Haywood's The History of Jenny and Jemmy Jessamy (1753) was translated into French by "L. M***" and published by Chez Maradan in 1797.
A short review of this edition appeared in the Journal typographique et bibliographique on 12 June 1797. I wasn't able to see this review when I was researching my Bibliography, but it is now on Google Books (here) so I thought I would transcribe and translate it. (And if anyone cares to improve on this translation I would be very much obliged!)
Journal typographique et bibliographique no. 32 (24 Prairial an 6 [12 June 1797]), 260–61:
Jemmy et Sophie, ou les Méprises de l’Amour; trad. de l'anglais, par L. M***. Très-jolie fig. (An 6). Prix, 3 fr. et 4 francs par la poste. Paris, Maradan, libraire, rue du Cimetière-André-des-Arcs.
Cette jolie production sort des presses du cit. Crapelet. Nous dirons de cet artiste, que son nom nous suffira pour faire l'éloge de l'exécution typographique, comme l'a si bien dit le Journal de Paris. Nous regrettons de ne pas connoitre l'artiste qui a gravé les caractères. Cependant nous pensons qu'ils ont été fondus par le cit. Lyon, rue St.-Jacques, ou gravés et fondus par le cit. Gando. Nous annoncerons de ce typographe une très-jolie édition des Voyages de Levaillant, dans notre prochain Numéro.
[This pretty production leaves the presses of citizen Crapelet. We will say “this artist,” that this description will be enough to praise the typographical execution, as the Journal de Paris said so well. We regret that we not discover the artist who engraved the characters. However, we think that they were forged by citizen Lyon, St. Jacques Street, or engraved and forged by citizen Gando. We will announce a very-pretty edition of the Voyages of Le Vaillant from this typographer, in our next Number.]
Monday, 3 January 2011
Not-Haywood Texts, Links etc
This post, providing links to texts that are NOT by Haywood, was replaced by a more comprehensive post in 2021: Works Falsely Attributed to Eliza Haywood .
[last updated 26 March 2022]
Thursday, 16 December 2010
What You Miss Online: text-bases vs microfilms
I have been working on an article on An Apology For The Conduct of Mrs Teresia Constantia Phillips (1748). Phillips (aka Con Phillips) does not have a Wikipedia page (shame on Wikipedia) but you will find a few details about her here.
My article is an account of the publication of Phillips's Apology. It was published in parts. Eighteen of them over the course of a few years. I mention this because, one aspect of my research has been trying to uncover newspaper advertisements for each Number. I started, of course, with the Burney Newspaper database.
It took a while to find a few advertisements, but once I was on the right track I refined, varied and repeated my search in a way that has rapidly become familiar to literary scholars. Below is the text of a typical advertisement (from Old England, 9 April 1748):
AN APOLOGY for the Conduct of Mrs TERESIA CONSTANTIA PHILLIPS; more particularly that Part of it which relates to her Marriage with an Eminent Dutch Merchant: The Whole authenticated by faithful Copies of his Letters, and of the Settlement which he made upon her to Induce her to suffer (without any real Opposition on her Part) a Sentence to be Pronounced against their Marriage; together with such other Original Papers, filed in the Cause, as are necessary to illustrate that remarkable Story.
To be had at her House in Craig’s Court, Charing Cross; where all Booksellers may be supplied, with the usual Allowances; and to prevent Imposition, each Book will be signed with her own Hand.
N.B. Whoever presumes to pirate this, or any of the following Numbers, will be prosecuted with the utmost Rigor of the Law, being duly enter’d at Stationers Hall.
No. II. will be publish’d on Monday the 25th Instant.
It is amazing how few advertisements you find if you search for "Teresia Constantia Phillips" or "Apology for the Conduct"—none in fact. This is because the Burney database search-engine doesn't cope well with caps. So you have to search for words not in caps. Or in italic, that also doesn't work well either. Oh, or words that start with a lower-case s, or contain a medial s (that is, a long-esse, the one that looks like an "f"). Or multi-word searches. Otherwise it is great!
