My Summer Conferences

I've given papers at three conferences this summer in rather different locations and to different groups of people. The actual conferences themselves have been enjoyable and informative, though my personal difficulties have made them a little more traumatic than I would've preferred.

The first one, at the beginning of June, was the Oxford English Graduate Conference 2014 on the theme of 'Margins'. Of course, this gave me the brilliant excuse to see Oxford - and to see Oxford in the sunshine - which was a very pleasant experience. My paper, entitled 'Reclaiming a Sensation Novelist: Re-evaluating Edmund Yates', was on a 9:00 am panel, probably a good thing because once it was over I started to enjoy the day a little more. The programme was packed full with four sets of four simultaneous panels. The variety was excellent, though I tended to stick to the more Victorian ones. Perhaps my favourite panel was 'Nineteenth-Century Women' that included three outstanding papers from Ruth Ashton (University of Leicester), Teja Pusapati (University of Oxford) and Rebecca Shuttleworth (University of Leicester) who looked at 'fallen'/'new' women, the English Woman's Journal and provincial women in abolitionist discourse respectively. The day was a success overall and I managed to overcome my inherent shyness and hold a few conversations with some interesting people.

Secondly, at the end of June, was 'Recoveries 2014: Reconnections, 1714-1914' held at the University of Nottingham. The paper I gave there was a variation on my Oxford paper, slightly shorter and with more of an emphasis on Yates's novel Black Sheep in relation to Dickens. I was pleased with how it went and got some interesting questions. Once again, there was a nice mix of paper within the time period, my favourites perhaps being Amy Watson (Nottingham Trent University) discussing Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Adam Abraham (University of Oxford) talking about imitations of The Pickwick Papers and Elizabeth Adams (independent) on the collaborative authorship questions surrounding Mary Elizabeth Braddon. The university campus at Nottingham is stunning, a perfect place to discuss literature and culture.

Finally, I attended the 6th annual Victorian Popular Fiction Association conference which was on the theme of 'Victorian Treasures and Trash'. I attended this conference last year and it was brilliant. I'm pleased to say that this one was exactly the same. Spread over three days, there were plenty of papers to hold my attention, dealing with some Victorians I know a fair bit about and some of whom I know absolutely nothing. There's something equally fascinating and terrifying about being in a room with a heap of Victorian experts but they're all lovely people. I didn't get the chance to talk to some people I wanted to but that was partly due to time and partly due to my shyness going into overdrive. I did spend a lot of time hiding but I was there. That's the important thing.

My paper was on the Thursday morning and was a completely different creature to the Oxford and Nottingham papers. While they focused on the collaboration rumours surrounding Edmund Yates, this one delved into textual analysis and comparison to Dickens in a paper called 'Bleak House to Black Sheep: Literacy and the Street Boy'. I was fortunate to be on a panel with Sarah Lill (Northumbria University), whose paper on Edward Lloyd was both fascinating and slotted most neatly in alongside mine. There were too many excellent papers to name and I wouldn't want to leave anybody out so let me just say that it was a brilliant conference with some thought-provoking panels.

All of these conferences have thrown up things I want to now read, whether related to my research interests or not. Thanks to Oxford, I need to get more acquainted with Dickens's Christmas journals, read some Marilynne Robinson and delve - quite carefully - into George Moore. Nottingham taught me that I need to finally read The Pickwick Papers and dramatically improve my knowledge of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 'lesser' novels. The VPFA gave me a lot of potential reading material including stories by Louisa Baldwin, Dr Paull's Theory by A.M. Diehl, Behind the Mask by Louisa May Alcott and a few texts on stammering from the nineteenth century. I may also give The Mill on the Floss another shot.

It's been a busy five weeks but rewarding nonetheless. I only hope my papers proved as interesting to others as theirs did to me.

Book Review: John Marchmont's Legacy by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

John Marchmont's Legacy begins with Edward Arundel, destined for the army, bumping into his old teacher, the title character, working on a London stage. There is a hope that Marchmont will come into property but, until then, he and his young daughter, Mary, are living in poverty. Thanks to Edward's kindness, John Marchmont trusts him with the welfare of his daughter if they come into the inheritance and he dies. John is particularly worried about the ambitions of his brother, Paul Marchmont. John does come into his property and decides to marry Edward's cousin, Olivia, to provide a good mother figure for Mary. What he doesn't know is that Olivia has been in love with Edward for years and only marries him because Edward doesn't want her. After John's death, however, the household changes and when Edward falls in love with Mary, it's something Olivia struggles to accept. And then Paul Marchmont arrives...

