Onion ) Volume 3 Issue 03 Spring 2009

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Onion ) Volume 3 Issue 03 Spring 2009 T 0 ast P NEWSLETTER onion_) Volume 3 Issue 03 Spring 2009 /C, C William Whiffin photograph of boys following Poplar Borough Council water cart, 1919 CONTENTS: Editorial Note 2 East End Photographers 5 — William Whiffin 6 Memorial Research 2 Notes and News 9 Obituary — Mary Cable 3 Strange or What!!! 11 Programme Details 4 Bookshelf 13 Bancroft Library Update 5 Mementos of Tower Hamlets - Website 16 ELVIS Newsletter Spring 2009 Editorial Note: MEMORIAL RESEARCH I At the Annual General Meeting, held on 30th October 2008, the following Committee Doreen and Diane Kendall, with Doreen members were re-elected: Philip Mernick, Osborne and other volunteers continue their Chairman, Doreen Kendall, Secretary, Harold work in the Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park Mernick, Membership, David Behr, meticulously researching graves and recording Programme, Ann Sansom, Doreen Osborne, memorial inscriptions. They would welcome and Rosemary Taylor. All queries regarding any help members can offer. Their work has membership should be addressed to Harold grown into a project of enormous proportions Mernick, 42 Campbell Road, Bow, London E3 and complexity, with an impressive database 4DT. of graves researched, with illustrations attached. Enquiries to Doreen Kendall, 20 Puteaux House, Cranbrook Estate, Bethnal Green, Unfortunately, due to pressure of work, London E2 ORF, Tel: 0208 981 7680, or Philip Doreen and Diane cannot undertake any Memick, email: philmernicks com research on behalf of individuals, but would welcome any information that has been Check out the History Society's website at uncovered through personal searches. Meet www.eastIondonhistory.org.uk. them in the Cemetery Park on the 2nd Sunday of every month at 2 pm, where you can Our grateful thanks go to all the contributors receive helpful advice and suggestions on the of this edition of the newsletter, with a special best way to conduct your searches. mention to David Webb, for his fascinating series on East End Photographers. We trust By the time this newsletter goes to print, the our members will enjoy reading it as much as I Cemetery Park Open Day and Woodlands have, whilst compiling the newsletter. Letters Craft Day on Sunday 3"I May will be over, but and articles on East End history and we would appreciate any feedback from those reminiscences are always welcome and we who attended. make every effort to publish suitable material. Whilst hand-written articles are acceptable, items of interest, and any queries can be emailed to Philip Mernick. lrAt f:•/24:t. The Newsletter is edited and typeset by Rosemary Taylor with assistance of Philip Mernick, and an editorial team comprising, Doreen Kendall, David Behr, and Doreen Osborne. N Trust we will have better weather than this! (Membership Secretary photographed on February 2"°) ELHS Newsletter Spring 2009 Obituary Message from John Cable : Mum passed away peacefully on the morning Mary Cable (1939-2009) of Sunday January 25 th at St Raphael's Hospice. Both her children - myself and Juliet We were truly saddened to hear of the death of were there, along with our partners (Cathy and Mary Cable, a stalwart member of the East Bob). As was her husband Ken, who had been London History Society. She regularly there with her all the preceding night. attended the Lectures, and enjoyed the coach outings with the ELHS, seldom missing the The previous Sunday we had a party to opportunity for an excursion. celebrate her 70th birthday. Which was a great success, attended by many of her close friends Mary was very active in the community, and and family - standing room only! She spent did some sterling work for the Ragged School her remaining week in comfort at the hospice, Museum. She was made a Life Member for with no pain. She had been as happy as can be her dedicated years of service when she finally expected, maintaining her sense of humour moved from Stepney. Her other interest was until close to the end. the William Morris Society, where she was an enthusiastic member. Mary taught for many While it is of course very sad to see her go. I'd years at Ben Jonson Primary School in Essian like to remind everyone to remember her as Street Stepney, this was very close to her flat the vibrant and adventurous soul she was. on The Ocean Estate. Mary moved Over the last week or so it has been very from Stepney and lived for several years in uplifting, talking to some of the great variety beautiful Arundle, before moving back to her of friends that she has accumulated throughout flat in the East End. Finally she moved again her life. They have reminded me of what an to Surrey, until her final passing. This was