Keeping this in mind, and—as I said—refining, varying and repeating my search, I found sixty-six advertisements using these seven search terms
Mrs Phillips = 26
Teresia = 11
Apology = 11
Phillips's Apology = 7
Fair Penitent = 7
Dutch Merchant = 3
Metzotinto = 1
Of course, I used other terms too, but didn't find anything that had not already been discovered using the above terms. That is, other searches only threw up duplicates. I was pretty happy with what I found, and was able to write the first draft of my article on the basis of these advertisements.
But, having satisfied myself that this was all I was going to find on the Burney database, I then turned to the microfilm series on which the Burney database is founded. It is time-consuming and—frankly—unpleasant work, but by searching for advertisements in just a single newspaper title I found a further fifty-four advertisements. Important advertisements, which added enormously to my article. (Including the advertisements for a Dutch translation of Phillip's Apology!)
Which is the reason for the title to this post. And this warning: if you rely on text-bases like EEBO, ECCO, and Burney, you will almost certainly miss at least half of the material you are looking for. I say this confidently because the microfilm search I conducted could be expanded to other newspapers to discover even more material.
And this is why, tedious as it is, it is still necessary to search the microfilms that text-bases like the Burney Newspaper database are generated from. And it is also why, expensive and seemingly redundant as they are, it is still necessary for genuine research libraries to buy and keep the microfilms that these text-bases are generated from!
My article is an account of the publication of Phillips's Apology. It was published in parts. Eighteen of them over the course of a few years. I mention this because, one aspect of my research has been trying to uncover newspaper advertisements for each Number. I started, of course, with the Burney Newspaper database.
It took a while to find a few advertisements, but once I was on the right track I refined, varied and repeated my search in a way that has rapidly become familiar to literary scholars. Below is the text of a typical advertisement (from Old England, 9 April 1748):
On Monday next will be published,
(Price One Shilling)
The First Number of
(Price One Shilling)
The First Number of
AN APOLOGY for the Conduct of Mrs TERESIA CONSTANTIA PHILLIPS; more particularly that Part of it which relates to her Marriage with an Eminent Dutch Merchant: The Whole authenticated by faithful Copies of his Letters, and of the Settlement which he made upon her to Induce her to suffer (without any real Opposition on her Part) a Sentence to be Pronounced against their Marriage; together with such other Original Papers, filed in the Cause, as are necessary to illustrate that remarkable Story.
Were ye, ye Fair, but cautious whom ye trust,
Did ye but know how seldom Fools are just,
So many of your sex would not in vain.
Of broken Vows, and faithless Men, complain;
Of all the various Wretches Love has made,
How few have been by Men on Sense betray’d?
Rowe’s Fair Penitent.
Did ye but know how seldom Fools are just,
So many of your sex would not in vain.
Of broken Vows, and faithless Men, complain;
Of all the various Wretches Love has made,
How few have been by Men on Sense betray’d?
Rowe’s Fair Penitent.
To be had at her House in Craig’s Court, Charing Cross; where all Booksellers may be supplied, with the usual Allowances; and to prevent Imposition, each Book will be signed with her own Hand.
N.B. Whoever presumes to pirate this, or any of the following Numbers, will be prosecuted with the utmost Rigor of the Law, being duly enter’d at Stationers Hall.
No. II. will be publish’d on Monday the 25th Instant.
It is amazing how few advertisements you find if you search for "Teresia Constantia Phillips" or "Apology for the Conduct"—none in fact. This is because the Burney database search-engine doesn't cope well with caps. So you have to search for words not in caps. Or in italic, that also doesn't work well either. Oh, or words that start with a lower-case s, or contain a medial s (that is, a long-esse, the one that looks like an "f"). Or multi-word searches. Otherwise it is great!
