A summer syllabus: OLLI at AU, Two novels of longing at two ends of an imperialist century

Haylet Atwell as Margaret Schlegel in HBO Howards End (scripted Kenneth Lonergan)

Anthony Hopkins as Mr Stevens and Emma Thompson as Miss Kenton in 1993 Remains of the Day (scripted by Harold Pinter, then revised Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala, 1993)

For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University
Days: Monday mornings, 11:45 am to 1:15 pm,
June 7 to 28,
4 sessions online, zoom meeting style (location of building: 4801 Massachusetts Ave, NW) 20016
Dr Ellen Moody

Peppard Cottage used for Howards End in M-I-J 1993 (here it is not photographed in prettying up light) – the house in the novel is Rooksnest which Forster and his mother lived in for many years

Dyrham Park (South Gloucester) used for Darlington Hall in 1993 Remains of the Day

Description of Course: SG 1620 Summer 2021 Two novels of longing at two ends of an Imperialist century

The class will read as a diptych E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910) and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989). Both examine class, race, war, fascism and colonialism; family, sex, and property relationships from the “empire’s center,” England, from a post-colonial POV. The core center of both novels is the human needs of their characters against capitalist, gender- and class-based backgrounds. I urge people see on their own either or both the 1992 Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala film Howards End (w/Thompson & Hopkins) and 2015 HBO serial, Howards End (Kenneth Lonergan w/Atwell & Macfayden); and the 1993 Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala film The Remains of the Day (also w/Thompson & Hopkins). We can ask how ironic romances can teach us fundamental lessons about how to survive and thrive in today’s worlds.

Required Texts:

E. M. Forster, Howards End, ed Abinger Edition, introd, notes David Lodge. London: Penguin, 2000. ISBN 978-0-14-118231-1
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day. NY: Knopf, 1989; or Vintage International, 1990. ISBN 978-06-7973172-1
There are readily available relatively inexpensive MP3CD sets of the Howards End read by Nadia May (Blackstone) and Remains of the Day by Simon Prebble (Tantor). Both are superb. A more expensive CD audio of Howards End by Colleen Prendergast. All unabridged.
All three movies (films? streaming videos?) are available on Amazon prime (small price for viewing or none at all).

Format: The class will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.

June 7: Introduction: Forster, his life & other writing, Bloomsbury (kept short), Forster’s Howards End

June 14: Howards End and the 2 film adaptations

June 21: Transition from Howards End to The Remains of the Day

June 28: The Remains of the Day, the one film adaptation, and if time permits Ishiguro’s other novels (esp. A Pale View of the Hills, Never Let Me Go, When We Were Orphans) & 2 films made from Ishiguro’s books beyond what’s cited above, viz., The White Countess (Ishiguro wrote the screenplay) and Never Let Me Go.

Emma Thompson seen from afar as Miss Kenton, walking as much in the corridors of Mr Stevens’ mind as those of Darlington Hall (she also plays Margaret Schlegel in the 1993 Howards End)

Helena Bonham Carter as Helen Schlegel (the younger sister, a Marianne Dashwood type) (1993 Howards End)

Outside reading or watching:

There is an enormous literature on Forster and he himself left a large body of writing. The best biography because it’s the one candid one about Forster’s sexual orientation and his life is Wendy Moffatt’s A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life by E.M. Forster NY: Farrar, Strauss, an Giroux, 2010. Then I recommend for the text and the rich backgrounds and criticism section, The Norton edition of Howards End, ed. Paul B. Armstrong, who brings together remarkable material both on and by Forster, and includes Forster’s “What I Believe” (central to understanding him and his relevance to us today). I’ll also sent as attachments or URLs: Barbara C. Morden, “Howards End and the condition of England,” May 2016, Literature 1900–1950, British Library, Oliver Tearle, “Revisiting Howards End: Notes towards an Analysis of Forster’s Novel, Interesting Literature, n.d; on the 4 part HBO film scripted by Lonergan, Roslyn Sulcras, “A Howards End: True to Then and Now, the New York Times, online: https://tinyurl.com/37s564xf. See also my blog on Howards End, book & movies.

There are many essays on Ishiguro, his novels, and especially The Remains of the Day (and not a few on the various films too), but many seem not to understand him or this and his other earlier seemingly realistic book (s) or to be beside the point — perhaps because the post-modern post-colonial perspective and Ishiguro’s mix of realism, symbolic allegory and surrealism, different genres and anti-realism (symbolism) gets in the way of understanding this particular story as told by the butler. I will send along Wroe, Nicholas, “Living Memories: Kazuo Ishiguro,” The Guardian (biography entries), 18 February 2005, online at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/19/fiction.kazuoishiguro …; Lee, Hermione, “Books & the Arts: Quiet Desolation,” The New Republic, 202 (January 1990):36-39; Deborah Guth, “Submerged Narratives in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day,” Modern Language Studies, 35:2 (1999):126-37; Meera Tamaya, Ishiguro’s “Remains of the Day”: The Empire Strikes Back,” Modern Language Studies, 22:2 (Spring 1992):45-56. See also my blog on Remains of the Day, the book and movie. We’ll also use the fascinating online interview of Ishiguro at YouTube (TIFF Bell Lightbox for a post-screening discussion of the film adaptation of The Remains of the Day): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1P6c3yomp0

Recommended for both books:   Jacqueline Banerjee’s Literary Surrey.  Hampshire:  John Owen Smith, 2005; and Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Big House,” in her Collected Impressions. NY: Knopf, 1950.

