DOCSLIB.ORG

Journal of Stevenson Studies Volume 9

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Journal of Stevenson Studies Volume 9 Journal of Stevenson Studies Volume 9 JSS9Book.indb 1 17/10/2012 23:06 ii Journal of Stevenson Studies JSS9Book.indb 2 17/10/2012 23:06 Journal of Stevenson Studies iii Editors Professor Linda Dryden Professor Emeritus Centre for Literature and Roderick Watson Writing English Studies School of Arts and Creative University of Stirling Industries Stirling Napier University FK9 4LA Craighouse Scotland Edinburgh Tel: 01786 467500 EH10 5LG Email: [email protected] Scotland Tel: 0131 455 6128 Email: [email protected] Contributions to volume 10 are warmly invited and should be sent to either of the editors listed above. The text should be submitted in MS WORD files in MHRA format. All contributions are subject to review by members of the Editorial Board. Published by The Centre for Scottish Studies University of Stirling © The contributors 2012 ISSN: 1744-3857 Printed and bound in the UK by Antony Rowe Ltd. Chippenhan, Wiltshire. JSS9Book.indb 3 17/10/2012 23:06 iv Journal of Stevenson Studies Editorial Board Professor Richard Ambrosini Professor Gordon Hirsch Universita’ di Roma Tre Department of English Rome University of Minnesota Professor Stephen Arata Professor Katherine Linehan School of English Department of English University of Virginia Oberlin College Dr Hilary Beattie Ohio Department of Psychiatry Professor Barry Menikoff Columbia University Department of English Professor Oliver Buckton University of Hawaii at Manoa School of English Professor Glenda Norquay Florida Atlantic University Department of English and Cultural History Dr Jenni Calder Liverpool John Moores National Museum of Scotland University Professor Linda Dryden School of Arts and Creative Professor Marshall Walker Industries Department of English Edinburgh Napier University The University of Waikato Professor Richard Dury Professor Roderick Watson University of Bergamo Department of English Studies University of Stirling (Consultant Editor) Dr Penny Fielding Department of English University of Edinburgh JSS9Book.indb 4 17/10/2012 23:06 Journal of Stevenson Studies v Contents Editorial.................................................................................. 1 Robert-Louis Abrahamson & Richard Dury Stevenson the essayist ..............................................................3 Robert-Louis Abrahamson ‘The Essays must fall from me’: an outline of Stevenson’s career as an essayist .................................................................9 Richard Dury Stevenson’s essays: language and style ..................................43 Richard J. Hill Stevenson in the Magazine of Art ..........................................93 Alex Thomson Familiar style in Memories and Portraits ............................119 Dewi Evans Stevenson in Scribner’s: ethics and romance in the literary marketplace ............................................................. 149 Neil Macara Brown Had their day: Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Popular Authors’ ...................................................................171 Marie Léger-St-Jean ‘Long for the penny number and weekly woodcut’: Stevenson on reading and writing popular romance ...........207 Jennifer Hayward ‘The Foreigner at Home’: the travel essays of Robert Louis Stevenson ........................................................233 Andrew Robson Stevenson as sympathetic essayist ....................................... 271 Timothy S. Hayes ‘Not so childish as it seems’: Stevenson’s interrogation of childishness in the South Seas ......................................... 291 JSS9Book.indb 5 17/10/2012 23:06 vi Journal of Stevenson Studies Lesley Graham The reception of Stevenson’s essays..................................... 313 Uncollected Stevenson (3) ‘Books and Reading. No 2. ...................................................343 Richard Dury, Notes on ‘Books and Reading. .....................346 Contributors ......................................................................355 Notes and Queries............................................................ 361 Journal Notes ....................................................................363 JSS9Book.indb 6 17/10/2012 23:06 Journal of Stevenson Studies 1 Editorial Our thanks go to Robert-Louis Abrahamson and Richard Dury who have been the guest editors of this special issue of the Journal of Stevenson Studies, which is entirely dedicated to Stevenson’s work as an essayist. As they say in their introduction they are both involved in editing volumes dealing with Stevenson’s essays for the New Edinburgh Edition of his works, and this project will undoubtedly bring much-needed attention to the essays along with new and rewarding critical insights. The present issue of the journal is already an example of just how much is to be gained by a renewed critical focus on the