Keeping this in mind, and—as I said—refining, varying and repeating my search, I found sixty-six advertisements using these seven search terms
Mrs Phillips = 26
Teresia = 11
Apology = 11
Phillips's Apology = 7
Fair Penitent = 7
Dutch Merchant = 3
Metzotinto = 1
Of course, I used other terms too, but didn't find anything that had not already been discovered using the above terms. That is, other searches only threw up duplicates. I was pretty happy with what I found, and was able to write the first draft of my article on the basis of these advertisements.
But, having satisfied myself that this was all I was going to find on the Burney database, I then turned to the microfilm series on which the Burney database is founded. It is time-consuming and—frankly—unpleasant work, but by searching for advertisements in just a single newspaper title I found a further fifty-four advertisements. Important advertisements, which added enormously to my article. (Including the advertisements for a Dutch translation of Phillip's Apology!)
Which is the reason for the title to this post. And this warning: if you rely on text-bases like EEBO, ECCO, and Burney, you will almost certainly miss at least half of the material you are looking for. I say this confidently because the microfilm search I conducted could be expanded to other newspapers to discover even more material.
And this is why, tedious as it is, it is still necessary to search the microfilms that text-bases like the Burney Newspaper database are generated from. And it is also why, expensive and seemingly redundant as they are, it is still necessary for genuine research libraries to buy and keep the microfilms that these text-bases are generated from!
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
The Byronic Heroine
I finished reading Atara Stein's The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction, and Television last night. And, well, I have to say I was very disappointed in the book. So disappointed I went looking for other reviews and—having not found one—wrote my own for Amazon (here and below). I wanted to be able to direct my students to a recent account of some pop-culture Byronic Heroes, but I am going to have to keep searching.
The main problem with this book is probably the inability of essentialist feminism to deal with characters who disrupt gender stereotypes, but the most obvious problem is the fact that Stein is never clear about who is responsible for either the characters and actions or responses she is making observations about.
Stein tends not to talk about authorial or directorial intention, she criticises characters and plots as if they came into being independent of authors, publishers, producers, studios etc and there is no discussion of genre expectations in cinema even, though the book is about genre expectation in literature. Stein also tends to be silent about reader/viewer response, though the essentialist arguments she quotes depend on this.
If a female character uses violence to protect herself, is she necessarily masculinised/de-feminised? If a character is briefly depicted in her underwear, is she necessarily feminised/sexualised/weakened? The critics quoted here believe, yes necessarily, and that the female character briefly depicted in her underwear is thereby shown to be vulnerable: that a (male) viewer cannot help but have a sexual response to this depiction, and that his response re-inscribes the character's position as object/victim of the viewing male.
The possibility is not considered that a female viewer may have a sexual response, a male may not have one, or that such a response from either a male or a female does not necessarily inscribe the character in a position as object/victim, that the fictional female concerned may be indifferent—in her fictional universe—to the response of others, seeks, welcomes or is empowered by the response or is perfectly capable of defending herself from any form of unwanted attention or aggression. In the context, some of these are even more implausible than the arguments that Stein presents, but the fact is that only one possibility is considered.
If we are not talking about the character's fictional universe, then the argument must be articulated that briefly depicting a female in her underwear cannot help but lead to a sexual response in viewing males, and that this response re-inscribes the position of all real women as object/victim. Again, the possibility is not considered that a female cinema-goer may be indifferent to the response of others, seeks, welcomes or is empowered by the response, or is perfectly capable of defending herself from any form of unwanted attention or aggression.
When I read this sort of criticism I find myself wanting to ask the writer: how is a fictional female to protect herself—as a female and in a way that does not inscribe her in a position as either object/victim or masculinised/de-feminised? In fact, how is a powerful fictional female to be depicted at all?
And how can any sort of feminist criticism value the male response (assumed to be sexual, and assumed to be violent and predatory) over the female one? Do a few seconds of (hetro-male) "fan service" negate the overwhelming Grrl-power message of a film? In the case of the Alien franchise, a Grrl-power message that was enthusiastically embraced and has subsequently reappeared many times over. Is the ultimate argument, that the good these film do over-balanced by the evil that they perpetrate?
