Emily Dickinson's Music Book Digitised

Emily Dickinson's music book has been digitised by Harvard and can be accessed - here

The full brilliant post by the Houghton Library Blog on the history of music books and this one in particular can be found - here

"Music books or “binders’ volumes” were extremely popular during the years 1830-1870. These personal collections of bound published sheet-music titles were assembled by young women primarily during their adolescent years, when musical training and accomplishment was sought after as a reflection of cultural refinement and gentility.

[...]
The average binder’s volume contains 35 to 45 pieces of music. At just over 100 pieces, Emily Dickinson’s music book is uncommonly large. The book’s content tells us a great deal about her musical interests. Most binders from the period contain a majority of vocal music and only some instrumental numbers. In contrast, eighty percent of the Dickinson book is devoted to instrumental music, indicating Emily’s keen engagement in the piano repertoire of her day.

While the music book contains a majority of popular waltzes, marches, quicksteps, theme and variations, and instrumental operatic arrangements, many of considerable difficulty, there are also notable groupings of traditional Irish and Scottish dance tunes and ballads, political songs, and in particular, minstrel music which are rare in binders’ volumes."

Emily Dickinson's Electronic archive can be found - here

A call for papers for on Emily Dickinson’s Reading Culture - here

Poetry Foundation's page on Emily Dickinson - here

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

New publication: The Boundaries of the Literary Archive

Carrie and I are very pleased to say that our edited collection The Boundaries of the Literary Archive is now in print and available to purchase!

The book can be found here on the Ashgate website, and here on Amazon.

The flyer for the book with full details can found below.

Lantern Archive Opens 800,000 Pages of Digital Content

A great new resource for anyone in the film and media history field -- the Lantern Archive, a new digital repository  for media history resources -- has gone live as part of the Media History Digital Library.

This new searchable archive gives access to some 800,000 pages of content that span film, television and broadcasting history, encompassing a vast number of film periodicals and magazines (if you're interested in knowing more about how these were used by audiences in the silent period, take a look at my chapter on 'Letter Writing, Cinemagoing and Archive Ephemera' in myself and Carrie's new edited collection The Boundaries of the Literary Archive -- out now!).

The project represents a collaboration with the University of Wisconsin, whose collections of film periodicals are now text-searchable online -- a huge benefit to any researcher who has had experience of trawling page-by-page through these materials on microfiche looking for that elusive mention on one particular film or one particular star... even better, you can download images and texts.

Check it out, and enjoy the bizarre, the entertaining and the beautiful from film publishing up to the 1970s.

TS Eliot poem hand set by Virginia Woolf fetches £4,500 at auction

Hogarth Press edition of TS Eliot's The Waste Land. Photograph: Bonhams

A first edition of The Waste Land published by Woolf's Hogarth Press has been sold to St Andrew's University. Read the article - here








'A rare UK first edition of T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land, hand-set by Virginia Woolf – who "had difficulty with the typography" – has been bought at auction by the University of St Andrews for £4,500 after being donated to Oxfam.'

Sales such as these can draw attention to interesting aspects of the poem itself. For example, Lydia Wilkinson, books specialist at auction house Bonhams, notes that:

"Woolf had difficulty with the typography because of the way Eliot would write, the rhythm and space used in his poems, and she had a bit of trouble getting the typeface right." 

This type of detail, considering the already acknowledged influence that The Waste Land' had on texts such as Mrs. Dalloway, can cause us to reconsider the "rhythm and space" in Woolf's novels.


See more Eliot related content on this blog - here
And more on Woolf - here

Daphne du Maurier's son reveals 'Rebecca’ was based on the author's life

From the Telegraph

Interview in the Telegraph with the author's son Kits Browning which discusses some of the source material for the novel including du Maurier's life and some interesting documents. It also notes that there is a new adaptation in the pipeline! Read the full interview here.






Some excerpts: 

'"Very roughly, the book will be about the influence of a first wife on a second,” wrote Daphne du Maurier in her notes. “Until wife 2 is haunted day and night… a tragedy is looming very close and crash! Bang! Something happens.”

[...]

The seed of the story lay in du Maurier’s jealousy of Jan Ricardo, the first fiancée of her husband. “I know that she came across one or two letters or cards, fairly sort of harmless things, where Jan did sign 'Jan Ricardo’ with this wonderful great R,” says Browning, flourishing his hand in the air. It is a portentous curlicue that is emulated in the book.

“The name Rebecca,” wrote du Maurier, “stood out black and strong, the tall and sloping R dwarfing the other letters.” Ricardo later threw herself under a train, although not, Browning says, due to his parents’ marriage. Still, it is said that Daphne was haunted by the suspicion that her husband remained attracted to Ricardo.