essays, and we are indebted to Dury and Abrahamson for this initiative. In fact, with this in mind, we would like to encourage Stevenson scholars to consider taking on, or proposing guest editorships in their turn, if there is a particular theme in Stevenson studies that they would wish to explore in any future dedicated issue. On the international front, professor Roslyn Jolly has posted an invitation for papers for the 7th biennial International Stevenson Conference, which will be held at the University of New South Wales from 8th to 10th July 2013. It seems likely that volume 11 of the Journal will contain papers from this event, continuing a tradition that goes back to the first such conference in Stirling in the year 2000. The topic for the 2013 conference will be ‘Stevenson, Time and History’. Readers should know that the Journal of Stevenson Studies is now available online through EBSCO, starting with volume 8. Previous numbers will still be available online (and current issues after two years) on the Stevenson website located at Napier University. Nevertheless, we would still like to encourage readers to place an order at their own institution for hard copy versions of the Journal. Finally, it is with great pleasure that we announce that Edinburgh Napier University has taken possession of the bulk of JSS9Book.indb 1 17/10/2012 23:06 2 Journal of Stevenson Studies the Ernest Mehew collection, with other items being lodged at the National Library of Scotland. For over sixty years Ernest Mehew collected a huge library of Stevensonia, some which may be very rare. This now amounts to around 2000 books and journals as well as copies of letters and other materials. In due course the collection will be housed in a special room, dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson, within Edinburgh Napier’s Merchiston Library. Eventually a plaque for the room will acknowledge the tireless work of Ernest Mehew and his wife, Joyce, in preserving these items for posterity. It is anticipated that the Edinburgh Napier collection will be available to scholars in the autumn of 2013, once funding has been secured for the housing and curating of the bequest. Linda Dryden would especially like to thank Nick Rankin and the Ernest Mehew Estate for the enormous effort that went into ensuring that this collection was finally delivered in its entirety to Edinburgh. It is entirely fitting that Mehew’s bequest will now be permanently situated in the city of Stevenson’s birth. Roderick Watson and Linda Dryden JSS9Book.indb 2 17/10/2012 23:06 Journal of Stevenson Studies 3 Stevenson the essayist Robert-Louis Abrahamson Richard Dury The contributions to this issue of the Journal of Stevenson Studies all address some aspect of Stevenson’s essays. As guest editors, along with Lesley Graham and Alex Thomson, we are editing Stevenson’s essays in five volumes for the New Edinburgh Edition. The four of us have been working together on the pro- ject for the last few years, discussing the essays with others in the ‘ReadingRLS’ internet forum and speaking with each other often several times a week via Skype. Volume 1, prepared by Abrahamson, will present the 1881 text of Virginibus Puerisque; Volume 2, prepared by Abrahamson and Dury, will contain Familiar Studies of Men and Books; Volume 3, by Thomson, Memories and Portraits; Volume 4, by Dury, Uncollected Essays, 1871-80; Volume 5, Graham, Uncollected Essays 1881-94. In the context of this work, it made sense to propose a whole issue of the JSS to the essays, both to assess what aspects of Stevenson’s essays are currently engaging the attention of scholars and critics and to open up new areas of discussion. The call for papers brought forth a good crop of proposals, eleven of which survived to this publication. These gave us an immediate picture of current interests: no proposal concentrated on the 1870s essays (representing almost exactly half of Stevenson’s 100-odd published essays) and no fewer than three proposals focussed on one essay, ‘Popular Authors’ (one of the proposers was persuaded to widen his approach and the two others that remain are interestingly complementary). This gives us a hint of current interest in non-canonical ‘popular’ texts and suggests an uneasiness among literary critics as to how to approach the genre. Two of the pieces included in this issue, however, offer some clues as to how to talk about essays in their own right: Thomson JSS9Book.indb 3 17/10/2012 23:06 4 Journal of Stevenson Studies focusses on the interesting self-reflexivity of the familiar essayist and Dury looks at how to read the essay as performance. The relative blindness to the 1870s essays (which, however, are dealt with at length on the overview contributions of the
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Perceptions of the Murderess in London and Paris, 1674-1789