amazingly accomplished woman she was. Not close to The Royal Marsden Hospital where only in the pursuit of her own varied interests, Mary received good care during her illness. from art and design, through architecture to botany and travel - just for the sake of Mary was 70 years old, dying one week after adventure. She has worked hard in support of her birthday. The day before her birthday she charity, principally The Royal Marsden cancer held an open house at her home in Surrey, hospitals, of which she had been a patient. where 40 of her friends and family joined her But also in leaving such a positive - apparently to celebrate her birthday and life, as she knew deep and enduring impression on so many the end was imminent. Mary was in good individuals and families. She will be missed spirits and enjoyed seeing people from various by many. connections of her life and it was a joyous occasion. One of her friends from the East End Muni chose to leave her body to medical contacted as many people who knew Mary research and education. So there will be no from the East End, who now live in many funeral. Eventually her remains will be corners of England and abroad, and everyone cremated and the ashes scattered at the bases sent her a special birthday card. Mary was of two trees: One in London - an apple tree in amazed to think so many old friends and the gardens of the Geffrye museum, which she contacts had remembered her 70th birthday. had planted in remembrance of her parents (Robert and Esther Barker). The other - a She was very active in the Over 50s Youth Pi5hutukawa, which she planted herself (as a Hostel Association and was joined by another large sapling) on our property in New Zealand, East End friend in touring New Zealand in in December 2007. 2008. 3 ELHS Newsletter Spring 2009 East London History Society Programme 2009 Olympic site Thursday 14th May 1009 Since August 2007 we have been recording the construction of the Olympic stadium Open Evening from the one publicly accessible viewpoint (on The Greenway). You can see the images Talking about shops and Trades that on the ELHS web site at: are no more. httn://www.mernick.org.uk/elhs/Stadium/St adium.htma The lectures are held on Thursday evenings at 7.30 pm in the Latimer Congregational Stop Press Church Hall, Ernest Street, El. Ernest Street is between Harford Street and Robert (Bob) Barltrop died on Sunday 26 of Whitehorse Lane, off Mile End Road April. Robert Barltrop who was born in 1922 (Opposite Queen Mary and Westfield wrote a weekly column for The Newham College). The nearest Underground Stations Observer for more than 18 years. From a long are Mile End and Stepney Green. Bus No. line of blacksmiths, his father was a horse 25. fodder dealer, and as a boy Robert used to go all round the East End with him on a horse and Suggestions and ideas for future topics and/or cart, delivering fodder. He was educated at Sir speakers for our Lecture Programme are George Monoux School in Walthamstow and always welcomed. If you can suggest someone served in the R.A.F. during World War Two. or indeed if you would like to give a talk He had been a professional boxer, a labourer, a yourself, please get in touch with David Behr, strip cartoonist, a schoolteacher and a sign- our Programme co-ordinator, either at one of painter – among other things, he said. He our lectures or, alternatively, email our wrote several books The Monument: Story of Chairman Philip Merrick with your comments the Socialist Party of Great Britain (1975), and suggestions. Email: phil@',inernicks.com Jack London: The Man, the Writer, the Rebel (1977), Muvver Tongue with Jim Wolveridge (1980), A Funny Age (Growing up in North East London between the Wars) (1985) and Note from Philip Mernick: Yes Mush: A Cockney Dictionary: The Cockney Language and Its World (2004). Short videos. My attempt with the part of He was married with three grown-up sons Morning Lane, Hackney now under a Tesco (two in the circus and one a policeman), and store was an interesting experiment and the lived in Stratford. offer is still open, although I have to admit I haven't yet finished one for Ernest Street. Google Streets (pretty good cover of Cover picture London) might render the offer redundant William Whiffin photograph of boys but they don't get down all of the back following Poplar Borough Council water cart. streets. Please email your requests to me at Bancroft Road has three different versions of phil(mernicks.com this. For details see page 6. 4 ELI IS Newsletter Spring 2009 PROJECT AND PROPERTY BANCROFT LIBRARY MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCY. Peter is UPDATE - April 2009 already drawing up a short list of suitable conservation architects to specify and Thanks to the continued support of the Leader supervise the works.
