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Literary criticism of children's literature asserts a one-directional view of power with the adult writer constructing the child reader. Using "aetonormativity"-- adult perceptions of normality -- this paper explores what happens when children co-construct publishable fiction. Our analysis of drama and creative writing workshops shows how whilst we were interested in developing the story of the protagonist, the children wanted to develop a gaming narrative. As a community of writers, we constructed a "hybrid" text which, unlike GameLit, explores the relationship between the protagonist and gaming, whilst providing positive portrayal of gaming. As the children became invested in the fiction, they became editors and revisions were taken on board. The paper concludes that involving children in writing children's literature can result in texts which disrupt aetonormativity by representing lived experiences. The paper also acknowledges that that further research is needed to explore how other children respond to such texts.

This paper is prompted by the author's experience as a researcher of English literary education in three different geographies over the past three years: Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Affect theory, as discussed in this paper, concerns atmospheres, surfaces, bodies, emotions, moods, vicinities and capacities. Drawing on affect theory, critical race scholarship and discussions of whiteness, the author argues that despite continued local attempts at diversification of English literary education, whiteness continues to circulate through and cling to many of the core texts, narratives and messages that make up English literary education (Bacalja & Bliss, 2019; McGraw & van Leent, 2018; McLean Davies, Truman & Buzacott, 2020). This whiteness is general and specific, global and local, obvious and hidden. Rather than attempting to discuss the literary canon as a whole, the author focuses on a specific literary text as an example of how whiteness circulates as neutral or normal in literary education, even in a text that's often framed as helping (white) students learn "about" racism.

This paper has two complementary objectives. After providing some theoretical perspectives on fiction generally, and on the teaching of fiction more specifically, it firstly evaluates, from a literary-critical perspective, a reasonably representative selection of the portrayal of teachers and teaching in some twentieth-century Anglo-Irish fiction and memoir. That initial, literary-critical evaluation of the texts, while focusing on aspects of both form and theme, seeks also to uncover the fascinating spectrum of models of teaching represented, some benign, but many quite dark and even, to a degree, sinister. The second half of the paper then suggests a range of pedagogical strategies which could be used, in the sixth-form classroom, to explore the richness and complexities of those portraits and of the contexts against which they are written. That in-depth pedagogical exploration is closely informed by the specifications for AS and A-level English teaching provided by two representative Examination Boards--the Council for Curriculum Examinations and Assessment (CCEA), which is based in Northern Ireland, and the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) -- and the exploration thus is linked closely to the demands and contexts for sixth-form English teaching both in Northern Ireland and in the UK as a whole.

Modern critics do not consider science fiction and mystery novels to be "serious reading", but Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis questioned the boundaries between "popular" and "serious" literature. Both Christian writers critically discuss the spiritual crisis of the modern world in each fiction genre. This paper will discuss Sayers and Lewis from a Christian postmodernist perspective, that is, the acceptance of both human constructions, such as multiple views on genres, and divine revelation, or what transcends the limitations of humanity. Both Sayers and Lewis agreed in terms of their understanding that a writer is limited by human language, but also in terms of their acceptance of the transcendental guidance offered in the interactive relationship with the divine being. The discussion will present Sayers and Lewis as Christian postmodernist writers who re-evaluate generally overlooked genres, begin to argue in their respective genres that gender matters, and introduce the reader to another world beyond the boundaries of the known literary genres. (Contains 9 footnotes.)

This essay examines the rhetorical persona of the "Fool" as employed by General Charles Gordon in six volumes of journals recorded during the siege of Khartoum by Mahdist forces from September to December, 1884. After identifying the particular rhetorical aspects of the "Fool" as social critic/site of ideological contestation, I argue that Gordon utilized this persona to undermine the Gladstonian opposition of an imperial morality based upon economic frugality and foreign non-involvement versus the immorality of imperial expansion. To accomplish this purpose, Gordon appropriated a textual location of social exteriority, employed ridicule of superiors as a form of "hidden transcript" made public, and subverted Gladstone's moral imperialism as a grotesque hybridization of moral ends mandating the use of immoral means by means of conditional reasoning. Finally, Gordon proposed an alternative meaning of moral imperialism as loyalty to indigenous allies. (Contains 62 notes.)