    Perceptions of the Murderess in London and Paris, 1674-1789 Anna Clare Jenkin A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sheffield Faculty of Arts and Humanities Department of History August, 2015 Thesis Summary This project is a comparative study of print about women accused of murder in eighteenth-century London and Paris. While gender played an important role in determining how such women were perceived, in that female killers stimulated forms of social introspection that male murderers did not, this thesis demonstrates that a wider variety of factors affected the kinds of women who stimulated concern among the London and Parisian populace. Most importantly, only eleven women accused of murder stimulated high levels of print reaction in the period, implying that aspects beyond their gender were behind such reactions. Through focus on the print material and judicial records of these eleven high-profile murderesses, including ballads, pamphlets, images, novels, legal tracts and printed correspondence, this thesis will expose a number of contemporary concerns present in eighteenth-century London and Paris. In both cities, perceptions of the crime of female- perpetrated murder reflected emerging concerns about the impact of urbanisation on social structures and women’s roles, alongside shifting European-wide ideas of gender difference. Murderous women’s occupations as midwives, servants, aristocrats and household managers were used to explore broader concerns about emerging sites of female independence. Discussion of cases that involved adultery, male sociability and court intrigue were used to reveal the perceived corrupting effects of urban society.
    [Show full text]
  • Robin Hood the Brute: Representations of The
    Law, Crime and History (2016) 2 ROBIN HOOD THE BRUTE: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE OUTLAW IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CRIMINAL BIOGRAPHY Stephen Basdeo1 Abstract Eighteenth century criminal biography is a topic that has been explored at length by both crime historians such as Andrea McKenzie and Richard Ward, as well as literary scholars such as Lincoln B. Faller and Hal Gladfelder. Much of these researchers’ work, however, has focused upon the representation of seventeenth and eighteenth century criminals within these narratives. In contrast, this article explores how England’s most famous medieval criminal, Robin Hood, is represented. By giving a commentary upon eighteenth century Robin Hood narratives, this article shows how, at a time of public anxiety surrounding crime, people were less willing to believe in the myth of a good outlaw. Keywords: eighteenth century, criminal biography, Robin Hood, outlaws, Alexander Smith, Charles Johnson, medievalism Introduction Until the 1980s Robin Hood scholarship tended to focus upon the five extant medieval texts such as Robin Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and the Potter, Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, and A Gest of Robyn Hode (c.1450), as well as attempts to identify a historical outlaw.2 It was only with the work of Stephen Knight that scholarship moved away from trying to identify a real outlaw as things took a ‘literary turn’. With Knight’s work also the post- medieval Robin Hood tradition became a significant area of scholarly enquiry. His recent texts have mapped the various influences at work upon successive interpretations of the legend and how it slowly became gentrified and ‘safe’ as successive authors gradually ‘robbed’ Robin of any subversive traits.3 Whilst Knight’s research on Robin Hood is comprehensive, one genre of literature that he has not as yet examined in detail is eighteenth century criminal biography.
    [Show full text]
  • Representations of the Criminal in Eighteen-Century England Daniel Gonzalez Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2002 The culture of crime: representations of the criminal in eighteen-century England Daniel Gonzalez Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Gonzalez, Daniel, "The culture of crime: representations of the criminal in eighteen-century England" (2002). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 112. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/112 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. THE CULTURE OF CRIME: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CRIMINAL IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English By Daniel Gonzalez B.A., Bucknell University, 1992 M.A., McNeese State University, 1995 M.F.A., McNeese State University, 1995 May 2002 Acknowledgments First, I owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to my dissertation director, Dr. Jim Borck, for his continuing encouragement and friendship during this lengthy process. Dr. Elsie Michie has also been a strong voice of encouragement, and without the guidance and support of both of these mentors, this dissertation would never have been completed. When I grow up to be a professor, I want to be just like them; they have helped me more than either can ever know.