Recommended publications
  • On the Margin of Cities. Representation of Urban Space in Contemporary Irish and British Fiction Philippe Laplace, Eric Tabuteau
    Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities. Representation of Urban Space in Contemporary Irish and British Fiction Philippe Laplace, Eric Tabuteau To cite this version: Philippe Laplace, Eric Tabuteau. Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities. Representation of Urban Space in Contemporary Irish and British Fiction. 2003. hal-02320291 HAL Id: hal-02320291 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02320291 Submitted on 14 Nov 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Gérard BREY (University of Franche-Comté, Besançon), Foreword ..... 9 Philippe LAPLACE & Eric TABUTEAU (University of Franche- Comté, Besançon), Cities on the Margin; On the Margin of Cities ......... 11 Richard SKEATES (Open University), "Those vast new wildernesses of glass and brick:" Representing the Contemporary Urban Condition ......... 25 Peter MILES (University of Wales, Lampeter), Road Rage: Urban Trajectories and the Working Class ............................................................ 43 Tim WOODS (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), Re-Enchanting the City: Sites and Non-Sites in Urban Fiction ................................................ 63 Eric TABUTEAU (University of Franche-Comté, Besançon), Marginally Correct: Zadie Smith's White Teeth and Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners ....................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Language and Conflict in English Literature from Gaskell to Tressell
    ARTICULATING CLASS: LANGUAGE AND CONFLICT IN ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM GASKELL TO TRESSELL Timothy John James University of Cape Town Thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN JANUARY 1992 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town ABSTRACT ARTICULATING CLASS: LANGUAGE AND CONFLICT IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, FROM GASKELL TO TRESSELL Concentrating on English literary texts written between the 1830s and 1914 and which have the working class as their central focus, the thesis examines various ways in which class conflict inheres within the textual language, particularly as far as the representation of working-class speech is concerned. The study is made largely within V. N. Voloshinov's understanding of language. Chapter 1 examines the social role of "standard English" (including accent) and its relationship to forms of English stigmatised as inadequate, and argues that the phoneticisation of working-class speech in novels like those of William Pett Ridge is to indicate its inadequacy within a situation where use of the "standard language" is regarded as a mark of all kinds of superiority, and where the language of narrative prose has, essentially, the "accent" of "standard English". The periodisation of the thesis is discussed: the "industrial reformist" novels of the Chartist years and the "slum literature" of the 1880s and '90s were bourgeois responses to working-class struggle.
    [Show full text]
  • THE IMAGINATION of CLASS Bivona Fm 3Rd.Qxd 2/9/2006 4:56 PM Page Ii Bivona Fm 3Rd.Qxd 2/9/2006 4:56 PM Page Iii
    Bivona_fm_3rd.qxd 2/9/2006 4:56 PM Page i THE IMAGINATION OF CLASS Bivona_fm_3rd.qxd 2/9/2006 4:56 PM Page ii Bivona_fm_3rd.qxd 2/9/2006 4:56 PM Page iii THE IMAGINATION OF CLASS Masculinity and the Victorian Urban Poor Dan Bivona and Roger B. Henkle The Ohio State University Press Columbus Bivona_fm_3rd.qxd 2/9/2006 4:56 PM Page iv Copyright © 2006 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bivona, Daniel. The imagination of class : masculinity and the Victorian urban poor / Dan Bivona, Roger B. Henkle. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8142-1019-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8142-9096-5 (cd-rom) 1. English prose literature—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Urban poor—Great Britain—History—19th century. 3. Social classes in literature. 4. Masculinity in lit- erature. 5. Sex role in literature. 6. Poverty in literature. 7. Poor in literature. I. Henkle, Roger B. II. Title. PR878.P66B58 2006 828’.80809352624—dc22 2005030683 Cover design by Dan O’Dair. Text design and typesetting by Jennifer Shoffey Forsythe. Printed by Thomson Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Bivona_fm_3rd.qxd 2/9/2006 4:56 PM Page v In Memory of Roger B. Henkle 1937–1991 Bivona_fm_3rd.qxd 2/9/2006 4:56 PM Page vi Bivona_fm_3rd.qxd 2/9/2006 4:56 PM Page vii - CONTENTS - Preface ix Foreword by
    [Show full text]
  • Arthur Morrison and the East End
    Arthur Morrison and the East End This, the first critical biography of Arthur Morrison (1863–1945), presents his East End writing as the counter-myth to the cultural pro- duction of the East End in late-Victorian realism. Morrison’s works, par- ticularly Tales of Mean Streets (1894) and A Child of the Jago (1896), are often discussed as epitomes of slum fictions of the 1890s as well as prime examples of nineteenth-century realism, but their complex contempo- rary reception reveals the intricate paradoxes involved in representing the turn-of-the-century city. Arthur Morrison and the East End examines how an understand- ing of the East End in the Victorian cultural imagination operates in Morrison’s own writing. Engaging with the contemporary vogue for slum fiction, Morrison redressed accounts written by outsiders, positioning himself as uniquely knowledgeable about a place considered unknow- able. His work provides a vigorous challenge to the fictionalised East End created by his predecessors, while also paying homage to Charles Dickens, George Gissing, Walter Besant and Guy de Maupassant. Ex- amining the London sites which Morrison lived in and wrote about, this book is an excursion not into the Victorian East End, but into the fictions constructed around it. Eliza Cubitt received her BA and MA from King’s College London and was awarded a PhD from University College London (UCL) in 2016. She has published work on Morrison, W. Somerset Maugham and Mar garet Harkness. She has taught at UCL and at Universität Tübingen, Germany. Since 2014, she has been a committee member of the Literary London Society.
