I have been on leave for four weeks. Before I went on leave I put in place an email notice that would alert people to the fact that I was on leave in the hope that they would let me … well, leave. Enjoy my holidays in peace and not expect me to answer my email immediately.
It didn't stop the flood of email, and it hasn't stopped everyone from expecting a reply to their email while I am on leave (i.e., expecting me to return to work). And some of the tasks I have been asked to perform are not simple ones, but time-consuming and tedious tasks. My leave could easily turn into Clayton's leave: "the holiday you have when you're not having a holiday."
Well, in the news today there is a story about Volkswagen blocking after-hours e-mails, which is described here as "a growing complaint in the workplace":
Volkswagen says it took steps to have its Blackberry servers stop sending e-mails to some of its off-duty employees who had complained. The company stops sending messages 30 minutes after the end of employees' shifts and resumes 30 minutes before the next shift starts, the BBC reported.
[…]
Volkswagen is not alone in hearing from employees who feel their employer is infringing on their personal time with after-hours e-mails, the BBC said.
"It's bad for the individual worker's performance being online and available 24-7," said Will Hutton, chairman of the Big Innovation Center at The Work Foundation. "You do need downtime, you do need periods in which you can actually reflect on something without needing instantaneously to give a reaction.
"Secondly, it has a poor impact on an individual's well-being. I think that one has to patrol quite carefully the borderline between work and non-work.
"So I can see why some firms are taking this action, the problem is that a universal response is impossible ... but certainly we should have the capacity to be opted out of it rather than be opted in."
The funny thing is, Monash is keen for its employees to take leave, partly because of the financial burden of carrying accumulated leave, but also because they recognise the benefit in terms of staff well-being. In fact, I have received a number of emails in the last few weeks telling me how good it would be for me to take the leave that I am on.
In fact, Monash are so insistent that you take your leave and not accumulate it that they will schedule you for leave whether you choose to take it or not. So, if you keep working through the period they have chosen for you, you simply lose the leave.
Of course, you can't take leave during the teaching period (26 weeks per year), or the exam period (eight weeks), or immediately before semester (six weeks), so there really is only about eight to ten weeks a year in which you can take leave. Which is now. So almost everyone is on leave at this time of year.
Which makes it even more strange/weird/bizarre/annoying/whatever that I (and other staff) continue to receive email demanding action at this time of year, while I/we/they are on leave. It is the sort of thing, you'd think, that the unions here would want action on.
So, starting today (which is when my new year starts) I am going to make renewed efforts to disentangle my work and personal email accounts, contacts etc, with the intention (this is sounding perilously close to a New Year's Resolution [and, therefore, doomed to failure]) of only reading and answering work email while I am at work.
Which will mean that, when I go on leave next time I won't have to work so hard to stay on leave—though I will face an even longer email backlog when I return from leave.
**And I realise that posting on my academic blog during my break may seem like work, but I ain't paid for it and I certainly get no credit for it (see here), so this is a hobby, not work!
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
Dutch Translation of The Female Spectator
An essay by Finny Bottinga published in the same year as my Bibliography of Eliza Haywood, but not seen by me until this morning (!), discusses a Dutch translation of The Female Spectator—a translation missing from my Bibliography. Rats. But kudos to Bottinga.
The essay is "Eliza Haywood's Female Spectator and its Dutch translation De Engelsche Spectatrice, in I Have Heard About You: Foreign Women's Writing Crossing the Dutch Border: From Sappho to Selma Lagerlöf, ed. Suzanna van Dijk (Hilversum, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2004), 217–24. (Now available online here, but no copy of this collection of essays is held in Australia, so I guess I can be forgiven for missing it.)
The identification of this translation was likely first made by Bottinga in her Masters thesis: Tea-Tables and Coffee-Houses: The Position of Eighteenth-Century Women in the Spectator, the Female Spectator and in the Dutch translations of these periodicals: A comparative study (MA thesis, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden 1996).