    [Show full text]
  • Crime, Deviance, and the Social Discovery of Moral Panic In
    UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF HUMANITIES History Volume 1 of 1 Crime, Deviance, and the Social Discovery of Moral Panic in Eighteenth Century London, 1712-1790 by Christopher Thomas Hamerton Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2016 ABSTRACT This thesis utilises the theoretical device of Folk Devils and Moral Panics, instigated by Stanley Cohen and developed by Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, to explore the discovery of, and social response to, crime and deviance in eighteenth- century London. The thesis argues that London and its media in the eighteenth- century can be identified as the initiating historical site for what might now be termed public order moral panics. The scholarly foundation for this hypothesis is provided by two extensively researched chapters which evaluate and contextualise the historiography of public opinion and media alongside the unique character and power located within the burgeoning metropolis. This foundation is followed by a trio of supportive case studies, which examine and inform on novel historical episodes of social deviance and criminality. These episodes are selected to replicate a sequence of observable folk devils within Cohen’s original typology – youth violence, substance abuse, and predatory sex offending. Which are transposed historically as the Mohocks in 1712, Madam Geneva between 1720-1751, and the London Monster in 1790. Taken together, these three episodes provide historical lineage of moral panic which traverses much of the eighteenth-century, allowing for social change, and points of convergence and divergence, to be observed. Furthermore, these discrete episodes of moral panic are used to reveal the social problems of the eighteenth-century capital that informed the control narratives that followed.
    [Show full text]
  • THE NEWGATE CALENDAR Edited by Donal Ó Danachair Volume 2
    THE NEWGATE CALENDAR Edited by Donal Ó Danachair Volume 2 Published by the Ex-classics Project, 2009 http://www.exclassics.com Public Domain -1- THE NEWGATE CALENDAR Old Newgate Prison -2- VOLUME 2 CONTENTS RICHARD THORNHILL, ESQ Convicted of Manslaughter on 18th of May, 1711, for killing Sir Cholmondeley Deering in a Duel................................................................10 TOM GERRARD Taught a Dog to pick Pockets, and was executed for Housebreaking at Tyburn in August, 1711 ..................................................................12 WILL MAW Having committed a Robbery, Maw ordered his Wife to organise a Mock Funeral, so that People should think he was dead. He was executed at Tyburn in October 1711 ...........................................................................................................14 DAVY MORGAN Executed at Presteigne in April, 1712, for murdering Edward Williams .......................................................................................................................15 ELIZABETH MASON Executed for the murder of her godmother, 18th June, 1712 16 ELIZABETH CHIVERS Executed for the murder of her bastard child, 1st August, 1712..............................................................................................................................17 COLONEL JOHN HAMILTON Convicted of Manslaughter, 11th of September, 1712, as Second in a Duel between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mahon..............19 RICHARD TOWN Executed at Tyburn, December 23, 1712, for Fraudulent Bankruptcy
    [Show full text]
  • UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Outlaws, Outcasts, and Criminals of the British Novel, 1800-1850 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7zd212gr Author Baldwin, Ruth Elizabeth Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Outlaws, Outcasts, and Criminals of the British Novel, 1800-1850 By Ruth Elizabeth Baldwin A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Ian Duncan, Chair Professor Janet Sorensen Professor David Lieberman Spring 2013 Abstract Outlaws, Outcasts, and Criminals of the British Novel, 1800-1850 By Ruth Elizabeth Baldwin Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Berkeley Professor Ian Duncan, Chair “Outlaws, Outcasts, and Criminals” provides a new account of the nineteenth-century historical novel by using the category of outlawry to illuminate the transitional period between Romantic and Victorian literary regimes. I argue that any account of the late eighteenth- and nineteenth- century novel must theorize the crucial link between outlawry and the novel form. Far from being a product of history, crime in these novels activates the category of history on which they depend. As the novel develops, the link between crime and history becomes an essential structural part of the genre. This recognition enables me to forge new and surprising connections between the Romantic outlaw as instituted by Schiller’s The Robbers, the outlaw anti-heroes of Walter Scott’s historical novels, the historical criminals of W.H.
