NB. NOW RESCHEDULED TO AN EVENING IN FEBRUARY 2013 – APOLOGIES FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE
What better way to spend a wintery Saturday afternoon than doing as Jane would have done: making the most of domestic entertainments as provided by the ‘variety shows’ of their day, the poetic miscellany.
Come along on Saturday 17th November to take part.
‘The Cheerful Companion’: a study day on poetry, music and performance in eighteenth-century poetic miscellanies will explore the varied world of eighteenth century poetic miscellanies, popular collections of verse, prose and music that were the main way in which many ordinary people consumed literature in the eighteenth century. With titles ranging from Laugh and be Fat to Elegant Extracts – a compilation known to modern readers, since it is read aloud in the Martin family household in Jane Austen’s Emma –, these collections provided something for everyone.
If we were able to step inside the parlours and drawing rooms of the eighteenth century, we’d find homes busy with home-made culture – book groups and tea table parties; amateur dramatics; groups of women reading and weeping their way through popular sentimental fiction; children stumbling through poems before their maiden aunts, and men at punch parties singing songs about dogs. We used to read and sing aloud, and we used to do it together, at home. Much of the material for these occasions was drawn from poetic miscellanies, and their contents give us a glimpse of that lost world of domestic culture and performance. Through them, we can see how, what and who people were reading at home, and how their sense of literary taste was shaped by the publishing market.
This study day will introduce the world of the poetic miscellany, with a series of short talks showing the ways in which reputations and texts were shaped by individual collections. There will also be an interactive session, in which participants will be able to explore the miscellanies within the Chawton House Library collection, and see for themselves how they presented verse for their early readers. It will conclude with a performance of music and readings taken from miscellanies, performed by the duo Alva (click to listen). In keeping with eighteenth-century practice, participants will also learn some simple, contemporary craft work while they listen.
The day will be led by Dr Abigail Williams, and by a team of researchers working on the Digital Miscellanies Index, a three year research project which will catalogue the contents of the 1200 or so poetic miscellanies published during the eighteenth century. For more information, see http://digitalmiscellaniesindex.org.