[...]

Manderley, like Hogwarts and Brideshead, is a name fixed in our imagination. Yet the anonymity of the novel’s narrator continues to intrigue. “She couldn’t think what to call her and so she didn’t call her anything. And then it became a challenge: could she actually write the whole thing without it,” says Browning. “Funnily enough, in the Hitchcock film, in the script she is written as 'I’, but they all called her 'Daphne’ on the shoot.”

Both Mrs de Winters were drawn from du Maurier’s own character. “I always identified Mum with the second, rather timid one,” says Browning. “It was totally split, because she was just as good as Rebecca at the sailing and all that toughness.'


You can see Vivian Leigh's test reel for the part of the second Mrs de Winter - here (via @DrJenBarnes)

Other du Maurier content on this blog can be found - here

Daphne du Maurier's papers are held in University of Exeter's Heritage Collections and form part of the subject of Prof. Helen Taylor's chapter in the forthcoming book: The Boundaries of the Literary Archive

Lindisfarne Gospels Digitised by the British Library and exhibited in Durham

As part of the British Library's commitment to digitising some of the most extraordinary manuscripts, we now have access to the Anglo Saxon Lindisfarne Gospels through its 'Turn the Pages' application - This allows you to turn the pages of the manuscript, magnify it, hear an audio description of the page or read a written description.

The highlights from the Lindisfarne gospels are free for a limited time and the full version can be bought as an app for ipad. Once again the BL makes me wish I owned an ipad!

The physical gospels are currently being exhibited in Durham from today (1st July)! See the website here.

"The Lindisfarne Gospels book is one of the greatest landmarks of human cultural achievement. Created by the community of St Cuthbert on Lindisfarne it is one of the best examples of Medieval creativity and craftsmanship.

The Lindisfarne Gospels Durham exhibition presents for the first time the extraordinary full story of the Lindisfarne Gospels, exploring how and why this masterpiece was created, its influence on Medieval Europe and how artistic traditions from Britain and the Mediterranean mainland came together in North East England.

At the centre of the exhibition in Durham University's Palace Green Library is the gospel book itself, written in honour of St Cuthbert. In addition many fabulous artefacts from Anglo-Saxon England will be on show including ornate gold objects from the Staffordshire Hoard, intricately carved stone from Lindisfarne and silver from Hexham, alongside some very special medieval manuscripts such as the St Cuthbert Gospel and the Durham Gospels. These items place the Lindisfarne Gospels within a wider context of Anglo-Saxon creativity and show how incredibly complex and elaborate Medieval craftsmanship was."

Abandoned Suitcases Reveal Private Lives of Insane Asylum Patients

I stumbled across this wonderful article containing really moving photographs of the suitcases and belonging of the patients at a psychiatric institution between 1910-1960.

From Collectors Weekly

"If you were committed to a psychiatric institution, unsure if you’d ever return to the life you knew before, what would you take with you? That sobering question hovers like an apparition over each of the Willard Asylum suitcases. From the 1910s through the 1960s, many patients at the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane left suitcases behind when they passed away, with nobody to claim them. Upon the center’s closure in 1995, employees found hundreds of these time capsules stored in a locked attic. Working with the New York State Museum, former Willard staffers were able to preserve the hidden cache of luggage as part of the museum’s permanent collection.

Photographer Jon Crispin has long been drawn to the ghostly remains of abandoned psychiatric institutions. After learning of the Willard suitcases, Crispin sought the museum’s permission to document each case and its contents. In 2011, Crispin completed a successful Kickstarter campaign to help fund the first phase of the project, which he recently finished. Next spring, a selection of his photos will accompany the inaugural exhibit at the San Francisco Exploratorium’s new location."

To read more about the project and an interview with the photographer - click here

From Collectors Weekly

Newly Opened files at the National Archives reveal drunken meetings, cross dressing and surveillance

There are some wonderful blog posts coming out of the National Archives material at the moment. Previously secret files have been opened and revealed some very interesting meetings!

From itv

"‘There I found Winston and Stalin, and Molotov who has joined them, sitting with a heavily-laden board between them: food of all kinds crowned by a sucking [sic] pig, and innumerable bottles. What Stalin made me drink seemed pretty savage: Winston, who by that time was complaining of a slight headache, seemed wisely to be confining himself to a comparatively innocuous effervescent Caucasian red wine. Everyone seemed to be as merry as a marriage bell’."

The papers have also exposed the bugging of Edward VIII in the period before his abdications exposing a 'serious breakdown in trust' between himself and his ministers.

In addition, the National Archives have posted some photographs of intelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke dressed as both a man and a woman taken by the Spanish police. The Lieutenant was fined by the Spanish police and hurried back to Gibraltar by Churchill.