    [Show full text]
  • Jailbreakers, Villains, and Vampires: Representations of Criminality in Early-Victorian Popular Texts
    Syracuse University SURFACE English - Dissertations College of Arts and Sciences 5-2013 Jailbreakers, Villains, and Vampires: Representations of Criminality in Early-Victorian Popular Texts Elizabeth Fay Stearns Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/eng_etd Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Stearns, Elizabeth Fay, "Jailbreakers, Villains, and Vampires: Representations of Criminality in Early- Victorian Popular Texts" (2013). English - Dissertations. 63. https://surface.syr.edu/eng_etd/63 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in English - Dissertations by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT In Jailbreakers, Villains, and Vampires: Representations of Criminality in Early- Victorian Popular Texts, I analyze moments of discursive dissonance that emerge through the juxtaposition of early-Victorian theories of criminality and representations of criminals in popular culture. In the 1830s and 1840s in England, methods for managing criminals underwent a series of revisions that corresponded to shifts in prevailing theories about the nature and course of criminal behavior. Assumptions that criminality was volitional, or that it originated in an individual’s deficient self-discipline, gradually shifted into perceptions that criminality was pathological, and that malefactors were naturally brutish and incorrigible. Predominant conceptions of criminality as stemming from character flaws or biological predispositions influenced depictions of criminals in a variety of Victorian popular texts including novels, plays, and, importantly, “penny bloods,” which were cheap publications marketed to lower-class readers. Such popular lower-class texts are rife with criminals and crimes yet their representations of criminality remain understudied.
    [Show full text]
  • Stop Thief !’ Apprehended the Suspect
    001-Hanging Court-cpp 4/10/06 06:06 Page 1 1 Stop Thief! Eighteenth-century Britain did not have a police force. The very word ‘police’ in its modern sense of an organised body of state officials did not emerge until the very end of the century. When Britons contemplated the possibility of creating such a force, it appeared to them to smack of arbitrary and tyrannical government of the sort they denigrated in France and which seemed ill suited to a Britain that endlessly congratulated itself on its liberty and balanced constitution. The price of this freedom was the expectation that individual Britons themselves would play a significant role in enforc- ing the law and detecting crime: legally, anyone who witnessed a serious crime in progress or who heard the cry of ‘murder!’ or ‘stop thief!’, was, as already observed, obliged to join in the pursuit. The parish constables and night watchmen, who were typically part-time, unpaid local officials, gener- ally restricted their activities to arresting suspects once they had been captured by victims or the wider public. As a result, at the heart of eighteenth-century justice was a kind of vigilantism that ensured a relatively high proportion of men and women found themselves involved in the enforcement of the law. It also ensured that many arrests were mistaken or malicious. Some crimes were unlikely to be prosecuted in this ‘do-it-yourself ’ manner. Those who committed victimless offences, including gambling, sodomy, prostitution, profane swearing and cursing and vagrancy (all considered crimes at this time) were prosecuted differently and more erratically.
    [Show full text]
  • Narratives of Crime and Disorder: Representations of Robbery and Burglary in the London Press, 1780-1830
    Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Narratives of Crime and Disorder: Representations of Robbery and Burglary in the London Press, 1780-1830 Thesis How to cite: Hopps, Robert Stephen (2017). Narratives of Crime and Disorder: Representations of Robbery and Burglary in the London Press, 1780-1830. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2017 The Author https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21954/ou.ro.0000ce4e Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk Narratives of Crime and Disorder: Representations of Robbery and Burglary in the London Press, 1780-1830 Robert Hopps Department of History Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The Open University, March 2017. ABSTRACT This thesis is a qualitative and quantitative study of crime and justice reportage of several London newspapers during two periods – the 1780s and the early nineteenth century focusing on two felonies: highway robbery and burglary, two of the most feared crimes at that time and used by contemporaries to assess the moral health of the capital. The press’s reliance on unsolved crime reports provide a more realistic guide to the extent and nature of offending than court records.