    [Show full text]
  • Arthur Morrison, the 'Jago', and the Realist
    ARTHUR MORRISON, THE ‘JAGO’, AND THE REALIST REPRESENTATION OF PLACE Submitted in Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy UCL Department of English Language and Literature Eliza Cubitt 2015 ABSTRACT In vitriolic exchanges with the critic H.D. Traill, Arthur Morrison (1863-1945) argued that the term ‘realist’ was impossible to define and must be innately subjective. Traill asserted that Morrison’s A Child of the Jago (1896) was a failure of realism, conjuring a place that ‘never did and never could exist.’ And yet, by 1900, the East End slum fictionalised in Morrison’s novel had been supplanted by the realist mythology of his account: ‘Jago’ had become, and remains, an accepted term to describe the real historical slum, the Nichol. This thesis examines Morrison’s contribution to the late-Victorian realist representation of the urban place. It responds to recent renewed interest about realism in literary studies, and to revived debates surrounding marginal writers of urban literature. Opening with a biographical study, I investigate Morrison’s fraught but intimate lifelong relationship with the East End. Morrison’s unadorned prose represents the late-Victorian East End as a site of absolute ordinariness rather than absolute poverty. Eschewing the views of outsiders, Morrison re- placed the East End. Since the formation of The Arthur Morrison Society in 2007, Morrison has increasingly been the subject of critical examination. Studies have so frequently focused on evaluating the reality behind Morrison’s fiction that his significance to late-nineteenth century “New Realism” and the debates surrounding it has been overlooked. This thesis redresses this gap, and states that Morrison’s work signifies an artistic and temporal boundary of realism.
    [Show full text]
  • Loughton and District Historical Society
    LOUGHTON AND DISTRICT HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER 197 MARCH–APRIL 2013 Price 40p, free to members www.loughtonhistoricalsociety.org.uk Golden Jubilee: 50th Season Grand Commuters and Forest for the People The Society has just published Grand Commuters: Buckhurst Hill and its Leading Families 1860–1940, by Lynn Haseldine Jones. Very little has been written about Buckhurst Hill for the best part of 50 years. From time to time, articles have appeared in this Newsletter and in local papers, but this is the first time the LDHS has been able to offer a book on any aspect of Buckhurst Hill’s history. Lynn Haseldine Jones has spent some years researching the families who effectively ran Buckhurst Hill. They were major employers in the town, they were influential in politics and religion locally, and their influence can be discerned even today. Many interesting families lived in the prosperous developing suburb of Buckhurst Hill in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The golden age of the suburb began with the coming of the railway in 1856, which encouraged men of business to set up homes here for their often large families. Many were philanthropists, using their wealth and position to assist the community, either in politics or religion. The Buxtons and the Linders were politically Liberals; the Powells were supporters of the Conservative Party. The Powells, Buxtons and Howards were Anglicans; the Linders and the Westhorps were keen Congregationalists. Buckhurst Hill still benefits from their charity and evidence of their activities in the Church of St John the Baptist, Buckhurst Hill, and St James’s United Reformed (formerly the Congregational) Church can be seen to this day.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Flashes from the Slums': Aesthetics and Social Justice in Arthur Morrison
    ‘Flashes from the Slums’: Aesthetics and Social Justice in Arthur Morrison Audrey Murfin (Sam Houston State University, USA) The Literary London Journal, Volume 11 Number 1 (Spring 2014) Abstract: ‘“Flashes from the Slums”: Aesthetics and Social Justice in Arthur Morrison’ is a reappraisal of the late-Victorian slum writer Arthur Morrison. This article places Morrison in conversation with both Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1838) and with late 19th-century photography, most notably that of American Jacob Riis. Attention to the formal aspects of Morrison’s work, in particular the aesthetic influence of flash photography, reveals that Morrison’s politics are more progressive than has been seen to date. Keywords: Arthur Morrison, A Child of the Jago, flash photography, Jacob Riis, Oliver Twist The novels of late-Victorian slum novelist Arthur Morrison have been under- appreciated due in large part to critical assessments that his contempt for his characters is politically uncomfortable. Critics in Morrison’s own time felt that he was unsympathetic to his subjects. This misconception has persisted to the present day, with current critics reading his novels as embarrassing condemnations of the degenerate lower classes. This paper is largely an apology for Morrison, though I by no means want to suggest that Morrison’s politics were impeccable. Rather, attention to the formal aspects of his work reveals a deep desire to alleviate and ameliorate the conditions of the poorest in society, though at times obstructed by his own conflicts and despair. We can arrive at a more accurate reading of the intersection between Morrison’s artistic views and his politics through an examination of two predominant influences: The Literary London Journal, 11:1 (Spring 2014): 4 from the past, the socially progressive writings of Charles Dickens, and contemporaneously, the emerging technologies of urban photography.