Volumes of wonderful close readings of wonderful novels and discussions of issue include: Claude J Summers, E.M. Forster. NY: Ungar,1983; Barry Lewis and Sebastian Groes, Kazuo Ishiguro: New Critical Issues of the Novels. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. On Forster from the standpoint of all his writings: John Colmer, E.M. Forster: The Personal Voice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975.

Hugh Grant as Lord Darlington’s nephew, young Mr Cardinal confronting Mr Stevens (1993 Remains of the Day)

Samuel West as Leonard Bast, wandering in a vision he has of a park he walks in (1993 Howards End)

A summer syllabus: The Bloomsbury Novel at OLLI at AU

Ackerley as busy editor of The Listener, nearby Tulip (the movie)

For a 4 week summer course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University
Day: Monday afternoons, 1:45 to 3:15 pm,
June 1 to June 22
Zoom, Virtual Classroom
Institutional location: 4801 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D.C. 20016
Dr Ellen Moody

Online at: https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2020/02/16/a-spring-syllabus-the-novels-of-e-m-forster-at-olli-at-au/

Description of course:

This course will examine novels & art included in the term Bloomsbury through the fiction of four of the novel writers: we’ll read E.M. Forster’s Maurice, J. R. Ackerley’s My Dog Tulip, Virginia Woolf’s short fictions taken from two books: The Complete Short Fiction (which includes Memoirs of a Novelist) and The Death of the Moth and other essays, and Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent. Bloomsbury books (non-fiction, biography, essays, poetry) are written by people who belonged to an amorphous early to mid 20th century creative group, associated with a specific area in London, who were friends and associates, or whose works were printed at the Hogarth Press. This works produced by this group are splendidly interesting, remain strongly influential until today, are in various genres highly original texts of powerful art. There are good movies to watch for Maurice, My Dog Ackerley, & All Passion Spent. I ask everyone before class to read E.M. Forster’s “What I Believe.”

Dora Carrington (1893-1932), The Mill at Tidmarsh (her most famous picture)

Required texts (in the order we will read them):

E. M. Forster, “What I Believe,” Online at http://spichtinger.net/otexts/believe.html or https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/what-i-believe-by-e-m-forster (if you want to buy, it’s reprinted in Two Cheers for Democracy. Harcourt, Brace, 1951; rpt. many times)
E.M. Forster, Maurice, ed., P. N. Furbank, introd., notes by David Leavitt. Penguin 1971; rpt 2003. ISBN 978-0=141-44113-9.
J.R. Ackerley, My Dog Tulip, introd. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. New York Review of Books classic, 1999. ISBN 978-1-59017-414-2
Virginia Woolf, The Complete Shorter Fiction, ed., introd. Susan Dick. Harvest book, 1989. ISBN 978-0-15-621250-2 (this contains the whole of Memoirs of a Novelist).
————–, The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. I will send the whole book by attachment. It used to available at an Australian University of Adelaide site and is still on an Australian Gutenberg site:  http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1203811h.html. It exists in book form: The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. Harcourt, Brace, 1970 ISBN 0-15-625234-1
Vita Sackville-West. All Passion Spent, introd. Joanna Lumley. Virago 1982; rpt 2011. ISBN 978-0-86068-358-2.

Format: lecture and discussions

June 1st: Defining Bloomsbury philosophy, ethic, describing the aesthetic. “What I believe.” We will begin Forster’s Maurice
June 8th: Forster’s Maurice; beginning JR Ackerley’s My Dog Tulip. Read also for this day Woolf’s “Gypsy, the Mongrel” (in Complete Fiction) and “The Art of Biography (in Death of the Moth)
June 15th: My Dog Tulip, book & animated movie. Woolf’s “Mysterious Case of Miss V,” “The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn,” “Memoirs of a Novelist,” “Kew Gardens,” “The String Quartet,” “The Widow and the Parrot,” “Uncle Vanya,” “The Shooting Party,”  from Appendix C, “The Dog,” “Ghosts,” and “English Youth” in The Complete Fiction). Then “The Death of the Moth,” “Twelfth Night at the Old Vic,” Professions for Women,” “Thoughts on Peace During an Air Raid” (in Death of the Moth and Other Essays).
June 22nd: First half of period: Woolf, biography, experimental fiction; Sackville-West & biography & fiction; her All Passion Spent.

James Wilby as the ebullient sincere young Maurice

Hugh Grant as the hardened self-depriving older Clive

Recommended: 4 movies

All Passion Spent. Directed by Martin Friend. Screenplay Peter Buckman. Perf. Wendy Hiller, Maurice Denham, Harry Andrews, Eileen Way, Phyllis Calvert. 3 part (hour each) series. BBC, Masterpiece Theater, 1986. On YouTube.