This paper explores the relation between love, learning and knowledge as found in three dialogues of Plato, "Symposium", "Phaedrus" and "Republic". It argues that the account of the ascent from carnal desire to the love of beauty, as set out in the "Symposium", is best seen in terms of a genealogy of love in which the object of love is transformed into an object of knowledge. The "Phaedrus" shows us how affection and love between two individuals can help motivate a love of learning. The "Republic" demonstrates the value of knowledge through the distinction between knowledge and opinion (or received belief). A love of learning is, therefore, driven by that which is genuinely valuable and worthy of love. Plato helps us today in two respects: first, he reminds us that learning can (and for him, must) have an affective quality. Second, he reminds that the value of learning is related to the knowledge and insight it yields. (Contains 13 notes.)

Information about several papers discussed at the 2009 Disciplining Thelwall: The Art and the Act: John Thelwall in Practice Conference, held from October 16-18, 2009 in Halifax, Nova Scotia is presented. Topics include a historiography of Thelwall studies, a collection of papers from a previous, related conference proceeding published as "John Thelwall: Radical Romantic and Acquitted Felon," edited by Steve Poole, and literary criticisms of Thelwall's writings by Sarah Zimmerman, Molly Desjardins and Julia Carlson. A biographical overview of the life of author, elocutionist, and political activist John Thelwall (1764-1834) is presented.

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The article examines the ways that comic papers and editorial cartoons in Ireland and Great Britain used Ireland and the Irish question to analyze events in Eypt and Sudan from 1882 and 1885 and the response of the British government. Topics include political beliefs during the Victorian era, satire, and comics' coverage of dominant political news story. Also discussed are the tension and interplay between images and texts and politicians' use of the press to understand political issues.

The gift book "Remember Me!" with Blake's wonderful engraving of the 'Hiding of Moses' was more remarkable for its decorations than for its literary contents. Of the twenty-four copies recorded, each differs from the others in the pattern of binding, colour of fore-edges, endpapers, and the decorated sleeve-case. Despite this varied elegance, the work had only a modest sale, and the same sheets were re-issued in 1825 for the 1826 gift-giving season. This paucity of sales may be related to the fact that the publisher John Poole had little experience of book distribution. His speciality was as a maker of Marble Paper and Fancy Pocket-Books, not in selling them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the contingent and affective dimensions of genre in Victorian criticism on the ballad. Aesthetic judgments comprise an important part of the historical meta-discourse surrounding literary genres, yet these categories occupy only a marginal position in our present theories of genre. The terms of aesthetic judgment tend to fall out when we tally historical genres' discursive conventions and map their formal and thematic contours. In contrast, Victorian literary criticism's dependence on the language of feeling, not only in describing individual works but also in shaping generic taxonomies, provides an opportunity to consider the ways in which the seemingly irreducible particularities of aesthetic experience meet the generalizing force of genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alan Hollinghurst's novel The Line of Beauty (2004) is widely considered a contemporary masterpiece of realist social critique, taking aim at Britain's rich and powerful under Thatcher's Tory government and recollecting the twin traumas of Thatcherism and AIDS Crisis in the 1980s. Developing Simon During's analysis of the novel as a sort of paradigmatic allegory of life under neoliberalism (2010; 2013), this paper examines BBC2's three-part heritage adaptation of The Line of Beauty (2006) as a study more particularly of the conditions of intimacy and relationality under this emergent social order. The use of heritage screen conventions in the series situates the career of the novel's Jamesian central consciousness, Nick Guest, amidst the material spaces and possessions of Thatcherite elites. Drawing from James' vision of materialism in The Spoils of Poynton (1897), a key literary antecedent for Hollinghurst's novel, the series' semantically charged heritage mise-en-scènes and its stark depiction of the corporeal effects of HIV/AIDS enables it to portray both the perverse pleasures and the brutal material, human implications of a social world in which all associations, including friendship, love and kinship, are underwritten by the logic of ownership and the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the celebrity image of the English author Charlotte Smith and English poet Mary Robinson within the newspaper the "Morning Post" during the 1780s and 1790s. An overview of the the "Morning Post's" publishing of Smith's poetry, including the poem "Song from the French of Cardinal Bernis," from her book "Elegiac Sonnets," is provided.