By far, the most interesting character in this novel is Olivia. Her love for Edward pervades the novel, even though she accepts it's a damaging love, and the jealousy which emerges from it is inevitable but still fascinating to read. In comparison, the nice Mary feels somewhat like a cardboard cut out. Her courtship with Edward is very sentimental and childish in tone. Mary doesn't seem to grow up out of the child Edward first encounters and is subsequently made something of an angel. Of course, this works as an excellent contrast to Olivia but it also serves to highlight that Olivia is one of Braddon's best creations while Mary languishes amongst the stereotypical insipid 'good' heroines of sensation fiction.

The plot suffers from an abundance of coincidental incidents, as many sensation novels do. Being a seasoned reader of the form, I'd pretty much ascertained what was going to happen a few chapters in with John's prophetic mistrust of his brother and Olivia's pervading love for Edward. It did mean that I spent a good proportion of the second half of the novel frustrated and waiting for the inevitable revelation.

I also detected a problem which it seems Braddon struggled with - the introduction of another 'good' heroine, Belinda, which essentially creates a surplus going into the final pages. I'll allow you to discover for yourself how this is resolved.

Ultimately, John Marchmont's Legacy is a good novel mainly because of Olivia Marchmont. Of all the characters within these pages, she's the one that lingers.

Downloading Classics onto Kindle

I went on a bit of a splurge the other night. Conscious that I'm spending three weeks in Birmingham, I went onto Amazon and downloading a heap of free classics for my Kindle, which is one of the best presents I've ever received. Unfortunately, those added to what I already have on there have equated to something of a mountain. So if anyone has any suggestions for which of the following long list I should read I'd be grateful! These are all books I haven't read before, illustrating some gigantic holes in my education. (List in no particular order!)

1. Felix Holt - George Eliot
2. The Lost Girl - D.H. Lawrence 
3. The Cloister and the Hearth - Charles Reade
4. The Return - Walter de la Mare
5. Witch Stories - Eliza Lynn Linton
6. The Ghost Pirates - William Hope Hodgson
7. A Lady of Quality - Frances Hodgson Burnett
8. Mathilda - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
9. Camilla - Fanny Burney
10. The Innocence of Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
11. The Wisdom of Father Brown - G.K. Chesterton
12. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
13. The Europeans - Henry James
14. Evelina - Fanny Burney
15. A Sicilian Romance - Ann Radcliffe
16. Dombey and Son - Charles Dickens
17. Washington Square - Henry James
18. Moon and Sixpence - W. Somerset Maugham 
19. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens 
20. King Solomon's Mines - Henry Rider Haggard
21. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence
22. Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
23. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
24. Persuasion - Jane Austen
25. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
26. Verner's Pride - Ellen Wood
27. The Odd Women - George Gissing
28. New Grub Street - George Gissing
29. Ruth - Elizabeth Gaskell
30. The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet - Burton E. Stevenson
31. The Angel of Terror - Edgar Wallace
32. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab - Fergus Hume
33. The Bartlett Mystery - Louis Tracy
34. The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault - Charles Perrault
35. The Leavenworth Case - Anna Katharine Green
36. The Virginians - William Thackeray
37. The Man - Bram Stoker
38. Lair of the White Worm - Bram Stoker
39. Two on a Tower - Thomas Hardy
40. Under the Greenwood Tree - Thomas Hardy
41. The Trumpet-Major - Thomas Hardy
42. The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid - Thomas Hardy
43. A Pair of Blue Eyes - Thomas Hardy
44. The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
45. The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy
46. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
47. The Professor - Charlotte Bronte
48. Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
49. Villette - Charlotte Bronte
50. Antonina - Wilkie Collins
51. A Rogue's Life - Wilkie Collins
52. The New Magdalen - Wilkie Collins
53. The Two Destinies - Wilkie Collins
54. The Fallen Leaves - Wilkie Collins
55. The Black Robe - Wilkie Collins
56. Heart and Science - Wilkie Collins
57. "I Say No" - Wilkie Collins
58. The Evil Genius - Wilkie Collins
59. Guilty River - Wilkie Collins
60. The Legacy of Cain - Wilkie Collins
61. Blind Love - Wilkie Collins
62. Les Miserable - Victor Hugo
63. The Lovels of Arden - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
64. Birds of Prey - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
65. Henry Dunbar - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
66. John Marchmont's Legacy - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
67. Fenton's Quest - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
68. Charlotte's Inheritance - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
69. Run to Earth - Mary Elizabeth Braddon 

...Onwards to 2013

Since I failed many of my goals in 2012 (see here) you might think I'd go easy on myself in 2013. No chance. What follows is an overview of the things I want to get done. Later in the year I'll probably compile another 'traffic light' post since the last one helped me focus my thoughts on what needed doing - even though I didn't do much of it at all in the end! So, here goes nothing...