Carrington. Directed by John McGrath. Screenplay Christopher Hampton. Perf. Jonathan Pryce, Emma Thomson, Rufus Dewell, Samuel West, Penelope Wilton. Le Studio Canal, 1995.
Maurice. Dir.James Ivory. Screenplay Kit Hesketh-Harvey Perf. James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves, Phoebe Nicholls, Simon Callow, Ben Kingsley, Judy Parfitt, Denholm Elliot. Merchant-Ivory, 1987. Available as Prime Video on Amazon.
My Dog Tulip. Cartoon Film written, drawn, edited by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger. Voices Christopher Plummer and Lynn Redgrave. Produced by Howard Kaminsky. Axiom, New Yorker film, 1999. It is available as a Vimeo if you keep searching for it:

https://vimeo.com/264796405

To the Lighthouse. Dir Colin Gregg. Script Hugh Stoddard. Perf. Rosemary Harris, Michael Gough, Suzanne Bertish, Kenneth Branagh, Lyndsey Baxter, Pippa Guard. BBC, 1983. Online at YouTube

General Studies & life-writing:

Ackerley, J. R. My Father and Myself, introd. W. H. Auden. NYRB classic, 1999.
Johnstone, J. K. The Bloomsbury Group: E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey. Noonday Press, 1954
Raitt, Suzanne. Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Oxford, 1993.
Shone, Richard, ed. The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant. Tate Gallery, Princeton UP, 1999.
Summers, Claude J. E.M. Forster. NY: Ungar, 1983.
Rosenbaum. S. P. ed. The Bloomsbury Group: A collection of Memoirs & Commentaries. All sort of essays by many Bloomsbury people. Rev. Toronto Press, 1995.
Wade, Francesca. Square Haunting: Five women, freedom and London between the wars. Faber & Faber, 2020.

Bridge over the Allier c.1933 Roger Fry (1866-1934)

Another spring syllabus: Booker Prize Books: A Marketplace Niche?

From The English Patient: the burnt-up hero (Ralph Fiennes) reading Herodotus, the Canadian who has been tortured (William Dafoe)

A Syllabus

For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at George Mason University
Day: Eight Wednesday later morning into afternoons, 11:50 to 1:15 pm,
March 29 to May 17
Tallwood, 4210 Roberts Road, Fairfax, Va
Dr Ellen Moody

Description of Course

In this course we will discuss four gems of Booker Prize fiction. Some have said the prize functions as a brilliantly exploited marketplace tool aimed at a specific readership niche, just perfect for high quality film adaptations and literary criticism. The selected books are characteristically historical fiction, self-reflexive, witty and passionate, post-colonialist, — plus all have been made into films. Before the class begins, please read Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop;then in class we’ll read J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, and Graham Swift’s Last Orders

Required Texts (in the order we’ll read them):

Fitzgerald, Penelope. The Bookshop. 1970: rpt. 1997: Boston: Hougton Mifflin. ISBN 0395869463. Or latest edition: Introd. David Nicholls, Mariner, 2015 iSBN: 978-0544484092
Carr, J. L. A Month in the Country. Introd. Michael Holroyd. 1980; rpt. New York Review of Books, 2000. ISBN 0940322471
Ondaatje, Michael. The English Patient. New York: Vintage, 1992.
Swift, Graham. Last Orders. New York: Vintage, 1996.

From Patrick O’Connor and Simon Gray’s A Month in the Country: the protagoniss (Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth), and stationmaster preacher (Jim Carter)

Format: The class will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.

March 29th: 1st week: The politics of selling good books: history of the Booker Prize; we begin with Penelope Fitzgerald

April 5th: 2nd week: Penelope Fitzgerald’s Bookshop; we begin J. L. Carr and A Month in the Country: historical fiction

April 12th: 3rd week: A Month in the Country; clips from the film and discussion

April 19th: 4th week: A Month in the Country; Michael Ondaatje and context for The English Patient

April 26th: 5th week: Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient; clips from the film and discussion

May 3rd: 6th week: The English Partient; begin Graham Swift and post-modernity (Waterlands); Orders

May 10th: 7th week: Last Orders: alternating streams of consciousness; clips from film and discussion

May 17th: 8th week: Finish Last Orders; Return to Booker and other prizes; wide discussion for future courses reading books like these

From Fred Schepisi’s Last Orders (2004): Jack’s four friends (Ray Winston, David Hemminges, Bob Hoskins, Tim Courtney) on the pier, by the sea, and his wife, Amy (Helen Mirren) getting on the bus

Suggested supplementary reading & films:

Cooper, Pamela. Graham Swift’s Last Orders. NY: Continuum, 2002
English, James. “Winning the Culture Game: Prizes, Awards, and the Rules of Art,” New Literary History, 33:1 (Winter, 2002):109-135.
The English Patient. Dir. And Screenplay. Anthony Mingella. With Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliet Binoche ….. Miramax,1996
Gray, Simon. Old Flames and A Month in the Country: Two Screenplays. London: Faber and Faber, 1990
Huggan, Graham. “Prizing ‘otherness:’ A short history of the Booker,” Studies in the Novel, 29:3 (1997):412-33.
Kelly, Saul. The Lost Oasis: The Desert War and the Hunt for Zerzura: The True Story Behind the English Patient. Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 2002.
Last Orders. Dir and Screenplay. Fred Schepisi. With Helen Mirren, Bob Hoskins, Michael Caine … Sony, 2004.
Lee, Hermione. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. New York: Vintage, 2014
Minghella, Anthony. The English Patient: The Screenplay. London: Methuen, 1997.
A Month in the Country. Dir. Patrick O’Connor. Screenplay Simon Gray. With Colin Firth, Patrick Malahide, Kenneth Branagh, Natasha Richardson …. Pennies from Heaven, 1987.
Moseley, Merritt. “Britain’s Booker Prize,” The Sewanee Review, 101:4 (1993):613-22.
Norris, Sharon. “The Booker Prize: A Bourdieusian Perspective,” Journal for Cultural Research, 10:2 (2006):139-58.
Rogers, Byron. The Last Englishman: A Life of J. L. Carr. London: Aurum, 2003.
Showalter, Elaine. “Coming to Blows over the Booker,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 48 (June 2002):42
Strongman, Luke. The Booker Prize and the Legacy of Empire. Netherlands: Rodopi, 2002.
Sutherland, J. A. Fiction and the Fiction Industry. London: Athlone Press, 1978.
Todd, Richard. Consuming Fictions: The Booker Prize and Fiction in Britain Today. London: Bloomsbury, 1996.

The sea and the desert …

Ellen

Pivotal City and County Victorian Novels: A spring syllabus

John O’Connor (1830-1889), Pentonville — looking west (1884)

A Syllabus

Household Words

The Cornhill with an illustration of Framley Parsonage by John Everett Millais as frontispiece

For a Study Group at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University
Literature and Language 641: Pivotal City and County Victorian Novels & Victorian Gothic
Day: Ten Monday early afternoons, 11:45 am to 1:15 pm
4801 Spring Valley Building, near American University main campus, Northwest, Washington DC
Dates: Classes start March 6th; last class May 8th, 2017.
Dr Ellen Moody

Description of Course

We’ll read 3 best-sellers: Gaskell’s North and South (1855), Trollope’s Framley Parsonage (1860), and Dickens’s “The Signalman” (1866) plus Margaret Oliphant’s ghost story, “The Library Window” (1896). Gaskell’s “Tale of Manchester Life,” published in Dickens’s highly politicized and socially concerned Household Words, is a radical graphic tale of the life of factory workers, based on a strike and time of near starvation and unmitigated depression, and by a woman. Trollope’s 4th Barsetshire concoction, commissioned by Thackeray at The Cornhill for its first series of issues made The Cornhill, which may be called the New Yorker of its day, enormously popular; Framley Parsonage was intensely as Downton Abbey: Gaskell said of it she wished he would go on writing it forever; she did not see why he should ever stop. FP, seen today also as a complacent pro-establishment book, is a Thackerayan ironic pleasure, wider ranging in its perspectives than is usually noted. Dickens’s short story, unrivaled as a psychological study over a response to machinery from an old world and gothic perspective was the Christmas tale his periodical, All the Year Round, is autobiographical, and was in 1976 adapted into a gem of a BBC film by Andrew Davies. Oliphant’s “Library Window” was serialized in Blackwood’s and is a self-reflexive account of authorship. We’ll explore how these fictions intersect with one another, mirror their shared era, and connect to our own.

Required Texts in the order we’ll read them:

Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, ed, intro. Patricia Holman. 2003: rpt of Penguin 1995 ed. ISBN: 9780140434248
Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage, ed. David Skilton and Peter Miles. Penguin 1986. ISBN 0140432132
Charles Dickens, “The Signalman,” found in The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens, ed. Peter Hanning. New York: Franklin Watts, 1983. Contains A Christmas Carol and several other gems, plus has original illustrations with stories. It is online in at least 3 places: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1289
http://commapress.co.uk/resources/online-short-stories/the-signalman-charles-dickens
Margaret Oliphant’s “Library Window,” https://archive.org/details/Four_Stories_of_the_Seen_and_Unseen. Or from Blackwood’s the first publication: https://archive.org/stream/blackwoodsmagazi159edinuoft#page/n5/mode/2up

John Constable (1776-1837), Stoke-by-Nayland (1835/6)

Format: Study group meetings will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion (essays mentioned will be sent by attachment or are on-line).

Mar 6th: In class: Introduction to course: the era, genres; shared themes. Introducing Gaskell: life & work; conflicts with her publisher Dickens

Medium range shot of Thornton’s cotton factory

Anna Maxwell Martin as Bessy Higgins (both from Sandy Welch’s North and South, BBC 2004)

Mar 13th: In class: Gaskell’s North and South, Chapters 1-17 (“Haste to the Wedding” through “What is a Strike?”
Mar 20th: In class: North and South, Chs 18-34 (“Like and Dislikes” through “False and True”. Beyond the novel, read for next time: Rosemarie Bodenheimer, North and South: A Permanent State of Change,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 34:3 (1979):281-301
Mar 27th: North and South, Chs 35-end (“Expiation” through “Pack Cloudes Away”); . Beyond the novel, for next time Michael D. Lewis, “Mutiny in the Public Sphere Debating Naval Power in Parliament, the Press, and Gaskell’s North and South, Victorian Review, 36:1 (2010):89-113.
Apr 3rd: We begin with clips from the BBC 2004 North and South (scripted by Sandy Welch) and discuss the film adaptation. Then Introducing Trollope: life & works; the Barsetshire series and The Cornhill; read for next time: Trollope’s Framley Parsonage, Chapters 1-15 (or Instalments 1-5, “Omnes Omnia bona dicere” to “Lady Luftons Ambassador.”