At just after six in the evening on 16 June 1851, a balloon carrying two passengers narrowly avoided crashing into the transept of the Crystal Palace. This near-disastrous balloon ascent was the result of just one of the popular entertainments that sprang up to capitalize on the crowds of visitors to the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in London in 1851. Despite the fact that on this occasion popular entertainment and didactic recreation almost literally collided, histories of the Exhibition have kept the two separate. It is notable that today the Great Exhibition is most often studied through sources such as Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Fxhibition of 1851 (1852), the Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue (1851), or the Illustrated London News, all aimed at middle-class audiences. However, cheap broadside ballads also commented on the Exhibition and offer alternative perspectives on the event. This paper focuses on these neglected sources and reads them within a broader network of literary and visual sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much attention has been given to the science–religion controversies attached to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, from the infamous 1860 Huxley–Wilberforce debate at Oxford to John Tyndall's 1874 ‘Belfast Address’. Despite this, almost no attention has been given to the vast homiletic literature preached during the British Association meetings throughout the nineteenth century. During an association meeting the surrounding churches and halls were packed with men of science, as local and visiting preachers sermonized on the relationship between science and religion. These sermons are revealing, particularly in the 1870s when the ‘conflict thesis’ gained momentum. In this context, this paper analyses the rhetoric of conflict in the sermons preached during the meetings of the association, exploring how science–religion conflict was framed and understood through time. Moreover, it is argued that attention to the geography of the Sunday activities of the British Association provides insight into the complex dynamic of nineteenth-century secularization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In late September 1586, Edward Barker (a royal registrar who reported directly to the English Secretary of State, William Cecil) interrogated three suspected Catholic activists, including onesinger, Henry Ediall. The interrogations were conducted in the wake of the Babington plot, an alleged assassination attempt on the life of Queen Elizabeth in which Mary, Queen of Scots, was found to be complicit. Barker questioned the men about their dealings with the attainted exiled Catholic activist Charles Paget (and his brother Lord Thomas) and about their reactions to the government’s execution of Edmund Campion. Ediall was questioned too about a choral establishment he allegedly ran for the Pagets and his performance of ‘direges’ at their residence. Under interrogation, Ediall, who mentioned the music of Tallis and Byrd in his testimony, claimed that he had sung nothing unlawful. But a look into the repertory he alluded to in his testimony suggests he did sing works that would have been of interest to the government. In this article, which includes full transcriptions of these State Paper documents, the evidence of these interrogations and relevant musical works are analysed to draw new conclusions about the well-known ‘political motets’ of Byrd, shedding fresh light on their legal status, how they could be positioned politically and how they could be put to use in a politically charged environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the potential future of political biography in Great Britain. While it is attested that the British political biography is a very well-honed and respected form of literature, this paper also posits that biography is intellectually and culturally the least confident form of political writing. Biographers are contrasted with artists in other genres, such as thriller writing, filmmaking, and wood-carving. Prominent political figures such as English author Samuel Johnson and English anarchist and biographer Lytton Strachey are discussed in relation to the topic. It is urged that complacency poses a risk to the future of British political biography.