    [Show full text]
  • 2016, the Author. This Is an Open Access Article, Distributed Under the Terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) Basdeo, S
    © 2016, The Author. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY) Basdeo, S. (2016) Robin Hood the Brute: Representations of the Outlaw in Eighteenth Century Criminal Biography. Law, Crime and History, 6(2), Pp.54-70. Law, Crime and History (2016) 2 ROBIN HOOD THE BRUTE: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE OUTLAW IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CRIMINAL BIOGRAPHY Stephen Basdeo1 Abstract Eighteenth century criminal biography is a topic that has been explored at length by both crime historians such as Andrea McKenzie and Richard Ward, as well as literary scholars such as Lincoln B. Faller and Hal Gladfelder. Much of these researchers’ work, however, has focused upon the representation of seventeenth and eighteenth century criminals within these narratives. In contrast, this article explores how England’s most famous medieval criminal, Robin Hood, is represented. By giving a commentary upon eighteenth century Robin Hood narratives, this article shows how, at a time of public anxiety surrounding crime, people were less willing to believe in the myth of a good outlaw. Keywords: eighteenth century, criminal biography, Robin Hood, outlaws, Alexander Smith, Charles Johnson, medievalism Introduction Until the 1980s Robin Hood scholarship tended to focus upon the five extant medieval texts such as Robin Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and the Potter, Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, and A Gest of Robyn Hode (c.1450), as well as attempts to identify a historical outlaw.2 It was only with the work of Stephen Knight that scholarship moved away from trying to identify a real outlaw as things took a ‘literary turn’.
    [Show full text]
  • Outlaws, Outcasts, and Criminals of the British Novel, 1800-1850 By
    Outlaws, Outcasts, and Criminals of the British Novel, 1800-1850 By Ruth Elizabeth Baldwin A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Ian Duncan, Chair Professor Janet Sorensen Professor David Lieberman Spring 2013 Abstract Outlaws, Outcasts, and Criminals of the British Novel, 1800-1850 By Ruth Elizabeth Baldwin Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Berkeley Professor Ian Duncan, Chair “Outlaws, Outcasts, and Criminals” provides a new account of the nineteenth-century historical novel by using the category of outlawry to illuminate the transitional period between Romantic and Victorian literary regimes. I argue that any account of the late eighteenth- and nineteenth- century novel must theorize the crucial link between outlawry and the novel form. Far from being a product of history, crime in these novels activates the category of history on which they depend. As the novel develops, the link between crime and history becomes an essential structural part of the genre. This recognition enables me to forge new and surprising connections between the Romantic outlaw as instituted by Schiller’s The Robbers, the outlaw anti-heroes of Walter Scott’s historical novels, the historical criminals of W.H. Ainsworth’s “Newgate” novels, the female social climbers of Jane Austen’s novels, and the scandalous anti-heroines of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and of M.E. Braddon’s sensation novels. Key to the developments I am tracing is a new kind of anti-hero made possible by the early nineteenth-century novel’s incorporation of other, non-novelistic genres.
    [Show full text]
  • John and Jane Ball, Highwaymen?
    John and Jane Ball, Highwaymen? Notes taken from the History Group meeting on 26th March 2018 The theme of the evening was Highwaymen with particular reference to John and Jane Ball. Our guest, Mr Salter, had visited the County Records Office and libraries in search of material about our alleged highwaymen, but could turn up only 4 articles. The first referenced the Ball’s having been millers who were killed when their cart overturned on that steep hill and the road being named after them. Another article related that they were highwaymen who lived at the top of the hill and robbed and killed travellers as their horses flagged near the top, keeping the money, burying the dead and driving off the horses. Having been caught they were duly tried and hung, then displayed on gibbets on the hill to convey a warning. They reputedly plied their trade in the late 1600’s though it is difficult to tie this down. A speculative thought has occurred post-meeting, brought on by articles read there that indicated that highwaymen operated mostly following the English Civil War (1642 – 1651), it being an unruly period. It was during the Civil War that Knaptoft Church was slighted and maybe that was conducive to the situation. The date on the tie-beam of Yeoman’s Cottage in Shearsby is 1669 (though gauged as earlier by dendrochronology). Maybe, just maybe, the Yeoman was installed at that time to bring peace and order to a dangerous stretch of road! John Ball covert is to the East of the hill and Jane Ball covert is to the West.
    [Show full text]