Romantic Circles Blog

THE KEATS–SHELLEY MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION invites applications for the Keats-Shelley Prize for 2005. Supported by the John S. Cohen Foundation and The School of English, University of St Andrews.

2005 Chairman of Judges: Stephen Fry, – Author, Actor, Comedian, Film Director. Judging Panel: Matthew Sweeney, John Hartley-Williams (Poetry). Professor Peter Kitson, Dr Seamus Perry (Essays).

Two competitions, open to all: an essay and a poem, £3,000 IN PRIZES, the winners’ work to be published.

The essay can be on any aspect of Keats’s or Shelley’s work or life, and should be of 2,000-3,000 words, including quotations. Preference will be given to entries showing originality of thought and written in a clear and accessible style. All sources must be acknowledged.

The poem (which may be a narrative) must be original, unpublished and not a parody. It should focus on a Romantic theme associated with “ghosts.” It may be of any length up to 50 lines.

Other conditions of entry:

1. Two copies of your entry should be sent to Jill Gamble, KSMA Competition Secretary, School of English, The University, St Andrews, KY16 9AL, Scotland. Please enclose an SAE if you want your entry to be acknowledged. Copies of entries cannot be returned.

2. All entries must be received by 30 June 2005. Prize winners and a runner-up in each category will be notified in August. There will be a presentation ceremony in London in October. The winners will be announced at that time on the website of the Keats-Shelley Memorial House in Rome:

http://www.keatsshelley-house.org.

3. You may enter both categories but only once. There is a fee of £5 sterling for a single entry, £3 for a second entry in the other category. Payment must be enclosed, made by cheque, postal order or international money order in favour of the Keats- Shelley Memorial Association, or by sterling bank notes. All first-time serious entrants who are not already Friends of the KSMA will become Honorary Friends for one year (subscription normally £12) receiving the annual Keats-Shelley Review, free newsletters, invitations to events, etc.

4. All entries must be typed or wordprocessed on A4 or foolscap paper, and attached with a paper clip to a typed sheet giving the following: your name, address, a contact telephone number, the title of your essay or poem, and how you heard about the prize. Your entrance fee should also be attached. Please do not use staples.

5. Essays and poems must be in English and your original and unpublished work, and must not have been submitted to us in a former competition. Copyright remains with you as author, but your entry will be deemed to give consent to first publication in journals nominated by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association and The John S. Cohen Foundation.

6. The submission of an entry will be deemed to indicate full acceptance of the above conditions of entry to the competition.

A newly discovered set of four letters written by Percy Bysshe Shelley to Ralph Wedgwood will be auctioned at Christie’s in June, where they may sell for as much as £30,000. They were found among other materials in a dusty trunk at a house in Norbury, London.

The letters are part of a provocative correspondence on atheism by Shelley and fellow undergraduate pamphleteer, Thomas Jefferson Hogg. As the BBC and several other news sources in the UK are reporting, the manuscripts headed for a car boot sale when they were identified.

SJ

The Wordsworth-Coleridge Association invites papers for its sessions
at the Modern Language Association Convention in Washington, D.C.,
December 27-30, 2005.

SESSION TOPIC: Landmark Works. Inspired by Seamus Perry’s essay in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Meyer Abrams’ The Mirror and The Lamp (Essays in Criticism 54 [2004] 260-82), we invite paper proposals focusing on landmark critical works in the field of Romanticism during the last fifty years, including books by M.H. Abrams, Carl Woodring, Geoffrey Hartman, Karl Kroeber, Earl Wasserman, Robert Langbaum, David Erdman, Kenneth Neil Cameron, E.P. Thompson, Harold Bloom, Marilyn Butler, indeed all the great scholars who shaped our field and our thinking in the U.K. or in North America. Essays should describe the contribution made by specific critical work(s) to the discipline of Romantic studies and their continued significance.

Please send detailed abstracts by 15 March 2005, via e-mail to James McKusick: mckusick@umbc.edu

NOTE: All program participants must be members of MLA by April 1, 2005. It would be helpful to us (in preparing MLA program copy) if you would provide your full name and academic affiliation.

Sincerely yours,
James McKusick
Professor of English and Director of the Honors College
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Baltimore, MD 21250

Conference: “British Women Playwrights, 1780-1830,” at Chapman University, March 12, 2005.

Presented by Chapman University’s Department of English and Comparative Literature, with additional assistance provided by the School of Communication Arts.

The day of lectures, papers and panels will feature a performance of Hannah Cowley’s A Bold Stroke for a Husband, directed by Frederick Burwick, from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. Coffee and refreshments will be served at 8:30 a.m., with the first session of papers to commence at 9:00 a.m. There will be a luncheon at 12:00 p.m., the matinee performance at 1:30, followed by the afternoon session of papers from 4:00 to 5:30. Featured plenary speakers are Anne Mellor and Jeffrey Cox. The conference banquet will commence at 7:00. A full list of paper titles and abstracts may be seen on the website for British Women Playwrights around 1800: http://www.etang.umontreal.ca/bwp1800/

Registration for the conference will be at two rates: $40 for faculty and $25 for students. Checks should be made payable to “Chapman University” and sent to:

Gisela Verduzco
Department of English and Comparative Literature
Chapman University
1 University Drive
Orange, CA 92866

You may also address questions about payment, accommodations, special parking or dietary needs to Gisela Verduzco at (714) 997-6750 or verduzco@chapman.edu

Scott Simon interviewed Romantic Circle’s own Steve Jones this morning on NPR about Byron’s The Corsair, which made publishing history this week in 1814 by selling out its entire run of 10,000 copies on the first day of publication.

For more about Byron’s poem and for a recording of the interview, visit http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4487368.