While recent studies of Victorian literary criticism have investigated poetry's place in the periodical press, little attention has been paid to the history of poetry published in large-circulation general newspapers. this essay discusses poetry published in The London Times during the 1860s, examining the literal place of poetry within the newspaper, its themes and formal characteristics, and its relation to authorship. I suggest that reading these poems in relation to their original material context raises theoretical questions about the history of reading, intertextuality, and poetry's function in the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the eighteenth century, language-experts were increasingly concerned with correctness and appropriate social expression. As a result, English grammar went through several attempts to codify and prescribe rules for correct usage, so that the number of these works increased rapidly from the 1760s onwards and reached a notable peak in the 1790s. In order to find a place in an increasingly saturated marketplace, authors, editors and publishers variously resorted to selling strategies that included, for instance, adding value to the English grammar by incorporating rich prefatory or post-main-text matter. This paper deals with author(itie)s and sources explicitly mentioned in the prefatory matter of eighteenth-century English grammars for children, with a focus on metacomments aimed at endorsing the book with reliability and validity for teachers and young learners. The study is based on acknowledged author(itie)s and sources so as to identify which were most commonly cited in the material examined, on the one hand, and to discuss the different reasons articulating this practice, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how The Listener, a journal launched in 1929 by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), established itself as a site for serious radio criticism in the United Kingdom. However, such coverage did not appear fully formed, but developed and changed over time, depending on the critic(s) and the industrial and cultural contexts within which they worked. By looking at coverage from three periods – the mid-1930s, mid-1950s and mid-1970s – I propose that there have been different distinct phases taken by the radio criticism found within its pages. One important factor shaping the form taken has been the question of intermediality that, in this case, existed between radio and the printed form. Namely, the problem of developing a means of reviewing and critiquing an aural form within a printed medium dominated by traditional visual and literary criticism. Such an insight and understanding, of the way the radio discourse changed over time in The Listener, is vital as this journal has become, especially with its digitalization, an increasingly important resource for scholars working in the field of broadcasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coleridge's investment in aesthetics and criticism has broadly been understood as an attempt to overcome the Kantian bargain by which knowledge of the world is gained by relinquishing the thing in itself. This paper seeks to supplement that understanding by recasting the stakes of Kant's critical philosophy in terms of a conflict over the limits and possibility of “discovery.” Drawing on contemporary accounts of discovery by Captain Cook and George Shelvocke, the essay explores the critical role discovery plays in the “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as an historical practice of maritime expansion and mapping, as a textual event, and as an integral moment in the practice of literary criticism, which is to say, of “reading.” Maritime discovery in the Rime, the essay argues, allegorizes literary criticism, revealing both the promise and the limits of the romantic conception of literature as containing its own criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the origins of the practice of book reviewing in England prior to the 1749 founding of the Monthly Review. As early as the 1660s, periodicals contained various kinds of notices (like advertisements or publication announcements) and reviews of new works that aimed to inform readers of the existence and content of particular books. An examination of a broad variety of these notices, which vary in sophistication from rudimentary to refined, reveals a range of evaluative discussions that provides a glimpse of contemporary reading tastes and habits. The attention to books in periodicals also demonstrates the close connections between the press and the book trades: many writers and publishers seem to have been encouraging public attention to books, marketing books published by themselves or their associates, or capitalizing on reader interest in newly published works to sell periodicals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