Stein's answer seems to be yes, the good is over-balanced. Which brings me to Stein's broader argument: that escapist cinema makes film-viewers into drones who are more obedient and accepting of their lot, that escapist cinema drains our collective bile. That the portrayal of characters like Ripley is intended to re-inscribe conventional gender roles and keep women passive/weakened.
The problem is, this argument really only works if you can establish that characters like Ripley are either intended to be, or are perceived to be, unappealing, or that their fate is either intended to be, or are perceived to be, an object lesson in how not to behave. Since neither the intentions of the film-makers (broadly considered) nor the response of the film goers (broadly considered) are considered at all then Stein's argument simply cannot be successful. She does not even articulated her argument this clearly.
My Amazon review:
First up: this book is *full* of typos, outrageous ones, ones that every text-editing program (like Word) would pick up. This suggests that nobody at SIUP was paying any attention when this book went to press … which may explain how this book got published at all in its present form.
I am intensely interested in this topic, so I found the first couple of chapters useful, even though I disagreed with many of the arguments and claims.
However, I was simply bored by the sections on The Crow and Anne Rice’s vampires, and bored to tears by the sections on Neil Gailmon's Dream and Star Trek's Q. The chapters on these characters do not have a clear over-arching argument and there is no over-view of the characters and plot-lines, just an endless series of observations, some of which are contradictory, some of which are implausible or wrong-headed, and many of which are simply repetitive.
The wost section is undoubtedly the one I was most interested in -- the one I bought the book for -- on the Byronic Heroine. Stein wants to mount a feminist argument against the Terminator and Alien films, but seems unsure how to do it, so she simply attacks the film from every direction and quotes -- approvingly -- some of the asinine arguments I have ever read.
The nadir is reached on pages 199 and 200 where Sarah Connor, from the Terminator films, is criticised because she "emulat[s] her culture's icon of heroic behaviour: the violent male outlaw …. It does not occur to her to adopt a creed of nonviolence." (199) [Well, *that* would be a short action film!] And when Ellen Ripley, from the Alien films, returns to her hyper-sleep-bed-thing at the end of one film, we are informed that this brief glimpse of her in her underwear:
[1] re-feminises her;
[2] makes her “a vulnerable sex object”;
[3] and therefore “a potential victim for men”; a potential realised in the mind of one critic
[4] who fantasises “sexual violence can bring the uppity Ripley down” and therefore concludes
[5] that the scene is intended as “a warning to female viewers.”
That’s right: simply show that you have legs and you inscribe yourself as an inevitable rape victim. Apparently this message is so loud and clear that the simple act of showing Ripley’s legs drowns out the you-go-girl message implicit in depicting a woman who has saved herself (and human kind) by single-handedly annihilating a nest of the most terrifying aliens ever imagined.
Oh, and note that these two films are related (thematically?) to Catherine from Wuthering Heights and Eustacia from The Return of the Native. I believe the phrase is “drawing a long bow.”
Whatever merit some of these arguments have—and as a card-carrying feminist I do agree with some of the observations on inscribing gender—it annoys me to see such sloppy thinking, contradictory, implausible or wrong-headed arguments, masquerading as “feminism.”
I will not be recommending this book to my students.
The main problem with this book is probably the inability of essentialist feminism to deal with characters who disrupt gender stereotypes, but the most obvious problem is the fact that Stein is never clear about who is responsible for either the characters and actions or responses she is making observations about.
Stein tends not to talk about authorial or directorial intention, she criticises characters and plots as if they came into being independent of authors, publishers, producers, studios etc and there is no discussion of genre expectations in cinema even, though the book is about genre expectation in literature. Stein also tends to be silent about reader/viewer response, though the essentialist arguments she quotes depend on this.