There appears to have been two editions of the translation (see here and here), the main details of which are
De Engelsche spectatrice of Britsche leermeesteresse der zeeden. Na den vyfden druk uit het Engelsch vertaalt (Te Amsterdam: by Jacobus Kok, in de Binne-Bantemerstraat, 1762-63), 4 vols [No.1 (1762)–no.17 (1763)]. Held EuNA [OK 62-9576-9578; OK 93-53 (dl III)].
De Engelsche spectatrice of Britsche leermeesteresse der zeeden. Na den vyfden druk uit het Engelsch vertaalt (Te Amsterdam: by Jacobus Kok, in de Lange Niesel, 1775), 2 vols. Held EuNA [OK 93-54-55].
The Bijzondere Collecties of the EuNA (Library of the University of Amsterdam) descriptions are not clear enough for me to distinguish issues and editions, but I will obviously have to take a visit of Amsterdam soon.
The essay is "Eliza Haywood's Female Spectator and its Dutch translation De Engelsche Spectatrice, in I Have Heard About You: Foreign Women's Writing Crossing the Dutch Border: From Sappho to Selma Lagerlöf, ed. Suzanna van Dijk (Hilversum, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2004), 217–24. (Now available online here, but no copy of this collection of essays is held in Australia, so I guess I can be forgiven for missing it.)
The identification of this translation was likely first made by Bottinga in her Masters thesis: Tea-Tables and Coffee-Houses: The Position of Eighteenth-Century Women in the Spectator, the Female Spectator and in the Dutch translations of these periodicals: A comparative study (MA thesis, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden 1996).
There appears to have been two editions of the translation (see here and here), the main details of which are
De Engelsche spectatrice of Britsche leermeesteresse der zeeden. Na den vyfden druk uit het Engelsch vertaalt (Te Amsterdam: by Jacobus Kok, in de Binne-Bantemerstraat, 1762-63), 4 vols [No.1 (1762)–no.17 (1763)]. Held EuNA [OK 62-9576-9578; OK 93-53 (dl III)].
De Engelsche spectatrice of Britsche leermeesteresse der zeeden. Na den vyfden druk uit het Engelsch vertaalt (Te Amsterdam: by Jacobus Kok, in de Lange Niesel, 1775), 2 vols. Held EuNA [OK 93-54-55].
The Bijzondere Collecties of the EuNA (Library of the University of Amsterdam) descriptions are not clear enough for me to distinguish issues and editions, but I will obviously have to take a visit of Amsterdam soon.
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Eliza Haywood Played By Emma Thompson
According to Myheritage.com's facial recognition system, the celebrity who looks most like Eliza Haywood is Emma Thompson. So, when the story of Haywood's like is turned into a film, we know who we need to get to play the part!
As you can the fit is only 63%, but the likeness is striking. It would be even more striking if Emma were to put on a few kilos, which would make her face a little less angular. Here are a few more images that help to show the likeness.
[UPDATE: 2 July 2016: After all my pictures disappeared again I decided to give up on external hosts for large versions (1000px) of my image files and, for now on, will stick with the smaller images (500px), which Blogger is prepared to host.]
Thursday, 10 November 2011
The History of Miss Leonora Meadowson
Haywood's The History of Miss Leonora Meadowson is a fascinating and curious work for many reasons. I invested an enormous amount of time in searching for a copy—or, indeed, any trace—of Leonora Meadowson; and when I did find a copy at the Fales library in New York it was one of the major milestones in my Haywood research. My first conference paper (at the 1999 BSANZ Conference), and my first published article, were also on "Eliza Haywood's last ('lost') work."
After my 1999 article the discoveries continued, when I realised that Leonora Meadowson was a revision of Cleomelia, making it one of a tiny number of examples of Haywood revising one of her works, and it was one of the key pieces of evidence tying the death(?) of Haywood's daughter-in-law to 2 Cowley Street in Westminster in 1788.