1788 saw the first legislative victory for the campaign to abolish the British slave trade. Writing as part of a wider movement to generate support for the Bill about to go through parliament, both Hannah More and Ann Yearsley published poetry describing the horrors of slavery. However, this paper will argue that what lay behind More and Yearsley's decision to become involved with the campaign was an intense and bitter rivalry, the consequence of their failed patronage relationship. The essay will argue that a rivalry between the two was known to exist, and that the two poems published by More and Yearsley in 1788 were seen partially in terms of that rivalry. In order to demonstrate this the essay will discuss a previously unknown poem by Yearsley's friend and patron Eliza Dawson which directly compares Yearsley with More. Their poems, Slavery: A Poem and A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave Trade are then discussed in detail in order to suggest that at their hearts is not a concern for the African slaves they are nominally supposed to be helping, but a fiercely contested poetic battle to determine who has the right to speak for the city of Bristol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay suggests that with the increasing prominence of "historical poetics" as a set of social collectives, methodologies, and debates (especially about literary analysis), now seems to be an ideal time to assess its history and consider its future. The first part of the essay offers a genealogy of historical poetics, accounting for some of the central tenets of the group and considering detractors of these assertions, especially about the idea of "lyric reading" and the "lyricization" of poetry. The second part explains how the institutional history of historical poetics affects what it might become in the future, particularly if scholars expand its scope to include poetries not aligned with the 19th century Anglo‐Atlantic world. It suggests how postcolonial literary studies and the history of empire might alter some of the original insights of the Historical Poetics group. Examples draw from poetry printed in India's earliest anglophone newspapers between the 1780 and 1800, part of the "unread poetry of colonialism." Recovering an historical understanding of this poetry demonstrates that Anglo‐Indian newspapers, while poignantly aware of their debts to Britain, perceived their verse as adapting borrowed British literary institutions. Insights devised from historical poetics provide another way to analyze seriously the conventional and common poetry of 18th century Anglo‐Indian newspapers, to assess how its authors perceived the institutional contexts of their writing, and to describe how it differed from Europe's norms. The final section concludes with some thoughts on what historical poetics might reveal about intellectual labor in the professional literary academy. Ultimately, historical poetics is not only about how we study poetry, but is an extended conversation about the value of history in literary study and how historical change is valued (or not) by academic scholars. Scholars can use historical poetics to consider larger questions about how to distribute their attention and how it might be rewarded by their colleagues and professional organizations. Over the next 10 years, it will prove crucial for scholars of historical poetics to reengage with questions about what archives are valuable for an historical reading of poetry and what those archives mean for the analysis of poetry in the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the British periodical entitled "Critical Review," edited by Tobias Smollet, published between 1756 and 1845. It is compared to the similar "Monthly Review" which was created earlier, as both journals were created to serve a growing reading public by offering reviews of literature but differed in their editorial policies, with Smollet relied on a "set of gentlemen" as reviewers.

The authors discuss the career of U.S. satirist and lecturer Artemus Ward and his program on the Mormons. They mention Ward's visit to Utah and interactions with Mormons, there, his subsequent lecture series in the U.S. and Great Britain on the Mormons, and how the lectures influenced the opinion of Mormons.

The article discusses eighteenth-century English collections and literature and discusses the bibliographical difficulty presented by these eighteenth-century texts. Topics include an analysis of the work of publishers like Jacob Tonson, and color production that were presented in eighteenth-century natural history books.

The article explores a body of largely anonymous poetry written in response to the visit of Mai, the first Polynesian visitor to England who arrived in 1774 on a ship of the second expedition of explorer James Cook. A second group of poems was written as if from the viewpoint of Purea, a Tahitian nobelwoman. Topics include the Pacific in British popular culture, verse satire, and sexuality in literature. Poems include “Omiah’s Farewell; Inscribed to the Ladies of London,” An Historic Epistle, from Omiah, to the Queen of Otaheite,” and “An Epistle from Oberea, Queen of Otaheite, to Joseph Banks, Esq.”