If a female character uses violence to protect herself, is she necessarily masculinised/de-feminised? If a character is briefly depicted in her underwear, is she necessarily feminised/sexualised/weakened? The critics quoted here believe, yes necessarily, and that the female character briefly depicted in her underwear is thereby shown to be vulnerable: that a (male) viewer cannot help but have a sexual response to this depiction, and that his response re-inscribes the character's position as object/victim of the viewing male.
The possibility is not considered that a female viewer may have a sexual response, a male may not have one, or that such a response from either a male or a female does not necessarily inscribe the character in a position as object/victim, that the fictional female concerned may be indifferent—in her fictional universe—to the response of others, seeks, welcomes or is empowered by the response or is perfectly capable of defending herself from any form of unwanted attention or aggression. In the context, some of these are even more implausible than the arguments that Stein presents, but the fact is that only one possibility is considered.
If we are not talking about the character's fictional universe, then the argument must be articulated that briefly depicting a female in her underwear cannot help but lead to a sexual response in viewing males, and that this response re-inscribes the position of all real women as object/victim. Again, the possibility is not considered that a female cinema-goer may be indifferent to the response of others, seeks, welcomes or is empowered by the response, or is perfectly capable of defending herself from any form of unwanted attention or aggression.
When I read this sort of criticism I find myself wanting to ask the writer: how is a fictional female to protect herself—as a female and in a way that does not inscribe her in a position as either object/victim or masculinised/de-feminised? In fact, how is a powerful fictional female to be depicted at all?
And how can any sort of feminist criticism value the male response (assumed to be sexual, and assumed to be violent and predatory) over the female one? Do a few seconds of (hetro-male) "fan service" negate the overwhelming Grrl-power message of a film? In the case of the Alien franchise, a Grrl-power message that was enthusiastically embraced and has subsequently reappeared many times over. Is the ultimate argument, that the good these film do over-balanced by the evil that they perpetrate?
Stein's answer seems to be yes, the good is over-balanced. Which brings me to Stein's broader argument: that escapist cinema makes film-viewers into drones who are more obedient and accepting of their lot, that escapist cinema drains our collective bile. That the portrayal of characters like Ripley is intended to re-inscribe conventional gender roles and keep women passive/weakened.
The problem is, this argument really only works if you can establish that characters like Ripley are either intended to be, or are perceived to be, unappealing, or that their fate is either intended to be, or are perceived to be, an object lesson in how not to behave. Since neither the intentions of the film-makers (broadly considered) nor the response of the film goers (broadly considered) are considered at all then Stein's argument simply cannot be successful. She does not even articulated her argument this clearly.
* * * * *
My Amazon review:
First up: this book is *full* of typos, outrageous ones, ones that every text-editing program (like Word) would pick up. This suggests that nobody at SIUP was paying any attention when this book went to press … which may explain how this book got published at all in its present form.
I am intensely interested in this topic, so I found the first couple of chapters useful, even though I disagreed with many of the arguments and claims.
However, I was simply bored by the sections on The Crow and Anne Rice’s vampires, and bored to tears by the sections on Neil Gailmon's Dream and Star Trek's Q. The chapters on these characters do not have a clear over-arching argument and there is no over-view of the characters and plot-lines, just an endless series of observations, some of which are contradictory, some of which are implausible or wrong-headed, and many of which are simply repetitive.
The wost section is undoubtedly the one I was most interested in -- the one I bought the book for -- on the Byronic Heroine. Stein wants to mount a feminist argument against the Terminator and Alien films, but seems unsure how to do it, so she simply attacks the film from every direction and quotes -- approvingly -- some of the asinine arguments I have ever read.
The nadir is reached on pages 199 and 200 where Sarah Connor, from the Terminator films, is criticised because she "emulat[s] her culture's icon of heroic behaviour: the violent male outlaw …. It does not occur to her to adopt a creed of nonviolence." (199) [Well, *that* would be a short action film!] And when Ellen Ripley, from the Alien films, returns to her hyper-sleep-bed-thing at the end of one film, we are informed that this brief glimpse of her in her underwear:
[1] re-feminises her;
[2] makes her “a vulnerable sex object”;
[3] and therefore “a potential victim for men”; a potential realised in the mind of one critic
[4] who fantasises “sexual violence can bring the uppity Ripley down” and therefore concludes
[5] that the scene is intended as “a warning to female viewers.”
