How to Succeed in the Victorian Literary Industry...

Over the past couple of months, I've checked out several non-fiction books on all sorts of topics that I imagine to be of interest to me -- Modernism! World War I and the arts! The history of children's literature! -- and have, without fail, been unable to finish a single one. Oh, it's not the subject's fault, and it's not really the author's; these are accomplished scholars, you know. Except that, well, "accomplished scholar" doesn't always translate to, er, "engaging writer." Intensive academic work in the field of English doesn't necessarily give one a gift for skillfully manipulating language or a strong sense of narrative; the Stephen Greenblatts of the world are rare. Sometimes the best person to write an insightful literary history is an outsider -- like someone with an academic background in political science and law! But of course!

I first read Daniel Pool's Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters: The Rows and Romances of England's Great Victorian Novelists in 1999, and reread it a few times after that, but haven't picked it up since 2002 or so. Ah, the joys of college. In any event, something put me in the mood for a little publishing history, so I started it again two days ago. If possible, I think I love it even more than I thought I did.

The novel as dominant form of popular entertainment really began to emerge in the early decades of Victoria's reign, the 1830s and '40s. (Novels had, of course, existed prior to this point, but, for various reasons outlined in the book, only began to gain genuine respectability as a literary form during this period.) And, like any good form of popular entertainment, the novel -- or, rather, the entire literary industry -- came with a great deal of delightful backstage drama. Pool, in his tremendously readable style, relates the stories of the industry's major players, dealing not only with authors such as Dickens and Marian Evans, AKA George Eliot, but also with key figures in the publishing world, like the painfully young [by which I mean, my age, but doing a job of actual importance] George Smith, champion, publisher, and object of unrequited affection of Charlotte Brontë, or the unscrupulous Mr. Newby, who was fond of selling his wares by confusing the public about issues of authorship and newspaper review attribution. So fond was he, in fact, of leading readers to believe that each latest novel was really written by some better-known author than it really was, that he resorted to printing critical comments such as these in the first edition of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

"The work is strangely original. It reminds us of Jane Eyre. The author is a Salvator Rosa with his pen." -- Britannia
"We strongly recommend all our readers who love novelty to get this story, for we can promise them they never read anything like it before. It is like Jane Eyre." -- Douglas Jerrold

Honestly, I can't fault Newby at all, because I'd reprint these gems of critical observation and total lack of irony, too.

Though, fond as I am of Newby's exploits, nay, of all Pool's stories, my heart belongs to the long, awkward saga of William Thackeray and Charlotte Brontë, who seemed to get herself caught up in these sorts of things far more than an introverted clergyman's daughter from the countryside really should have. The two authors initially had something of a mutual admiration society going on: she loved his work, he read Jane Eyre in a day, and she, in turn, wrote a fangirly dedication to him -- whom she had never met, it needs to be noted -- for the book's second edition. In a wonderfully unfortunate twist of fate, however, this dedication also led to the swift devolution of the whole lovefest. Thackeray, as it happened, had a mad wife who had been put away, was raising two young daughters, and relied on a governess for care of the girls. Jane Eyre was subtitled "An Autobiography," and the author's name, "Currer Bell," was known to be pseudonymous. You can see where I'm going with this. Thackeray was furious, Charlotte was mortified, and, well, I'll leave the rest for your own reading. Because you really, really need to read this book.

Really! If you're into Victorian novelists and scandal and all that. And who isn't? At least read it for statements like this:

Was it just Charlotte? Was it that publishers were so sexy? (94)

And for the fact that it would make a bloody good Masterpiece Theatre series, and if someone else doesn't someday adapt it, I will. Couldn't turn out any worse than last season's Billie Piper-miscasting, Jemma Redgrave-wasting Mansfield Park.

Beginning the World: Episode 5 - London, Part 1

So, ah, we suddenly found lots and lots of things to do in Cambridge and got a bit held up for a time. Yes, that's what happened. Nothing at all to do with my totally falling down on the blog job or anything silly like that. Really, now.

Last time, I promised that our next destination would be the "Ox" half of Oxbridge. Yeah, changed my mind about that one; now we're headed to London! For many weeks, I expect, as there are roughly 379 museums, churches, and otherwise historic sites I intend to explore! And those are just the ones that interest me most!

We'll begin our tour with a visit to what is arguably the world's greatest museum of decorative arts and design: the Victoria & Albert, which actually comprises three separate museums: the V&A proper, the Museum of Childhood, the currently online-only Theatre Collections. The V&A will be our first destination, and we're in luck: it wasn't terribly long ago that much of their deeply awesome website was under some sort of maintenance, but no more; every exhibition site, with all the online galleries and interactive design games contained therein, is now up and running again! Whee!

First up: Ideally, we'd have the option to time travel to 2010-11 to visit the Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes 1900-1939 and Aestheticism: Beauty in Art and Design 1860-1900 exhibits. For some peculiar reason or other, though, the V&A hasn't posted extensive online galleries for these yet. Imagine such a thing! One would think they'd at least have something set up for Magnificence of the Tsars, given that it opens this Wednesday and all, but nooo. Suppose we'll simply have to content ourselves with a little retrospective time travel, then.

Allow me to indulge my historical and aesthetic biases just a bit...

Modernism: Designing a new world 1914-1939 - I'm especially partial to the "Mapping Modernism" page, mainly because it's just fun to slide the little timeline arrow and wave the cursor over the dots indicating designers. I'm easily amused.

This one's already put in an appearance on this blog, way back in my second entry, but may as well post it again: International Arts and Crafts. Not only is there a whole lot of gorgeous among the Exhibition Highlights, but the site also offers a list and directions to nine notable Arts and Crafts-style buildings located in and around London, as well as a map of the museum's Arts and Crafts objects not part of the exhibition. Which doesn't mean much now, given that the exhibition took place in 2005, but it's still quite considerate of them.

Art Deco: 1910-1939. Lots of features here similar to those found on the other two sites, but there's also a quiz, which I aced before even reading through the site. Yay for useless knowledge of early twentieth-century design movements!

As much fun as these exhibition-specific sites may be, nothing at all compares to the time-wasting delight of this little page. For real. I've already created an album cover for my imaginary band (La Belle Indifference, in case anyone wanted to know, for which I provide the imaginary vocals, keyboards, and novelty percussion, and may or may not be fictionally involved with the non-existent guitarist); designed a ring; created my own Modernist poster; created an awfully pretty blue and brown tartan which the site never managed to e-mail me a link to, in spite of the option given to do so, which saddens me greatly, as it really was quite lovely, if totally inauthentic; and designed not one, but two textiles. Behold the result of my attempts at playing William Morris:

Textile 1

Textile 2

Thanks to V&A, it's easy to pretend to have actual artistic ability, even if in reality you can't even draw a straight line with a ruler and can only manage to cut fabric on an arc! Not that, um, anyone is really that lame with regard to spatial reasoning! Ha ha! *cough cough*

Once we've killed 6 or 7 hours with fake arts and crafts projects, it might be worth a trip to the V&A's Theatre Collections. The collections pages themselves are fairly underwhelming -- lots of promises of images that will be posted later this year or sometime in 2009 -- but the subjects page offers plenty of resources on all manner of theatre-related things, which is quite interesting. To me, at least, but that's the way this whole travel show works, isn't it? Mwa-ha-ha.

Next time: More London, I'm sure, but maybe I'd best not make any more promises about this sort of thing.