My PhD is obviously the most important thing in my life. With a little bit of luck I'll be close to completion by the end of the year - or at least I'll have all the blocks in place and just need to rearrange them a bit. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but goals were meant to be challenging.

Related to the above, I want to get some conference experience under my belt. Talking in public is not exactly something I'm good at but it has to be battled at some point and now is that time. I've submitted abstracts for a couple of conferences already but if they don't come off then there's plenty more to have a crack at.

This post details all my major writing projects. In terms of priority for working on this year, I'd put them in this order: 'Lily', 'Danni', 'Liz', 'Lauren', 'Max' and 'Vic' (which is the actual order they were written in the first place!). Realistically, I think I'll only work on the first four of those - although all six would be nice. In addition, I'll try and resist adding new first drafts to my pot (excluding NaNoWriMo).

I'll participate in NaNoWriMo again - provided I have a decent idea come November.

I'm working on a transcription (and introduction) of Edmund Yates's Black Sheep for Valancourt Books (details can be found here). By the end of the year I'd like to have made a huge dent in this - if not have it completely finished and submitted.

Although I'm not quite sure where my work with 2020UK will take me this year but I'll continue working with the group.

I'm not taking part in any reading challenges this year but that doesn't mean I won't be reading! My marvellous Christmas present of a Kindle (thanks to my sister and family) means I've started downloading loads of things I didn't have access to before. Some of them are work related (complete works of Wilkie Collins and some lost texts of Mary Elizabeth Braddon have already found their way onto the list) but others will just be plain fun. In addition, I'll be watching loads of classic films this year as my reward for doing some of the above stuff that looks terrifying in a list like this.

You'll notice all of these are pretty much professional goals. Don't I have any personal ones? Well, no. Let's allow those to melt into the distance and focus on the stuff that's really important.

A Little About Edmund Yates

I've been mentioning him in passing for months now. Yates is one of the authors I'm looking at for my thesis, although you can be forgiven for not knowing his fiction. Posterity - if it has remembered him at all - has placed him (justifiably) in the category of journalist. He is better known as a friend of Dickens and enemy of Thackeray than as a writer. Yet he wrote around nineteen novels between 1864 and 1875, serialising them in prominent journals of the day, such as Temple Bar, All the Year Round and Tinsley's Magazine. His first novel, Broken to Harness (1864), was described by Mary Elizabeth Braddon as a domestic novel but from Black Sheep (1867) onwards he was firmly a sensation writer.

His literary connections with people like Dickens were formed partly because of his parents. He was the son of Frederick and Elizabeth Yates, successful and very popular actors. They were on tour in Scotland when he was born. However, his parents were eager that he should not follow them into the theatre life and tried to prevent him getting too involved in that life. Consequently, he started work at the Post Office before his sixteenth birthday. This work would bring him into contact with Trollope, who became a bitter enemy later in life. Yates was also admitted to the Garrick Club aged only seventeen as a mark of respect for his parents. This ended badly when he offended (probably deliberately) Thackeray in a journal and was excluded from the prestigious club. It was likely that the publication of this unflattering article was deliberately timed to coincide with Dickens's announcement of his divorce - as a great friend of Dickens, Yates was probably trying to dilute the public gossip on that day. Thackeray, like Trollope, became a lifelong enemy, all the more upsetting for Yates because he had particularly admired Thackeray in his youth. Yates may have cultivated friendships with many literary powerhouses of the period but he was also prone to arguments with them. This led to a rumour after his death, perpetuated by Trollope and William Tinsley, that Yates was not responsible for writing some of his best novels. Yates's bibliographer, P.D. Edwards, has investigated this to the best of his ability, concluding that, while nothing can be confirmed, it is unlikely that the allegations are true.

The list of journals Yates contributed to - and, in some cases, edited - is almost never-ending. To name a few: Court Journal, Leader, Daily News, Illustrated Times, Morning Star, Comic Times (editor), Temple Bar (editor) and Tinsley's Magazine. He was a prolific journalist but it's also interesting to note that he continued working at the Post Office for twenty-five years. Where he found the time to write his articles and novels is difficult to comprehend. His first completed novel, Broken to Harness, was written out of desperation to fill a hole within Temple Bar after another contributor let him down. It would be followed by popular novels such as Black Sheep, Land at Last (1866) and Wrecked in Port (1869). As was usual with the period, anything remotely sensational was panned by the critics and gobbled up by the public.

