum of English Rural Life, London Road Campus DRAFT PROGRAMME TIME ACTION VENUE Registration and Refreshments Please collect your conference packs Seminar Keynote Speaker Prof. Alexis Easley Conference Session One Panel A Authors in Conversation Panel B Authorship, in fiction and theory Refreshment Break Seminar Session Two Panel A: Gendering the text form and content Panel B: Gendering the writer/performer Lunch Seminar Session Three Panel A: Recontextualising diaries and scrapbooks Panel B: Revisioning women and celebrity Conference Panel Discussion on female literary friendship Refreshment Break Seminar Session Four Panel A Out in Front women and celebrity Panel B Behind the scenes the business of publishing Closing Remarks Conference Supported by the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS): University of Reading 2018 Page 1

2 Invited Speakers Professor Alexis Easley - as a researcher, teacher, and editor, is interested in everything Victorian. She recently published the Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and Newspapers (co-edited with Andrew King and John Morton), which received the 2017 Colby Prize. Other recent books include Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, (University of Delaware Press, 2011) and First-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media, (Ashgate, 2004). Alexis serves as editor of Victorian Periodicals Review, an international scholarly journal dedicated to research on the Victorian press. She is co-editor of the recently edited collection, Researching the Nineteenth- Century Periodical Press: Case Studies (Routledge, 2017). Alexis s other current research and teaching interests include Victorian women writers, Victorian drama, working-class poetry, the Brontës, Harriet Martineau, Charles Dickens, detective fiction, Gothic novels, and professional editing. Emily Midorikawa is the co-author of A Secret Sisterhood: the Hidden Friendships of Austen, Brontё, Eliot and Woolf, with Emma Claire Sweeney and with a foreword by Margaret Atwood. It is published by Aurum Press in the UK and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the USA. Emma and Emily also run the website Something Rhymed, which celebrates female literary friendship. Emily s journalism has appeared in, among others, the Daily Telegraph, the I newspaper and The Times. She was the winner of the 2015 Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Dr Emma Claire Sweeney has won Arts Council, Royal Literary Fund and Escalator Awards, and has been shortlisted for several others. Emma publishes arts features and pieces on disability for the likes of the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday, Mslexia and The Times. She currently teaches creative writing at New York University, and has previously worked for Cambridge, City University s Novel Studio, and the Open University. Her debut novel, Owl Song at Dawn, which was inspired by her sister who has cerebral palsy and autism, was published by Legend Press in Poster Display Details to be confirmed University of Reading 2018 Saturday 10 February 2018 Page 2

3 Parallel Sessions PARALLEL PANEL DESCRIPTIONS Authors In Conversation: Club Membership of the Late 1880s Women and Fin-De-Siecle Authorship, Fulya Kincal Not indeed a good writer of novels : The Trolling of Sydney Owenson, Sara J. Kerr Authorship, in fiction and theory: Braddon s Grub-Street Scribbler : Antonia Thornton the professional writer at the end of Braddon s career in The Infidel, Helen McKenzie Mary Ward and the Business of the Romance of Faith, Stephen Edwards Gendering the text form and content: Ellen Wood s gender bending male voices from the quintessential lady-wifemother, Chloé Holland The Reception of a Nineteenth-Century Female Writer of Unfeminine International European Politics, Rachel Egloff Jane Austen: an honorary man, Chiara Codecà Gendering the performer: Performing Restraint: Alice Meynell s American Lecture Tour, , Sarah Parker What an actress this woman is! What an arch trickster what an all-accomplished deceiver : Mary Braddon s Literary, Theatrical, and Personal Performances, Anne- Marie Beller Marry an actress! No words can describe the horror : Images of the professional actor and propriety in Mabel s Progress (1867), Eleanor Dumbill Recontextualising diaries and scrapbooks: Recovering the Female Poetry Reader: Ann Warton Stock s Illustrated Commonplace Book ( ), Melissa Tricoire Poaching, Gleaning, Spinning: The Gendered Metaphors of Appropriative Art, Megen de Bruin-Molé Female authorship and celebrity in nineteenth-century Polish theatre: Helena Modrzejewska and her female fans, Agata Łuksza University of Reading 2018 Saturday 10 February 2018 Page 3

4 Revisioning the past: Immodest Violets: A Neo-Victorian Female Botanist in Courtney Milan s The Countess Conspiracy (2013), Caroline Duvezin-Caubet The Glocalization of Women s Concerns in a Filipino Version of Pride and Prejudice, Maria Lorena Santos Another Secret Sisterhood: Christiane von Goethe and Ernestine Engels Step Back On Stage, Laura Ginters Behind the Scenes the business of publishing: Our Readers Own Realm : Alice Corkran, L.T. Meade, and Reader Contribution in Victorian Girls Magazines, Beth Rodgers For you seem principally to indulge in brain work pure and simple : Utilising life history methods to explore varied transitions, transactions and transgressions of Mary L Booth, Annmarie Valdes Friendship and Fireworks: reinterpreting the relationship between Marie Corelli and George Bentley, Jenni Scott Out in Front - women and celebrity: Nineteenth-century Women s Poetry and the Politics of Fame: Marketplace, Voice, Tradition, Simon Avery Violet Fane s Fragmentary Memoirs, Ceylan Kosker An Obsessed Audience : The Theatrical Life of Adah Isaacs Menken, Jessica Sebali TRANSPORT AND TRAVEL Detailed information about how to get to the University London Road campus including a detailed map of the MERL site can be found at: Travelling by car and parking There is a small car park for Museum visitors at the front of our building. Spaces are limited and we ask visitors to find a space and collect a permit from the Museum reception. Please display the permit clearly on your dashboard as the car park is monitored by security contractors. Visitors are also welcome to use the University Acacia Road car park adjacent to the Museum. Visitors without a University parking permit must collect a permit from the Museum reception, to be displayed in your car. There are disabled visitor parking spots close to the entrance. Please be aware that the entrance way to The MERL from the street slopes upwards away from the pavement. Sat nav users, please use the postcode RG1 5EX. University of Reading 2018 Saturday 10 February 2018 Page 4

5 Public Transport From the mainline train station, take Leopard 3 or Scarlet 9 from stop AS at the station, or Claret 21 or 21A from stop EJ. Leopard 3 or Scarlet 9: Get off the bus outside the Reading Berkshire Hospital on Craven Road, or as soon as the bus turns right onto Addington Road. From there it is a.3 mile walk to The MERL: Go to the end of Addington Road and turn right on to Redlands Road. Walk down and cross at the zebra crossing. Walk 200m down the road and you will find The MERL on your left. Claret 21 or 21A: Get off the bus at Crown Place Passage stop on Kendrick Road. From there it is a.2 mile walk to The MERL: Continue a few metres up the road and turn left into Crown Place Passage, just before the Abbey School. This is a narrow and unlit path, unsuitable for powered wheelchairs. The passage becomes Acacia Road car park. Continue down the side of the Museum building to the end of the road and the entrance is on the right. The mainline train station is served by a direct link bus service to the main campus Claret 21 or 21A. This bus route travels through the Whiteknights campus; guests staying on campus are advised to alight at the Whiteknights House bus stop. University of Reading 2018 Saturday 10 February 2018 Page 5