Michael Sadleir’s Barsetshire drawn by a sketch made by Trollope

The Geroulds’ map of just Framley Parsonage

Apr 10th: Trollope’s Framley Parsonage, Instalments 1-5 (Chapters 1-15: “Omnes omnia bona dicere” to “Lady Lufton’s Ambassador”). For next time read Framley Parsonage, Instalments 6-11 (Chapters 16-33, “Mrs Podgens’ Baby” through “Consolation”); Andrew Maunderley, “Monitoring the Middle-Classes”: Intertextuality and Ideology in Trollope’s “Framley Parsonage and the Cornhill Magazine,” Victorian Periodicals Review (33:1, Cornhill Magazine II, Spring, 2000):44-64.
Apr 17th: Framley Parsonage, Instalments 6-11 (Chapters 16-33, “Mrs Podgens’ Baby” through “Consolation”). Read for next time Instalments 12-16 (Chapters 34-48, “Lady Lufton is taken by Suprise” to “How they all Married, had Two Children and Lived Happily Ever after.” Read also for next time, Stacey Margolis, Trollope for Americanists,” The Journal of Nineteenth-Century, 1:1 (2013):219-228; Mary Hamer, “Trollope’s First Serial Fiction,” The Review of English Studies, New Series, 26:102 (1975):154-170.
Apr 24th: Framley Parsonage, Instalments 12-16 (Chapters 34-48, “Lady Lufton is taken by Suprise” to “How they all Married, had Two Children and Lived Happily Ever after.” Full context for Trollope. Read for next time Dickens’s “The Signalman.” Read also Jill Matus, “Memory and Railway Disaster; The Dickensian Connection,” Victorian Studies 43:3 (Spring 2001):413-36

William Parrott (1813-69) The Great Eastern Under Construction at Millwall on the Isle of Dogs (1857)

May 1st: Introducing Dickens, Victorian gothic, the Christmas story; his life & work. For next time, watch YouTube of Signalman online (if you can); read for next time: Norris Pope, Dickens’s “The Signalman and Information Problems in the Railway Age,” Technology and Culture, 42:3 (July 2001):436-461′ Tamar Heller, “Women’s Reading and Writing in Margaret Oliphant’s ‘The Library Window=’,” Victorian Literature and Culture, 25:1 (1997):23-37
May 8th: Final discussion of all four texts, the mid-Victorian era, our authors.

Suggested supplementary (outside) reading (the assigned essays will be sent by attachment) and good sources:

Gerould, Winnifred and James. A Guide to Trollope: An Index of the characters and places and digests of the plots of all Trollope’s novels. Princeton UP, 1948.
Halperin, John. Trollope and Politics: A Study of the Pallisers and others. NY: Macmillan, 1977.
Hughes, Linda and Michael Lund. Victorian Publishing and Mrs Gaskell’s Work. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999.
Kaplan, Fred. Dickens: A Biography. New York: Wm Morrow, 1988.
Nayder, Lillian. The Other Dickens: A life of Catherine Dickens. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2011.
Overton, Bill. The Unofficial Trollope. NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1982.
Sadleir, Michael. Trollope: a commentary. 1961: rpt London: Constable, 1927.
Snow, C. P. Trollope: An Illustrated Biography. New York: New Amsterdam, 1975.
Steinbach, Susie L. Understanding the Victorians: Culture and Society in 19th Century Britain. London: Routledge, 2012.
Stoneman, Patsy. Elizabeth Gaskell. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. Very good short life and works.
Uglow, Jenny. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1993. The best.
Williams, Merryn. Margaret Oliphant: A Critical Biography. London: St Martin’s Press, 1986.

Films:

The Signalman. Dir. Lawrence Gordeon Clark. Screenplay Andrew Davies. Producer: Rosemary Hill. Featuring Denholm Elliot and Bernard Lloyd. BBC, 1976.

Barchester Chronicles. A 7-part BBC mini-series, 1983. Dr. Gilles. Scripted Alan Plater. Featuring Donald Pleasance, Nigel Hawthorne, Alan Rickman, Eleanor Mawe, Barbara Flynn, Susan Hampshire, Geraldine McEwan, Clive Swift
Dr Thorne. A 3 part IVT mini-series, 2016. Dr Niall McCormick. Scripted Julian Fellowes. Featuring Tom Hollander, Ian McShame, Stephani Martini, Phoebe Nicholls, Richard McCabe, Rebecca Front.
North and South. Dir. Brian Perceval. Screenplay: Sandy Welch. Producer: Kate Bartlett. Featuring Richard Armitage, Daniela Denby-Ashe, Brendan Coyle, Anna Maxwell Martin, Sinead Cusack, Tim Piggott-Smith, Pauline Quirk, Lesley Manville. BBC, 2004.