Since my Bibliography was printed in 2004 I have continued to search for references to this work in particular. Every time a new resource becomes available I use it to trawl for something I might have missed, but so far my finds have hardly been noteworthy.
On ECCO I found two bookseller's catalogues which contained copies of Leonora Meadowson. These are: Sael's Catalogue for 1792 (London: G. Sael, Bookseller, at the English Library, Newcastle Street, Strand, [1792]), 120 (no. 3284), "History of Miss Leonora Meadowson, 2 vols. h[alf]. b[ound]. new, 3s 6d" and Lackington, Allen, & Co.'s Catalogue, vol. 1 [Michaelmas 1798–99] (London: Lackington, Allen, & Co., Booksellers, Temple of the Muses, Finsbury-Square, [1798]), 116 (no. 4512): "Leonora Meadowson, a Novel, 2 vols. new, half bound 3s 4d 1788".
On the Burney newspaper text-base I found only one new advertisement, in The World, 11 July 1788, issue 479, from five months after the release of the book (see below). And on Google Books I found another bookseller's catalogue and advertisement. The catalogue is A Catalogue of Books in John Harding's Circulating Library, in the Market-Place, Abingdon, Berkshire ([Abingdon: John Harding], 1804), 37 (no. 617–18): "Leonora Meadowson, 2 vols. 5s." (the price being the replacement cost, as set out in clause IV of the terms of subscription); the advertisement appears in The British Mercury; Or, Annals of History, Politics…, 4:10 (3 March 1788): 318 "New Books … Leonora Meadowson. A Novel, 2 vol. Pr. 5s."
The geographical spread of these last two finds is interesting, particularly The British Mercury, which was edited by Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz in Hamburg. The British Mercury contained a digest of political and literary news from England and information about works available in Hamburg.
My recent discovery of a copy of Leonora Meadowson in another circulating library is much more important than the above—because the circulating library in question was in New York and it is possible that the unique Fale's copy of Leonora Meadowson is the same copy as that recorded as being held in Louis Alexis Hocquet de Caritat's Circulating Library in an 1804 catalogue.
In 1940 George Gates Raddin, the owner of one of only two surviving copies of this 1804 catalogue, published an annotated Checklist of the Fiction in H. Caritat's Circulating Library. He then published a series of studies of Caritat in very limited editions. Two of these studies are: The New York of Hocquet Caritat and his Associates, 1797–1817 and Hocquet Caritat and the Early New York Literary Scene. I have the checklist in front of me, and have put in loan requests for the other two studies.
According to Raddin's An Early New York Library of Fiction: With a Checklist of the Fiction in H. Caritat's Circulating Library, no. 1 City hotel, Broadway, New York, 1804 (New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1940), 66, Haywood was reasonably well-represented in Caritat's Circulating Library. The following five works are listed:
[1] Ab.68.4 The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, New ed. (1769) [Raddin locates a copy at MBU, but it does not appear on their online catalogue.]
[2] Ab.35.2 The History of Miss Leonora Meadowson
[3] Ab.69.6 The Invisible Spy, New ed. (1773).
[4] Aa.3.3 Secret Histories, Novel and Poems, 4th ed. (1742)—although "Caritat lists a 1-vol. ed." suggesting the set was incomplete.
[5] Ab.70.1 The Wife (1756).
Raddin was unable to locate a copy of Leonora Meadowson, so he quotes the entry from the 1804 catalogue in full ("History of Miss LENORA MEADOWSON, a novel, 2 vols"). What is not clear is if Leonora Meadowson appeared in any of the earlier Caritat catalogues. Of these there were at least two in English, the three being:
[1799] The Feast of Reason and the Flow of the Soul. A New Explanatory Catalogue of H. Caritat's General & Increasing Circulating Library (New York: M. L. & W. A. Davis, 1799) [ESTC: W27154; two copies (MWA, NN)].
[1803] A Catalogue of the Library of H. Caritat's Literary Room, New-York (New York: Isaac Collins & Son, 1803).