Keats, unlike the other Romantics, has prompted not just a dispute as to the character of his political allegiances, but a dispute about whether he is appropriately regarded as a political poet at all. Keats's recent critics are more familiar with the Poems of 1817 in which Keats emphatically and repeatedly identifies himself as an admiring associate of the editor of The Examiner, Leigh Hunt, but even in these poems the ambition to write a poetry that makes its impact on the non-poetic world alternates with a contrary tendency to define the world of the poem by its distance from the world outside it. In the Poems of 1820 the two tendencies persist, but, instead of working against one another, they allow Keats to resolve his contradictory ambitions and write poems that achieve a formal perfection that releases them from the contingent and yet continue to speak to the contingent world in which we all of us live our lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working at the intersection between literary history and periodical studies, this article investigates the role played by the literary journal Botteghe Oscure (Rome, 1948–1960) in processes of Anglo-Italian literary transfer. The article charts the journal’s British network, analysing quantitatively the presence of both established and new writers. Further, it focuses on Botteghe Oscure’s publishing and distribution policy in the United Kingdom, drawing on its founder Marguerite Caetani’s correspondence in order to interrogate the location of the journal within the Italian and the English literary systems, and thus illuminate the journal’s role as a site of literary production as it was shaped in both Italy and Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Lord George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale, is known internationally as, perhaps, the most famous Romantic poet of his generation. His work continues to be read across the globe. As a peer (succeeding to the title following the death of his great uncle, the 5th Baron Byron, in 1798) he was entitled to a seat in the Lords, and this article covers the period during which he was active in the House. He took his seat in 1809, but most of his work in the Lords took place between early 1812 and the summer of 1813. Thereafter, his financial troubles, his stellar literary career, and his personal problems, led him to spend little or no time in the House, and he lived abroad between 1816 and his death in 1824. In 1812, before he had become known for his poetry, except among a small London elite, he began actively to cultivate a political career, and he made his maiden speech on the Framework Knitters Bill in 1812. Byron was a prolific letter writer, and from his published correspondence as well as other sources of contemporary information, it is possible to document his growing career in the upper House, and to see how a young peer might make his way into politics in the absence of a particular sponsor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses leftist middlebrow fiction by women in the 1930s. Topics include criticism of 1930s literature which led to mythic rift between aesthetically experimental and socially engaged writing, exploration of a range of middlebrow fiction in the context of Mass Observation reports, cartoons and cookery books, and the failure to recognize tensions between leftist radicalism and conservatism when it came to middlebrow writing.

A literary criticism of the novel "Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen is presented. It mentions landscape improvement in the Georgian era. Topics include availability of large space in Sotherton, views of landscape designer Humphry Repton on the landscape improvement, and assessment of the imperialist implications of gender politics by postcolonial industry.

An essay is presented on the practice of using typographical techniques to disguise personal names in 18th-century satire. It is suggested that while some satirists believed that disguising personal names afforded them legal protections, others were aware of the risks but relied on the costly and time-consuming nature of court procedures to deter litigants. Details on British libel law are presented. The ethical and aesthetic aspects of satire and concealed names are also discussed.

The article discusses the circulation of manuscript poetry originating in Christ Church, Oxford, England in the early 17th century, with a particular focus on their incorporation into manuscript verse anthologies. It references the concept of the rolling archetype as developed by literary scholar Harold Love. According to the author, these groupings of poems reflected the cultural concerns and socioliterary dynamics of the period and place. Topics discussed include patronage and group identity.

This article explores national identity and Orientalism in the context of post-1815 British politics by examining T. J. Wooler's radical weekly The Black Dwarf. The essay investigates Wooler's adaptation of the well-known eighteenth-century literary ploy of the imaginary Oriental correspondence, and maintains that his Black Dwarf's epistolary communications with Japanese and supernatural addressees challenge the boundaries of Britishness. A mysterious figure, Wooler's character of the Black Dwarf differs from his literary Oriental precedents, but it is precisely this otherness that contributes to his critical authority to puncture British pride and to illustrate the transnational values of truth and liberty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay introduces the unpublished poetry of Sarah Wesley (1759-1828), daughter of co-founder and poet of Methodism Charles Wesley. Although Sarah Wesley is a crucial (if unacknowledged) source for our knowledge of early Methodism, her poetry challenges many of the denomination's central tenets, particularly its doctrine of love/ What is more, the poetry offers a new tenor to the period's most pressing political concerns, as well as possibilities for reconsidering the relationship between religion and early liberal feminism. Contextualizing Wesley in the incipient feminist debates at the end of the eighteenth century, I give particular regard to the thought of Catharine Macaulay and Hannah More (both of whom Wesley knew), and of Mary Wollstonecraft (whom Wesley anticipates). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the reception of writer Alexandre Dumas in Great Britain, with a particular focus on his role in debates surrounding cultural protectionism, copyright law, and Anglo-French literary exchange during the mid-19th century. According to the author, Dumas' popularity among Victorian readers and the widespread availability of his works led critics to view him as both a cultural and an economic threat to British fiction. Details on the role of copyright law in the serialization of Dumas' works and on the composition of his readership are presented. Other topics include piracy, free trade, and an 1848 riot protesting the theatrical performance of "The Count of Monte Cristo" in London, England.