To date I've read six of Yates's novel: Broken to Harness, Black Sheep, The Rock Ahead (1868), A Righted Wrong (1870), The Impending Sword (1874) and The Silent Witness (1875). His plots are sometimes flimsy and rely on coincidence and suspension of disbelief. But, then again, so did Wilkie Collins's sensation novels and they have been defined as classics. Yates utilises his journalistic tendency of observation in character sketches and humorous asides and, generally, I find him to be an enjoyable read. What has struck me most in his works is the treatment of so-called 'villains' in a way that inverts the expected conventions. Although allowing the reader to 'live dangerously' by enjoying the exploits of villains was a staple of sensation fiction, Yates took it further by making these villains sympathetic. One character who has stayed with me is that of Harriet Routh from Black Sheep. Her devotion to her husband is the heart of the plot and Yates effectively portrays her as a 'good' woman because of this devotion.

I'd recommend Yates's novels to anyone interested in sensation fiction. Unlike some writers I've come across, I was rarely bored reading his novels. Some are rushed, of course, and some were written in response to publisher demands. But, on the whole, he was very enjoyable to read and his journalistic endeavours are as interesting as his novels. There are plenty of little anecdotes out there about him for anyone willing to look. I'll leave you with a quote from a review of A Righted Wrong, written in the Saturday Review in 1870. Criticisms like this usually mean the novel lacks taste and literary merit but is a decent read nonetheless:

"We cannot honestly congratulate Mr. Yates on the appropriateness of his title, for novels like this are wrongs which there is no righting. The reader slips down in blank boredom between a couple of stools. There is nothing to interest, and there is just as little to amuse... It is simply colourless, and totally devoid of all marked characteristics. It reminds us of nothing so much as an excursion train of badly-coupled carriages, jolting among, without any apparent object, by badly-made loop-lines. The train has a destination certainly, known, we may presume, to the persons who despatch it; and you turn up somehow at the journey's end. But in the meantime the slowness of the pace, the frequent stoppages, and the general uncertainty make the travel martyrdom. Readers of course get tired of it, and get out as they please; but the conscientious critic must yawn and resign himself."

Well... I liked it!

The Dangers of Duality.

Something I've come across in my studies is the explicit use of duality in the fiction I'm reading. Characters are put in direct contrast to each other in order to make a point as well as to further the plot. The novel I'm reading at the moment (a little-know story by Edmund Yates, The Silent Witness) initiated the introduction of the two female characters by contrasting them in every way. One was fair haired, the other dark. One was a prattler, the other was full of sense. It may be wise to point out that the dark-haired intellectual quickly lost those traits when she was separated from the woman she was deliberately set up as opposite to.

Duality was a common tool of Victorian writers. It helped inform the reader using various simple distinctions: fair/dark, bright/dim, strong/weak and, of course, that old favourite pretty/ugly. It was used to great effect in Victorian fiction; think of Marian/Laura in The Woman in White or Mina/Lucy in Dracula.

It's an effective tool for any writer really and one that's still evident in every walk of fiction today. My favourite novel, Sarah Water's Fingersmith sets up a contrast between Sue and Maud from the beginning. The Harry Potter books are especially verbose in this kind of method: think Harry/Draco, Harry/Cedric, Hermione/Pansy, Neville/just about anyone.

It's a simple way of differentiating between characters. The idea of hair colour is one that seeps into even the best writer's conscious: if A has blonde hair then let's make B's dark so we can spot the difference. It's a handy marker but there are several pitfalls.

Firstly, if you create a character in response to another then the second character won't be as rounded and three-dimensional as the first. Not if all you've done is create an opposite for your protagonist. Some Victorian novels, especially sensational ones, suffer with this. The title character of Lady Audley's Secret is evil, for want of a better term. Her opposite in the novel is arguably Clara Talboys who, apart from having a desperate desire to find her missing brother, is an ineffectual human being. This had the desired effect of making the audience root for Lady Audley instead of Clara but it didn't do much for the depth of the novel.

A second problem with duality is that it can hinder character progression. If, as a writer, you're so intent on maintaining a distinction between various character then you can ignore the potential (or in some cases, necessity) for character evolution and change. This is extremely evident in serial television more than anything else. This is how the villain keeps going for years on end without being touched in any way by their deeds: think Tracy Barlow in Coronation Street, Don Beech in The Bill or Janine Butcher in Eastenders. What these characters loop back to is a desire to cause trouble, whatever brief epiphanies they may experience. They are there as the token villain and heaven-forbid they turn over a new leaf.

Finally, I'd say that duality can quickly become predictable and boring if not in the right hands. Some descriptions, especially in the Victorian books I'm reading at the moment, are cringeworthy in their attempts to set up a distinction between two characters.

The thing about contrast is that it should work on a primarily subliminal platform. If you have to point it out then you're not doing your job properly.