[1804] Explanatory Catalogue of H. Caritat's Circulating Library; no.I. City Hotel, Broad-Way, New-York (New York: G. & R. Waite, 1804).
Unfortunately, the nearest copy of an original of any of these is 7800 miles according to WorldCat! All of these are available online in the Early American imprints database, but not to me, so I am going to have to ask a colleague to look at them for me to establish when Caritat might have acquired his copy of Leonora Meadowson.
As for when he disposed of it: in 1804 Caritat sold the library to Isaac Riley, who soon after went bankrupt. What happened after that isn't clear. Yet. I hope to find out more about the fate of Caritat's books from Raddin's two histories. But presumably the library was sold, piecemeal. And, having been sold, it looks like this copy of Leonora Meadowson stayed put in New York until about 1970 when it was (mis)catalogued at the Fales library.
Of course, the Fales copy may not be the Caritat copy—in fact, the lovely condition of the Fale's copy argues against it—but so few copies of Leonora Meadowson are recorded that it is even more improbable that two copies made it to New York in the 1790s.
After my 1999 article the discoveries continued, when I realised that Leonora Meadowson was a revision of Cleomelia, making it one of a tiny number of examples of Haywood revising one of her works, and it was one of the key pieces of evidence tying the death(?) of Haywood's daughter-in-law to 2 Cowley Street in Westminster in 1788.
Since my Bibliography was printed in 2004 I have continued to search for references to this work in particular. Every time a new resource becomes available I use it to trawl for something I might have missed, but so far my finds have hardly been noteworthy.
On ECCO I found two bookseller's catalogues which contained copies of Leonora Meadowson. These are: Sael's Catalogue for 1792 (London: G. Sael, Bookseller, at the English Library, Newcastle Street, Strand, [1792]), 120 (no. 3284), "History of Miss Leonora Meadowson, 2 vols. h[alf]. b[ound]. new, 3s 6d" and Lackington, Allen, & Co.'s Catalogue, vol. 1 [Michaelmas 1798–99] (London: Lackington, Allen, & Co., Booksellers, Temple of the Muses, Finsbury-Square, [1798]), 116 (no. 4512): "Leonora Meadowson, a Novel, 2 vols. new, half bound 3s 4d 1788".
On the Burney newspaper text-base I found only one new advertisement, in The World, 11 July 1788, issue 479, from five months after the release of the book (see below). And on Google Books I found another bookseller's catalogue and advertisement. The catalogue is A Catalogue of Books in John Harding's Circulating Library, in the Market-Place, Abingdon, Berkshire ([Abingdon: John Harding], 1804), 37 (no. 617–18): "Leonora Meadowson, 2 vols. 5s." (the price being the replacement cost, as set out in clause IV of the terms of subscription); the advertisement appears in The British Mercury; Or, Annals of History, Politics…, 4:10 (3 March 1788): 318 "New Books … Leonora Meadowson. A Novel, 2 vol. Pr. 5s."
The geographical spread of these last two finds is interesting, particularly The British Mercury, which was edited by Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz in Hamburg. The British Mercury contained a digest of political and literary news from England and information about works available in Hamburg.
* * * * *
My recent discovery of a copy of Leonora Meadowson in another circulating library is much more important than the above—because the circulating library in question was in New York and it is possible that the unique Fale's copy of Leonora Meadowson is the same copy as that recorded as being held in Louis Alexis Hocquet de Caritat's Circulating Library in an 1804 catalogue.
In 1940 George Gates Raddin, the owner of one of only two surviving copies of this 1804 catalogue, published an annotated Checklist of the Fiction in H. Caritat's Circulating Library. He then published a series of studies of Caritat in very limited editions. Two of these studies are: The New York of Hocquet Caritat and his Associates, 1797–1817 and Hocquet Caritat and the Early New York Literary Scene. I have the checklist in front of me, and have put in loan requests for the other two studies.