That’s right: simply show that you have legs and you inscribe yourself as an inevitable rape victim. Apparently this message is so loud and clear that the simple act of showing Ripley’s legs drowns out the you-go-girl message implicit in depicting a woman who has saved herself (and human kind) by single-handedly annihilating a nest of the most terrifying aliens ever imagined.
Oh, and note that these two films are related (thematically?) to Catherine from Wuthering Heights and Eustacia from The Return of the Native. I believe the phrase is “drawing a long bow.”
Whatever merit some of these arguments have—and as a card-carrying feminist I do agree with some of the observations on inscribing gender—it annoys me to see such sloppy thinking, contradictory, implausible or wrong-headed arguments, masquerading as “feminism.”
I will not be recommending this book to my students.
Thursday, 18 November 2010
Evidence of Impact, A Decade Later
Way back in August of 2000 (four years before I finished my PhD!) I contributed to a discussion on the C18-List prompted by an exchange between Ellen Moody and Betty Rizzo about whether Frances Burney ought to be called Fanny Burney today. To me, this is a simple feminist argument. We don't use familiar names for male writers (Billy Shakespeare anyone?), so why should we do so for female writers?
As one contributor observed "Questions on the meaning of Fanny in the 18th c. are central." So I passed a few of the posts onto my cousin James Lambert, a lexicographer with an encyclopedic knowledge of sexual slang. He replied at some length, but those who wanted to believe that Fanny had an obscene meaning in the eighteenth century remained unconvinced. The debate shifted to Fanny Hill (is the name a pun?), and the true believers cited more dubious scholarship.
Eventually, the debate wearied the list and it died out. James and I went away, read the articles mentioned, remained skeptical and—some months later—said so. But the debate was over. Nobody who believed that Fanny was an obscene pun in the eighteenth century was interested in debating the subject online.
Early in the debate, John Dussinger had asked: "Won't some brilliant person on this list write an essay on the use of 'Fanny' in our long period?" This seemed like an excellent idea, so James and I decided that is what we would do. The only problem was, we were both rather busy so … *cough* … it was March 2007 before I started working on my part of the article and March 2008 before the first draft of the article was ready for submission.
We sent it to Studies in Philology who sent it off for refereeing and in October 2010 they graciously accepted the article, agreeing to publish it in their first number of 2011. We have just sent off the final galley edits and, all going well, our article will be printed just over a decade after John posed his challenge.
When I was attempting to answer John's question, I realised that we needed to consult the original songbooks that provide the earliest evidence for the obscene use of the word Fanny (in the early nineteenth century). I was unable to do so because I do not live in London (the songbooks are in the British Library) and they have never been published in full.
So, I suggested to a colleague in musicology that we should propose to Pickering and Chatto a full edition of these bawdy songbooks. Pickering and Chatto were delighted with the idea, the proposal was accepted, work is now underway and this four-volume edited collection will be published in the first half of 2011.
A few months ago I filled in the final report for my ARC grant. I held off on doing this for as long as possible, because the central questions in that report concern "Research Outputs" and "Evidence of Impact." The only "Impact" that the ARC is interested in is the impact of your research on others, and so the "Evidence" and "Outputs" that the ARC are interested in take the form of published books, articles, chapters, reviews and citations of the same etc.
The ARC are not interested in anything that has been researched, written, submitted, or even accepted, only items that have been printed or are being printed now. All of which is well and good in its way, but you are supposed to submit this report on your global impact immediately, on the day your money stops!