Beyond “The Signalman,” Dickens published much of his own fiction there: you see the 1st Instalment of A Tale of Two Cities

Ellen Moody

Trollope’s Small House at Allington: Another summer syllabus

Vignette for “Mr Crosbie meets an old clergyman on his way to Courcy Castle” (John Everett Millais, Chapter 6 of The Small House at Allington)

A Syllabus

The Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at George Mason University
Day: 6 Wednesdays, 11:50 am to 1:15 pm, Tallwood, 4210 Roberts Road, Fairfax
Dates: June 15 – July 20.
Dr Ellen Moody

Description of Course

Trollope’s own late map of Barsetshire, which indicates where to place Allington (look at top lefthand corner: Allington is between Silverbridge station and Guestwick Village)

Barsetshire 5: Trollope’s Small House at Allington

Geroulds’ map of Allington

We will read The Small House at Allington and Trollope’s short story, “The Parson’s Daughter at Oxney Colne.” Rumor hath it (she isn’t always treacherous) this ripely-mature psychologically subtle novel is still cited when someone asks, “Which Trollope novel should I read first?”, and it’s one that has never fallen out of print. I encourage those who take this course to first watch the 1983 BBC mini-series, Barchester Chronicles and read Dr Thorne (Barsetshire 3) before the course begins. Alas the recent ITV mini-series, Dr Thorne (by Julian Fellowes is poor and Framley Parsonage (Barsetshire 4) has never been filmed. Trollope himself resisted including The Small House in the first publication of the whole Barsetshire series, so an attempt will be made to see the book in the context of his wider oeuvre, and time permits but one great relevant short story of the parson’s daughter (set in Devonshire), will enable us to see its themes more clearly from the different setting. The usual Barsetshire semi-comic resolution in both The Small House and “The Parson’s Daughter” is derailed entirely with the London world so aggressive that the conflicts in failure and price of success for a kind of existence (wealthy, powerful, prestigious) rip apart the earlier fractured pastoral world – for our uncomfortable contemporary consideration. We will also have Millais’s delicately beautiful illustrations to look at. Please have read “The Parson’s Daughter of Oxney Colne” before term begins. 6 weeks.

Required: Anthony Trollope, The Small House at Allington, ed. Dinah Birch. London: Penguin, 1984. Also excellent intro in previous Oxford SHA, ed. James Kincaid ISBN 0192815520; and essay in back of Everyman SHA, ed. David Skilton (“Trollope and His Critics”) ISBN 9460877944

To view all Millais’s full page illustrations and vignette, go to Project Gutenberg.

The bull (Millais, “Lord de Guest at Home,” Ch 22)

For “The Parson’s Daughter of Oxney Colne,” there are on-line etexts:

The Literature Network
From The University of Adelaide collected edition of Trollope

Also recommended “A Journey to Panama”
University of Adelaide collected edition of Trollope

If you’re wanting to read more Trollope, “Parson’s Daughter” and “A Journey to Panama” both are also found in the superb Anthony Trollope: Early Short Stories, ed. notes John Sutherland. NY: Oxford, 1994. ISBN 019282984

Lady Alexandria and her mother pick out the carpets as Crosbie watches: “That won’t do” (Millais, “Preparations,” Ch 40)

Format: Study group meetings will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.

June 15: Trollope’s life, career; 1st 4 Barsetshires books; “The Parson’s Daughter.”
June 22: SHA, Chs 1-12: “Squire of Allington” to “Lilian Dale … a Butterfly”
June 29: SHA, Chs 13-24: “Guestwick” to “A Mother & Father-in-law”; read also McMaster on “The Unfortunate Moth.”
July 6: SHA, Chs 25-36: “Adolphus Crosbie spends an Evening at his Club” to “‘See the conquering hero, comes!'”; read also Turner on The Small House & the Cornhill
July 13: SHA, Chs 37-48: “Old Man’s Complaint” to “Nemesis” and “Trollope’s “A Journey to Panama.”
July 20: SHA, Chapters 49-60, “Wedding” to end; read also Gilead on “Trollope’s Orphans.”

Johnny talks to Lady Julia: “She has refused me and it is all over” (Millais, “The Second Visit,” Ch 54)

Suggested outside reading and sources (articles will be sent by attachment) and two films:

Barchester Chronicles. BBC mini-series, 1983. Dr. Gilles. Script Alan Plater. Featuring Donald Pleasance, Nigel Hawthorne, Alan Rickman, Susan Hampshire.
Bareham, Tony, ed. The Barsetshire Novels: A Casebook. London: Macmillan, 1983.
Dr Thorne. ITV mini-series, 2016. Dr.Niall McCormick. Script Julian Fellowes. Featuring Tom Hollander, Stephanie Martini
Gerould, Winifred Gregory and James Thayer. A Guide to Trollope: Index to Characters and Places, Digests of Plots. Princeton UP, 1987.
Gilead, Sarah. “Trollope’s Orphans and ‘the Power of Adequate Performance,” Texas Studies in Language and Literature, 27:1 (1985):86-105.
McDonald, Susan Peck. Anthony Trollope. Boston: Twayne, 1987.
McMasters, Juliet. “The Unfortunate Moth: The Unifying Theme of The Small House at Allington, Nineteeth Century Fiction, 26:2 (1962):127-44
Overton, Bill. The Unofficial Trollope. NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1982.
Snow, C. P. Trollope: An Illustrated Biography. New York: New Amsterdam, 1975.
Turner, Mark. “Gendered Issues: Intertextuality and The Small House at Allington in Cornhill Magazine, Victorian Periodicals Review, 26:4 (1993):228-34

