Dear blog,<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a week to go till my book is due in. I\u2019m in London at the moment after spending the day checking a few last minute references (confusion between Coleridge\u2019s Notebooks and Works now averted) and am now settling in for the final read-through. It\u2019s disconcerting to still be finding silly typos and errors, which makes you worry that there must be loads of them that you\u2019re not finding but still, it\u2019s nearly ready to go.<\/p>\n
After the deadline I have some much-needed holiday and then I need to crack on with the essay I\u2019m writing on drugs and literature for the Oxford Handbook of Romanticism. I\u2019m going to incorporate some stuff on Davy and nitrous oxide \u2013 the happiness drug of the 1790s, which is still sold in festivals in the UK. From 1st<\/sup> September I shall be on research leave and dedicate myself again to the Davy Letters project, which has been much neglected while I\u2019ve been writing the book.<\/p>\n From 10th<\/sup> September I shall be in London (cat and house sitting for friends) and will work in the Royal Institution for about two months, transcribing and checking transcriptions of the 200 letters held in the RI\u2019s archive. These are the single biggest collection but I shall also in my final month in London do the same for the 50-odd letters held in the Lambton archive in West London.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a blue sky here in London and I hear that the weather\u2019s going to improve. Here goes for my final week of 12-hour days without caffeine or alcohol. Wish me luck\u2026<\/p>\n Best,<\/p>\n Sharon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear blog, There\u2019s a week to go till my book is due in. I\u2019m in London at the moment after spending the day checking a few last minute references (confusion between Coleridge\u2019s Notebooks and Works now averted) and am now … Continue reading