From itv

Read more here.

Reclaiming Exhibition: Two views on Carl Theodore Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

1. Reclaiming

(Lisa Stead)

Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan if Arc is my favourite film, pretty much bar none. Although I suspect very concept of a favourite film is in itself a bit ridiculous -- clearly pinning down what you consider to be the 'best' is a question anyone who teaches or studies Film or English most likely dislikes being asked for all the ways in which it we feel it challenges us to say what's expected, what intellectually defines us and pins our taste down in a single sentence open to swift judgement. So much so that I always begin seminars with any new class by asking them to admit to (and revel in) what they consider to be their most embarrassing pet love, not the obscure art house text they think will make them look widely viewed, appropriately cultured in obscurity (and thus potentially that much more attractive to the geekier members of the opposite sex...).

However, despite this -- turns out, this IS my favourite film, one that I constantly circle back to and one that just kind of stays there under your skin. And the reasons why circulate further around its somewhat romantic exhibition history and status as film history artefact as much as its excessively beautiful, haunting and emotionally draining portrayal of faith on trial showcasing one of the greatest and most obscure performances in cinema.

Dreyer's film, which focuses upon the record of Joan's trial, was equal parts critically successful to financially disastrous upon its initial release, and its immediate history saw a series of cuts and mishaps and made the original a rare and eventually ‘lost’ commodity (the original negative was lost to a studio fire at UFA). Dreyer's attempted restructuring from a few remaining original prints was then again lost to fire in 1929 (bad fire times all round). Since then, the original film was considered lost entire, until, bizarrely canisters containing the film were found in a cleaning cupboard mental institution in Oslo in the 1980s. After three years at the Norwegian Film Institute the reels were finally examined and found to be Dreyer's original cut.

Reclaimed, frequently screened at film festivals, given a DVD release and now a part of numerous film syllabuses, the film really does live again in multiple forms.

What I personally want to flag up in contrast with Carrie's response below is the influence of the contemporary score commissioned for the reclaimed film-- which has a major influence upon the film is experienced in contrast to the live accomplishment you will witness with silent screenings at many festivals and events (a great number of diverse contemplate scores have been written for the film since the late 1989s, including Live accompaniments by the likes of Nick cave and Cat power). The power of Richard Einhorn's 1994 oratorio based on the film entitled "Voices of Light" (available as an optional accompaniment on the Criterion Collection's DVD release)  is rather difficult to put in to words, but the richness and fullness of the soundscape works in startling compositions and contrasts with the sparse nature of Dreyer's images, the intensity of his compositions that blank all else out against the frantic eyes of Renée Falconetti in the film's relentless succession of tight, unforgiving close ups as Joan response to each stage of her interrogation. Watch it with the score, watch it without -- experience it every way you can, because this is a text that grows and changes each time it's encountered, and one that carries with it it's bizarre history of reclamation and restoration that remains just as oddly intoxicating in the overall experience as the film itself.

2. (Re)viewings

(Carrie Smith)

I recently attended a screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc at Birmingham Cathedral as part of the Flatpack Cinema Festival -http://www.flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/the-passion-of-joan-of-arc/ The film was introduced by Paul Shallcross, a pianist who had written a score to accompany it. In his introduction he chose to stress the film’s timelessness. He mentioned that the sets gesture towards medieval simplicity, yet the soldiers wear helmets which look similar to those worn in World War One. He also highlighted the brief incongruent appearance of 1920s plastic spectacles.

Despite the film’s damning portrayal of the Catholic Church, to watch it in Birmingham Cathedral felt entirely appropriate. The cathedral’s high vaulted ceilings, columns, religious paintings etc made you feel that the bishops were about to enter from stage left. The image of the light through the window creating a crucifix on the floor of Joan’s cell was echoed in the stained glass window of the cathedral which was directly behind the screen. The acoustics of the cathedral meant that the score reverberated around the audience. The walls seemed to lean inwards towards Renée Maria Falconetti’s expressive face at the centre of the space.    

Too often, perhaps, films are confined to being watched in the archives and do not have the opportunity to be shown in spaces which can add new meaning and relevance. Dreyer’s film about intolerance felt like it was interacting with modern questions in a real setting and I would applaud Birmingham Cathedral for agreeing to the screening. It would be wonderful to see more silent films present beyond the archive in a living space and in doing so, able to reach larger audiences.

Storify: Beyond the Text: Literary Archives in the 21st Century Symposium

The Beyond the Text Symposium at the The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library sounded brilliant and I was grateful to everyone live tweeting the papers. I have put together a selection of the tweets on Storify, adding in the titles of the papers where possible.

It can be found here