Tag Archives: shelley

Keats, Shelley, and Prizes

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Dear Blog,
It’s been a busy and exciting week. After spending the first two days at Salford, I came down to London for the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association Prize ceremony (http://www.keats-shelley.co.uk/ksma%20awards.html). I’m one of two judges for the essay prize. The other judge, Professor Simon Bainbridge (Lancaster University) and myself, read 45 anonymously-submitted entries, and whittled these down to a shortlist of five. These were sent to the Chair of the Judges, this year the prestigious Malawian poet Jack Mapanje, who decided upon the top three. First prize went to a University of Newcastle PhD student, Andrew Lacey for his essay ‘Wings of Poesy: Keats’s Birds’. Second prize went to Stacey McDowell a University of Bristol PhD student a LitSciMedder (http://litscimed.org/members/staceymcdowell/) who works on William Hazlitt and others and ideas of taste. Stacey’s essay was called ‘Full of Air: Inspiration and Air-Eating Poets’. Third prize went to Professor Paul Keen at Carleton University in Ottawa, for ‘Shelley on the Assembly Line.’

There is also a poetry prize given by the Association, which this year was won by Simon Armitage. The theme was ‘ice’ and the winning poem was called ‘The Present’; it told the story of Simon’s attempt to find icicles in West Yorkshire to cheer up his daughter when she was ill. The ceremony is a very grand affair; this year it was held at the British Academy in Carlton House Terrace, London, and the dinner was at the Athenaeum Club, where there was a portrait of Davy on the ground floor. The prize is in its fourteenth year now and it’s wonderful that so many people care so much about Keats, Shelley and the younger Romantics more generally. I’m very proud to be a judge of the prize and hope that it grows from strength to strength. The Association also maintains the Keats House in Rome, and after a funding drive they have managed to raise enough money to make substantial improvements to the museum and its educational areas.

From London I went to Oxford and read the Davy letters in the Bodleian, one of which was a note from Davy to Godwin, which makes me rethink their relationship. The usual line is that there was a cooling of their relationship after a few years of Davy’s role in the Royal Institution. In fact this note, asking Godwin to come to dinner, expressed the ‘unfeigned’ wish that Davy had been able to spend more time in Godwin’s company.

I also had lunch with two of the tutors for the fourth event of LitSciMed, Michael Whitworth (Merton College, Oxford) and John Holmes (University of Reading) who are currently planning the sessions they will offer on the ‘Poetry and Science’ day of the event at the University of Salford. The programme will be finalised in the next few weeks and go online at www.litscimed.org.uk/events by 1st November with the application form on the same page.

All best,

Sharon

North-West Long C19th Seminar Series and other stuff

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Dear blog,

We held the north-west long nineteenth century seminar yesterday, with a paper from a LitSciMedder, Rachel Russell, which went extremely well. Rachel had lots of questions and clearly her topic fascinated the audience. The seminars have been going for over a year now; we have one every four months on the first of that month (the next one is January 5th 2011). There are always two academic speakers and two postgraduate papers (usually but not limited to staff /students working in Universities in the north west). We try to have two papers broadly on a topic concerned with the beginning of the nineteenth century and the other two on the later part. Where the ‘long nineteenth century’ starts and finishes though is up for grabs! The seminars have always been well attended, both with academics and members of the public, and we’re financially supported by Manchester Central Library, the University of Salford, BARS (www.bars.ac.uk) and BAVS (www.bavsuk.org). All are welcome!

Tomorrow we have the Northern Modernism Seminar at the University of Salford, and I’m looking forward to that very much. There are some interesting looking papers to be given. I’ve had a cultured week – A Streetcar Named Desire at the Bolton Octogon on Tuesday, John Simm in Hamlet last Saturday, and I went to see Dave Haslam interview Jonathan Franzen on Sunday. I’ve set up a Shelley Reading Group at work because there are now so many Phd students working on Shelley (plus others working more generally in the Romantic period) and two undergraduates writing dissertations on him. I’m really pleased that there’s such interest in Shelley and I’m looking forward to taking a back seat in the reading group and hearing what others think of his poetry.

Finally, I’ve had the date of my inaugural lecture confirmed (Tuesday 22nd February 2011) and will post on this blog the link that is needed to book tickets. I shall be terrified but it’ll be lovely to see lots of friendly faces in the audience.

More soon,

Sharon

Godwin, prizes, and PhDs

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Dear blog,

I’m just returned from the Godwin diaries conference in Oxford and am about to go on leave for two weeks, so I thought I should update my blog before my holiday.

I really enjoyed the conference – the project has, over the last three years, made an electronic, fully searchable, and annotated version of William Godwin’s diaries, 1788-1836. You can read about it here: http://godwindiary.politics.ox.ac.uk/. Now nearing the end of the project the team asked individuals to talk at the conference about various aspects of the diary and I concentrated on the scientific and medical aspects. The diary has an awful lot to say on these matters. Godwin was very sociable and seems to have been friends with a great number of surgeons, physicians, natural historians, and chemists, including Humphry Davy, Anthony Carlisle, William Nicholson, John Aikin, and William Lawrence. His diary is also a fascinating account of an individual’s health throughout out his life and the treatments he received from the various doctors he consulted. It seems that Godwin also took the internal temperature of his house every single day for years! The diaries are a rich resource and when the electronic version is made public I urge everyone to take a look. There is a lot there for LitSciMeders.

Earlier this week we appointed someone to the AHRC-funded collaborative PhD that will be co-supervised by the Working Class Movement Library (http://www.wcml.org.uk/) and I’m really excited about that. I also read over the essays submitted to the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association prize competition (http://www.keats-shelley.co.uk/ksma%20awards.html), and there were some really very good ones. It’s a tough job being one of the two judges for the prize.

Finally, can I encourage everyone to take a look at the resources page that Cris da Costa has put together for event three: http://www.litscimed.org.uk/page/learning. On this page, you can see Paul Craddock’s excellent filming from the two days, plus reading lists, slides used in presentations, and much more. The website will act as a resource once the face-to-face teaching on the programme has faded into the dim and distant past, and I do hope people find it useful.

All best,

Sharon