    [Show full text]
  • Detectives and Spies, 1880 - 1920
    ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ARTS, LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCES OPERATING OUTSIDE THE LAW: DETECTIVES AND SPIES, 1880 - 1920. KATE MORRISON A thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements of Anglia Ruskin University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature Submitted: January 2017. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor John Gardner for his invaluable intellectual advice, encouragement and support throughout the course of my research. His positive and informed engagement with a subject I found particularly stimulating gave me the confidence to pursue my research and expand the horizons of my study with new perspectives, giving me fresh ideas in the shaping of my research. I have benefitted from the assistance of Professor Rohan McWilliam, whose historical insights and vast knowledge of the literature within the field of crime fiction has been of immense value for which I am extremely grateful. I would also like to acknowledge my fellow research candidates, Steven White and Kirsty Harris who provided friendship and support in many ways along the journey to completion. i ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT FACULTY OF ARTS, LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY OPERATING OUTSIDE THE LAW: DETECTIVES AND SPIES, 1880 - 1920. KATE MORRISON January 2017. As a popular fiction hero Sherlock Holmes, embodies a mythical champion of enduring appeal, confirmed in his recent rebranding as defender of the oppressed for the twenty first century in a television series geared for the modern age. Stepping outside the boundaries of the law, he achieves an individualised form of justice superior to that of the judicial system in the eyes of his readers, yet, as I argue in this study, his long list of criminal offences places him firmly in the realms of criminality.
    [Show full text]
  • Final Thesis Hunt.Pdf
    UNDRESSING READERLY ANXIETIES: A STUDY OF CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES IN SHORT CRIME FICTION 1841-1911 by Alyson Hunt Canterbury Christ Church University Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 Contents Abstract 1 Acknowledgements 2 Introduction 3 Chapter One: Whodunnit? Anxieties of Criminal Identification 31 Chapter Two: Anxieties of Sex and the Body 77 Chapter Three: Anxieties of the Imagination - Fashioning the 122 Fictional Female Detective Chapter Four: Anxieties of Fashionable Modernity in Fin de 177 Siècle Serialised Crime Fiction Chapter Five: Anxieties of Crime - Strands, Clues and Narrative Threads 221 Conclusion 265 Works Cited 275 Alyson Hunt 1 Abstract Dress changes the way that we, as readers, perceive and interpret characters within fiction because of the hugely subjective way that it influences individuals. We all have some experiences and opinions of dress because we have all been exposed to it in some way, whether consciously or unconsciously, and therefore the way that we read dress is fraught with ambiguity because our own experiences are so varied. Clothing functions as an indicator of gender, class, identity, aesthetic taste, fashion and social and economic success. It can sexualise and desexualise, entice and repel, reveal and conceal, lead and mislead and thus functions as a useful tool for writers to influence readers. Despite the instability of dress as a stable sign, writers make assumptions that readers understand what is being implied by dress and make conscious decisions to describe dress within their narratives. In crime fiction, clothing is particularly useful because it allows hiding in plain sight: as an item so mundane it is barely noticed by the reader, yet it can function as compelling clue to reveal the identity of a criminal.