Huntington Library manuscript HM904 is a verse miscellany compiled by Constance Aston Fowler, daughter of Lord Aston, in 1630s Staffordshire. Constance operated as a kind of literary agent, soliciting, exchanging, and circulating poems, as well as preserving them in her book. Many of these poems are by or about family and friends, but they also indicate her connections with far-reaching networks of manuscript transmission. In particular, the volume contains Catholic devotional verses in an unusual and somewhat archaic hand (Hand B) that also appears in another Catholic miscellany from 1650s Warwickshire; and secular verses that may be by the Catholic love poet William Habington, or may be hybrid compositions that imitate or adapt his work. Both these ingredients have much to say about the complex compilation processes of manuscript verse miscellanies, and about the cultural participation of women and Catholics in seventeenth-century England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Britain during the 1970s saw the publication of a spate of cheap, lurid novels based around the sensationalised portrayal of subcultural groups such as skinheads and motorcycle gangs. Publisher New English Library led the field, with books such as ‘Skinhead’ and ‘Suedehead’, and this article analyses such books in relation to their social, economic and political context. Focusing on the novels' narratives and representations, it argues that the genre was constituent in broader media constructions of 1970s Britain as being beset by a social and political ‘crisis’. The article concludes by considering the books' appeal. The genre, it is argued, was rooted in traditions of ‘exploitation’ fiction characterised by open-ended ambivalence. As such, the novels could be understood in a variety of ways. Their worldview was often authoritarian and chauvinistic, but their emphasis on defiant rebellion also gave the books significant cachet among the subcultures they represented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues for the importance of work in print and newspaper history written before the 1960s. That decade is seen as marking a break in the way the topic was approached with work prior to the 1960s being criticised for narrowness and theoretical weaknesses. The article points to the sophistication of research and writing prior to 1960, in popular and more scholarly focused work. It argues that the historiography of this topic should be understood in terms of longer processes of development and institutional constraints which correlate with similar developments in other areas of historical research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BL Additional MS 17492, the so-called Devonshire Manuscript of Henrician courtly verse, is a prime example of how social and cultural phenomena contributed to early modern manuscript culture. Among the treasures of the Devonshire MS is a series of lyrics that chronicles a fascinating courtly intrigue of the 1530s: the illicit, clandestine marriage of Lord Thomas Howard and Lady Margaret Douglas, the headstrong niece of Henry VIII. After unpacking this historical drama, this essay advances the first substantial literary analysis of these poems by exploring the textual strategies through which Howard and Douglas attempted to negotiate the crown's insistent management of their erotic life. This treatment of the Douglas-Howard lyrics provides new opportunity to consider how the Devonshire MS reflects and refracts the gender dynamics of the contemporary Henrician court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview with Anouk Lang, the poet Richard Grant discusses his journey to becoming a professional performance poet: how he first came into contact with the dub poetry scene at university, his time as the Birmingham poet laureate in 2005-06, and his work with other spoken word poets at festivals, performances and school workshops around the UK. Topics covered include the role of live poetry in a culture in which sales of print publications are falling and new technologies are enabling writers to reach new audiences, poetry as a tool for confronting social issues such as racial conflict, the task of the poet laureate in relation to the city and the community, and generational, cultural and class divides in the contemporary British arts world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]