Ford Madox Brown (1821-93), Hampstead from my Window

On-line group readings and blogs:

From my website on Anthony Trollope
A group reading of The Warden
A blog on Barsetshire Towers
Shoverdosing on Barchester Chronicles: the BBC mini-series
Dr Thorne
Julian Fellowes’s Unwitting Dr Thorne: not quite hijacked by the elite
Framley Parsonage
A group reading of The Small House at Allington

Tom Hollander as a film Dr Thorne (he is right for the part as written in the book)

Framley Parsonage: A Summer Syllabus

John Constable, St Paul’s Cathedral — a landscape

A Syllabus

For a Study Group at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at George Mason University
Day: Six Thursday mornings, 11:50 to 1:15 pm, Tallwood, 4210 Roberts Road. Fairfax
Dates: Classes start June 18th; last day July 23rd.
Dr Ellen Moody

Description of Course

Framley Parsonage has been looked at as the crucial novel which transformed Trollope’s career and made him a central novelist for Victorian middle-class readers. The novel was felt to give “a strong impression of life as it was really lived at the time.” Elizabeth Gaskell, a fellow novelist, wrote: “I wish Mr Trollope would go on writing Framley Parsonage forever, and as serialized in the Cornhill, illustrations by John Everett Millais, it helped make the magazine: “How good this Cornhill Magazine is!” Elizabeth Barrett Browning exclaimed, “Anthony Trollope is really superb.” We will look at novel, its illustrations, its place in Trollope’s life and career, how it anticipates Trollope’s next famous series, The Pallisers. 6 weeks.

Required Text: Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage, ed., introd., notes David Skilton and Peter Miles. London: Penguin, 1984.

Format: Study group meetings will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.

June 18th: Introduction; Trollope’s life, career up to the Barsetshire books; the first three Barsetshire novels.
June 25th: FP, pp 1-108, Chapters 1-7: “Omnes omnia bona dicere” to “Sunday Morning”
July 2nd: FP, pp 109-224, Chapters 8-17: “Gatherum Castle” to “Mrs Proudie’s Conversazione”
July 9th: FP, pp 225-334, Chapters 18-27: “The New Minister’s Patronage to South Audley Street”
July 16th: FP, pp. 335-432, Chapters 28-36: “Dr Thorne” to “Kidnapping at Hogglestock”
July 23rd: FP, pp. 433-563, Chapters 37-48: ” Mr Sowerby Without Company” to “How They All Were Married”

Suggested outside reading and sources (articles will be sent by attachment):

Barchester Chronicles. A 7-part BBC mini-series, 1983. Dr. Gilles. Scripted Alan Plater. Featuring Donald Pleasance, Nigel Hawthorne, Alan Rickman, Eleanor Mawe, Barbara Flynn, Susan Hampshire, Geraldine McEwan, Clive Swift
Bareham, Tony, ed. The Barsetshire Novels: A Casebook. London: Macmillan, 1983.
Edwards, P.D. “The Boundaries of Barset” in Anthony Trollope: His Art and Scope. Lucia: University of Queensland, 1977.
Gerould, Winifred Gregory and James Thayer. A Guide to Trollope: An Index to the Characters and Places, an Digests of the Plots, in All of Trollope’s Works. 1948: rpt. Princeton UP, 1987.
Hamer, Mary. “Trollope’s First Serial,” Review of English Studies, New Series, 26:02 (1975):154-70.
Maunder, Andrew. “Monitoring the Middle-Classes”: Intertextuality and Ideology in Trollope’s “Framley Parsonage and the Cornhill Magazine,” Victorian Periodicals Review (33:1, Cornhill Magazine II, Spring, 2000):44-64.
Margolis, Stacey, “Trollope for Americanists,” Journal of 19th century American Literature, 1:2 (2103):219-228 [on why people enjoy Framley Parsonage so much].
McDonald, Susan Peck. Anthony Trollope. Boston: Twayne, 1987.
Overton, Bill. The Unofficial Trollope. NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1982.
Snow, C. P. Trollope: An Illustrated Biography. New York: New Amsterdam, 1975.

Barsetshire as drawn by Trollope and redesigned by Michael Sadleir (click on image to enlarge it)

On-line group readings:

From my website on Anthony Trollope
A group reading of The Warden
A blog on Barsetshire Towers
A blog on Dr Thorne
A group reading of Framley Parsonage

Framley as drawn by Winifred Gregory and James Thayer Gerould (click on image to enlarge it)

The Poldark Novels in Context: A Syllabus

Winston Graham and Garrick, still a puppy, at Perranporth Beach

A Syllabus

For a Study Group at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University
Day: Ten Monday afternoons, 1 to 2:50 pm, Temple Baptist Church
Dates: Classes start Mar 2nd; last day May 4th.
Dr Ellen Moody