    [Show full text]
  • Arthur Morrison, Criminality, and Late-Victorian Maritime Subculture Diana Maltz
    Arthur Morrison, Criminality, and Late-Victorian Maritime Subculture Diana Maltz I Introduction Modern critics commonly classify Arthur Morrison as an East End novelist. Following the vital scholarship of Peter J. Keating in the 1970s, they associate Morrison with other 1890s slum writers who employed unconventional spelling and punctuation to evoke Cockney speech: Henry Nevinson, Rudyard Kipling, W. Somerset Maugham, William Pett Ridge, Edwin Pugh, and Clarence Rook.1 For sure, Morrison was a native of Poplar, and lived much of his childhood in Grundy Street, just above the East India Dock Road. But the idiosyncratic identities of districts like the docks have been obscured by the repeated use by cultural historians of the generalizing phrase ‘East End’. In fact, as this essay explores, it was this close proximity to the wharves in particular that provided a key influence in Morrison’s other fictions. A way of addressing Morrison’s own interest in the specificity of locality is to examine his treatment of urban geography and consciousness of emerging methods of ethnography. Morrison prefaces his most well-known novel A Child of the Jago (1896) with a graphic map, and his frequent allusions to the ‘posties’ bounding the slum convey the district’s claustrophobic containment.2 As old Mr Beveridge tells the slum boy Dicky, one can only escape from the Jago by way of ‘gaol, the gallows, and the High Mob’ (pp. 51, 96). Dicky’s final revelation to Reverend Sturt that there is ‘’nother way out’ of the Jago points to his own ‘chiving’ [knifing] — and transcendent escape — at the hands of his arch-enemy Bobby Roper (p.
    [Show full text]
  • The Great Hiatus and the Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (My Paper) Page 1 of 12
    Notes on presentation for Nashville Scholars of Nashville The Great Hiatus and the Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (My Paper) Page 1 of 12 Meanwhile, During the Hiatus: Early Rivals of Sherlock Holmes By Drew R. Thomas What is the “Great Hiatus?” I want to make a few comments to put this discussion in context. Dorothy L. Sayers once wrote, “In 1887 A Study in Scarlet was flung like a bombshell into the field of detective fiction, to be followed within a few short and brilliant years by the marvelous series of Sherlock Holmes short stories. The effect was electric.” [Dorothy L. Sayers, The Omnibus of Crime (New York: Garden City Pub. Co., 1929), p.24.] Howard Haycraft, who wrote the first book-length history of the detective story (Murder for Pleasure), responded, “It may have been flung like a bombshell, but it didn’t explode.” [Howard Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure (), p. ] Doyle had trouble finding a publisher, and the one who finally bought it paid him £25—a paltry sum even in those days. And the rights never returned to Doyle tried unsuccessfully for the rest of his life to get the rights back. So that was it for Sherlock Holmes—or it would have been if an American editor from Lippincott’s magazine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—Joseph Marshall Stoddart— had not sailed across the Atlantic to bring together and encourage two young writers in whom he believed. Notes on presentation for Nashville Scholars of Nashville The Great Hiatus and the Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (My Paper) Page 2 of 12 Out of this encouragement, Doyle produced his second Holmes novel—The Sign of Four— (or The Sign of the Four, depending on which edition you have).
    [Show full text]
  • Nation, Ethnicity, and the Geography of British Fiction, 1880-1940
    Nation, Ethnicity, and the Geography of British Fiction, 1880-1940 Elizabeth F. Evans and Matthew Wilkens 07.13.18 Peer-Reviewed By: Stephen Ross Clusters: Race, Geography Article DOI: 10.22148/16.024 Dataverse DOI: 10.7910/10.7910/DVN/VW13KS Journal ISSN: 2371-4549 Cite: Elizabeth F. Evans and Matthew Wilkens, “Nation, Ethnicity, and the Geography of British Fiction, 1880-1940,” Cultural Analytics July 13, 2018. 10.22148/16.024 Among the most pressing problems in modernist literary studies are those re- lated to Britain’s engagement with the wider world under empire and to its own rapidly evolving urban spaces in the years before the Second World War.1 In both cases, the literary-geographic imagination—or unconscious—of the period between 1880 and 1940 can help to shed light on how texts by British and British- aligned writers of the era understood these issues and how they evolved over 1Special thanks to David Killingray, who assisted with research on foreign writers in Britain, and to Kara Mlynski, Patrick Evans, John Villaflor, Megan Kollitz, Dr. Melissa Dinsman, and Erik-John Fuhrer, who helped to prepare the corpora. Any errors are our own. The present work is an outcome of the Textual Geographies project, with funding support from the American Council of Learned Soci- eties, the National Endowment for the Humanities (#HK-250673-16 to Wilkens), and the University of Notre Dame. We gratefully acknowledge their assistance. Guangchen Ruan (Indiana University Data to Insight Center) assisted with large-scale named entity recognition over the full HathiTrust corpus, on which data this essay depends.
    [Show full text]