When it can take a decade—as here—between the prompt for an article and its publication, and when it can take three years between the submission of an article and it being printed, there seems little chance that an ARC final report, submitted on the day your funding stops, will capture even a fraction of your "Research outputs" and, as for "Evidence of Impact," it could be years again before any of the arguments we have presented gain any traction.
Which is why questions like these seem so stupid. It is also why filling in reports, and answering questions like these, is so disheartening. I am terribly sorry, I only managed to get half a dozen conference papers presented, three articles published, an exhibition and an international conference organised, but according to the citation indexes compiled a day or two after these articles were published: nope, no impact.
This is also why, no doubt, it seems like anyone whose speech is not peppered with "affectless references to DEST points, citation indices, ERA rankings, ARC applications …" is either a failure or a radical who belongs to one of the "secretive cells of idealistic academics" that Joseph Gora and Andrew Whelan have written about here.
As one contributor observed "Questions on the meaning of Fanny in the 18th c. are central." So I passed a few of the posts onto my cousin James Lambert, a lexicographer with an encyclopedic knowledge of sexual slang. He replied at some length, but those who wanted to believe that Fanny had an obscene meaning in the eighteenth century remained unconvinced. The debate shifted to Fanny Hill (is the name a pun?), and the true believers cited more dubious scholarship.
Eventually, the debate wearied the list and it died out. James and I went away, read the articles mentioned, remained skeptical and—some months later—said so. But the debate was over. Nobody who believed that Fanny was an obscene pun in the eighteenth century was interested in debating the subject online.
Early in the debate, John Dussinger had asked: "Won't some brilliant person on this list write an essay on the use of 'Fanny' in our long period?" This seemed like an excellent idea, so James and I decided that is what we would do. The only problem was, we were both rather busy so … *cough* … it was March 2007 before I started working on my part of the article and March 2008 before the first draft of the article was ready for submission.
We sent it to Studies in Philology who sent it off for refereeing and in October 2010 they graciously accepted the article, agreeing to publish it in their first number of 2011. We have just sent off the final galley edits and, all going well, our article will be printed just over a decade after John posed his challenge.
When I was attempting to answer John's question, I realised that we needed to consult the original songbooks that provide the earliest evidence for the obscene use of the word Fanny (in the early nineteenth century). I was unable to do so because I do not live in London (the songbooks are in the British Library) and they have never been published in full.
So, I suggested to a colleague in musicology that we should propose to Pickering and Chatto a full edition of these bawdy songbooks. Pickering and Chatto were delighted with the idea, the proposal was accepted, work is now underway and this four-volume edited collection will be published in the first half of 2011.
* * * * *
A few months ago I filled in the final report for my ARC grant. I held off on doing this for as long as possible, because the central questions in that report concern "Research Outputs" and "Evidence of Impact." The only "Impact" that the ARC is interested in is the impact of your research on others, and so the "Evidence" and "Outputs" that the ARC are interested in take the form of published books, articles, chapters, reviews and citations of the same etc.
The ARC are not interested in anything that has been researched, written, submitted, or even accepted, only items that have been printed or are being printed now. All of which is well and good in its way, but you are supposed to submit this report on your global impact immediately, on the day your money stops!
When it can take a decade—as here—between the prompt for an article and its publication, and when it can take three years between the submission of an article and it being printed, there seems little chance that an ARC final report, submitted on the day your funding stops, will capture even a fraction of your "Research outputs" and, as for "Evidence of Impact," it could be years again before any of the arguments we have presented gain any traction.
Which is why questions like these seem so stupid. It is also why filling in reports, and answering questions like these, is so disheartening. I am terribly sorry, I only managed to get half a dozen conference papers presented, three articles published, an exhibition and an international conference organised, but according to the citation indexes compiled a day or two after these articles were published: nope, no impact.
This is also why, no doubt, it seems like anyone whose speech is not peppered with "affectless references to DEST points, citation indices, ERA rankings, ARC applications …" is either a failure or a radical who belongs to one of the "secretive cells of idealistic academics" that Joseph Gora and Andrew Whelan have written about here.
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