Description of Course

In this course we’ll read Winston Graham’s first three Poldark novels: Ross Poldark, Demelza, Jeremy Poldark. These plus a fourth, Warleggan, were the novels adapted for the first season of televised Poldark (1974-75), and the matter for the coming Poldark mini-series (to be televised in the UK starting March 2015 and on American PBS channels starting in June 2015). They represent the first phase of a 12 novel roman fleuve, a regional romance continuing story, deeply researched and imaginatively realized historical novels moving from the time of the American and then French revolution and reform and politically radical movements in England to just after the end of the Napoleonic era, including the realities of county politics, mining, banking, smuggling (known locally as free trade) and farming in Cornwall. Written 1945-52, the first four mirror issues of the post World-War II world, are proto-feminist, with a deeply appealing group of characters from all classes in a realistic and romantic suspenseful stories. We will read four short essays on historical culture, Cornwall, and sex and politics in the novels, and see two episodes of the 1975-77 mini-series. It is suggested that students read one of Graham’s mysteries before the class begins. I choose The Forgotten Story [alternative title: The Wreck of the Grey Cat] since it is also set in Cornwall (1898), was written around the time of Ross Poldark, and filmed as a BBC mini-series (1983). Graham won many awards (he’s OBE) and praise from the literary establishment for his mysteries, several of which were filmed by Hitchcock (e.g., Marnie); many of his novels were US Book-of-the-Month Club selections.

Required Texts. Students are asked to bring a copy of the novel and/or essays we are discussing for the week to class. An online copy, a pdf and 2 Xeroxes of the (short) essays are provided; any edition of the books will do.

Graham, Winston. Ross Poldark: A Novel of Cornwall, 1783-87. Illinois: Sourcebook, 2009.
—————. Demelza: A Novel of Cornwall, 1788-90. Illinois: Sourcebook, 2010.
—————. Jeremy Poldark: A Novel of Cornwall, 1790-91. London Panmacmillan, 2008
—————. Warleggan: A Novel of Cornwall, 1792-93. London: Panmacmillan, 2008.
Moody, Nickianne. “Poldark Country and National Culture,” from Cornwall: The Cultural construction of a Place (a xerox will be provided);
Moody, Ellen. “‘I have the right to choose my own life:’ Liberty in the Poldark Novels,” on-line my website.
Taddeo, Julie. “Rape in the Poldark Narrative,” from Upstairs and Downstairs (a xerox will be provided).
Moseley, Rachel. “‘It’s a Wild Country. Wild … Passionate … Strange’: Poldark and the Place-Image of Cornwall,” From Visual Culture in Britain (a xerox will be provided).

Click on map to make larger: the imagined map of Poldark country is placed on top of the real Cornwall

Format: Study group meetings will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.

March 2nd: Introduction: Winston Graham, life, career, as a mystery writer, e.g., The Forgotten Story
March 9th: Historical Novels; Ross Poldark: pp 1-115 or Prologue, and Book 1, Chs 1-10
March 16th: Ross Poldark, pp. 116-225 or Book 1, Chs 11-18, and Book 2, Chs 1-7
March 23rd: Ross Poldark, pp 226-314, Book 2, Chs 8, Book 3, Chs 1-11
March 30th: Demelza, Book 1, Chs 1-15; Nickianne Moody’s essay
April 6th: Demelza, Book 2, Chs 1-14; Ellen Moody’s essay
April 13th: Demelza, Book 3, Chs 1-11; an episode from the mini-series.
April 20th: Demelza, Book 4, Chs 1-11; Rachel Moseley’s essay
April 27th: Jeremy Poldark; Book 1, Chs 1-14: Julie Taddeo’s essay
May 4th: Jeremy Poldark; Book 2, Chs 1-14; began Warleggan.
May 11th: Warleggan as a final book of a 4 book cycle

Suggested reading and Viewing

Collins, Wilkie. Rambles beyond the Railways; Notes on Cornwall taken a-Foot. Dodo Press. n.d.
Graham, Winston. The Forgotten Story. Oxford: Bodley Head, 1964.
—————. Poldark’s Cornwall. Oxford: Bodley Head, 1983.
—————. Memoirs of a Private Man. London: Panmacmillan, 2003
Hay Douglas, Peter Linebaugh, E. P. Thompson, et alia. Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in 18th century England. NY: Pantheon, 1975.
Poldark. Two 29 part mini-series, 1975-76, 1977-78. Various directors and writers, produced by Morris Barry and others. Featuring Robin Ellis and Angharad Rees, Jill Townsend, Ralph Bates, Paul Curran, Norma Steader, Richard Morahan
Porter, Roy and Dorothy. Patient’s Progress: Doctors and Doctoring in 18th century England. Stanford: StanfordUPress, 1989.
Waugh, Mary. Smuggling in Devon and Cornwall, 1700-1850 Newbery, Berkshire: Countryside Book, 1991.
Westland, Elia, ed. Cornwall: The cultural Construction of Place. Penzance: Patten Press, 1997.

Further on-line materials:

Authorized updated website on Graham, his life, novels, films.
The Poldark novels, and other fiction, non-fiction and films.
Winston Graham: lists of books, essays and other websites.

Godolphin House, Cornwall (used as Trenwith, the Poldark family home in 1975-76 BBC Poldark mini-series)

Ellen