According to Raddin's An Early New York Library of Fiction: With a Checklist of the Fiction in H. Caritat's Circulating Library, no. 1 City hotel, Broadway, New York, 1804 (New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1940), 66, Haywood was reasonably well-represented in Caritat's Circulating Library. The following five works are listed:
[1] Ab.68.4 The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, New ed. (1769) [Raddin locates a copy at MBU, but it does not appear on their online catalogue.]
[2] Ab.35.2 The History of Miss Leonora Meadowson
[3] Ab.69.6 The Invisible Spy, New ed. (1773).
[4] Aa.3.3 Secret Histories, Novel and Poems, 4th ed. (1742)—although "Caritat lists a 1-vol. ed." suggesting the set was incomplete.
[5] Ab.70.1 The Wife (1756).
Raddin was unable to locate a copy of Leonora Meadowson, so he quotes the entry from the 1804 catalogue in full ("History of Miss LENORA MEADOWSON, a novel, 2 vols"). What is not clear is if Leonora Meadowson appeared in any of the earlier Caritat catalogues. Of these there were at least two in English, the three being:
[1799] The Feast of Reason and the Flow of the Soul. A New Explanatory Catalogue of H. Caritat's General & Increasing Circulating Library (New York: M. L. & W. A. Davis, 1799) [ESTC: W27154; two copies (MWA, NN)].
[1803] A Catalogue of the Library of H. Caritat's Literary Room, New-York (New York: Isaac Collins & Son, 1803).
[1804] Explanatory Catalogue of H. Caritat's Circulating Library; no.I. City Hotel, Broad-Way, New-York (New York: G. & R. Waite, 1804).
Unfortunately, the nearest copy of an original of any of these is 7800 miles according to WorldCat! All of these are available online in the Early American imprints database, but not to me, so I am going to have to ask a colleague to look at them for me to establish when Caritat might have acquired his copy of Leonora Meadowson.
As for when he disposed of it: in 1804 Caritat sold the library to Isaac Riley, who soon after went bankrupt. What happened after that isn't clear. Yet. I hope to find out more about the fate of Caritat's books from Raddin's two histories. But presumably the library was sold, piecemeal. And, having been sold, it looks like this copy of Leonora Meadowson stayed put in New York until about 1970 when it was (mis)catalogued at the Fales library.
Of course, the Fales copy may not be the Caritat copy—in fact, the lovely condition of the Fale's copy argues against it—but so few copies of Leonora Meadowson are recorded that it is even more improbable that two copies made it to New York in the 1790s.
Friday, 4 November 2011
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots
The title-page of Eliza Haywood's Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (1725) claims that the work was "Translated from the French," though her "Introduction" says nothing of it being a translation. When I drafted my entry on this title I suggested that it was "more likely that Haywood wrote an original work that relied heavily on French materials." It looks like I was wrong about this.
Mary Helen McMurran has identified Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots as another translation of Pierre Le Pesant, Sieur de Boisguillebert, Marie Stuart, Reyne d’Escosse. Nouvelle Historique (Paris: Claude Barbin, 1675). I say another because James Freebairn’s translation of this work was proposed in June 1724 and issued "for the Author" in Edinburgh in 1725. That is, Haywood and Freebairn’s translations were competitors.
McMurran makes her case well and does an excellent job of comparing the two translations in The Spread of Novels: Translation and Prose Fiction in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 2010). Although I am disappointed that I "missed" this identification, I only missed it in the sense that I ought to have recognised the similarities of the Haywood and Freebairn’s translations, no scholar previous to 2004 having made the identification. That is, McMurran deserves full credit for making the attribution and will have it in the second edition of my Bibliography!
It is particularly pleasing to see work being done on Haywood's translations and the translation of works by Haywood into European languages. (I have mentioned before that Melbourne's Aleksondra Hultquist is doing important work on Haywood's La Belle Assemblee; see here.) No doubt, as this type of scholarship develops, more of Haywood's sources will be revealed but we will also get a much clearer idea of Haywood's creative input into her translations—as we do in McMurran's section on Haywood (82–90).
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