SENSATION PRESS NEWS
Now available: Mary Elizabeth Braddon and the Victorian Theatre by Jennifer Carnell.
10 February 2016
Coming Soon - Mary Elizabeth Braddon and the Victorian Theatre by Jennifer Carnell. After ten years of research, it's been a little frustrating that publication was slowed by all the fiddly extras like preparing the index. It is now being printed.
The paperback edition of Victorian Sensations: Essays on a Scandalous Genre has been published by Ohio State University Press. The collection was edited by Kimberly Harrison and the late Richard Fantina.
The book contains essays by Ellen Miller Casey, Richard Nemesvari, Catherine J. Golden, Albert C. Sears, Diana C. Archibald, Dianna Vitanza, Devin P. Zuber, Tamar Heller, Galia Ofek, Andrew Mangham, Richard Fantina, Nancy Welter, Lindsey Faber, Jennifer A. Swartz, Andrew Maunder, Lillian Nayder, Tamara S. Wagner, Kimberly Harrison, Vicki Corkran Willey and Monica M. Young-Zook.
Description: 'Wildly popular with Victorian readers, sensation fiction was condemned by most critics for scandalous content and formal features that deviated from respectable Victorian realism. Victorian Sensations is the first collection to examine sensation fiction as a whole, showing it to push genre boundaries and resist easy classification. Comprehensive in scope, this collection includes twenty original essays employing various critical approaches to cover a range of topics that will interest many readers. In addition to well-known novels such as The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins and Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, this volume addresses other works by Collins and Braddon as well as those of Sheridan Le Fanu, Rhoda Broughton, Charles Reade, Ellen (Mrs. Henry) Wood, and perhaps surprisingly, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.
Sensation literature, once considered one-dimensionally as a vehicle for contrived, plot-driven stories of mystery and intrigue, is shown here as a multi-faceted formal and ideological hybrid. Essays are organized thematically into three sections: issues of genre; sensational representations of gender and sexuality; and the texts’ complex readings of diverse social and cultural phenomena such as class, race, and empire. The introduction reviews critical reception of sensation fiction to situate these new essays within a larger scholarly context.
Victorian Sensations aims to further previous efforts to recognize sensation fiction as an integral part of Victorian literature and not as the subgenre that it has too long been considered. The collection’s broad scope indicates the breadth and complexity of the genre itself.'
6 August 2015
Coming soon in October 2015: Mary
Elizabeth Braddon and the Victorian Theatre:
A Biographical Guide to Actors and Managers (title provisional). In progress
since the publication of The Literary Lives of Mary Elizabeth Braddon
and the culmination of years of research. Mary Elizabeth Braddon charts Braddon's
acting career, revealing new performances and shows she carried on acting
for longer than I previously believed. It follows the lives of over 540 actors,
managers and other theatrical performers who worked with Braddon in the 1850s
and 1860s and contains numerous illustrations. Her fellow actors included
the son of the forger Jim the Penman,
an actor who travelled to Persia and become the Shah's exposives expert, an
actress whose father claimed to be the lost French Dauphin, actors who found
wealth and fame and others who ended their days in the workhouse. It continues
with an exploration of the careers of their children.
20 March 2015
Recent pages added to the Mary
Elizabeth Braddon Pages include Braddon and newspaper serialisation (including
a rare Victorian tintype advertising her work), her Cornish family home, early
paperback editions of Braddon's novels and an update to Edward Braddon.
4 February 2015
Today is the 100th anniversary of the death of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. To mark the day, as well as the Braddon Keepsake (see below), a number of pages have been added to the Mary Elizabeth Braddon Pages, including Lichfield House, an account of Braddon's funeral in Richmond and a page about John Maxwell. More will be added through the year,
7 JANUARY 2015
The Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Keepsake: 2015 Anniversary Edition
Paperback published to mark 180 years since Braddon's birth on 4 October 1835
and 100 years since her death on 4 February 1915.
Contains six
short stories by Braddon, including a story discovered after the publication
of The Literary Lives of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Braddon's first ever
published story, and a further two short stories never before published in
book form. 103 pages with an early portrait of Braddon on the front cover.
A schoolboy finds himself claimed by a ghostly goblin.
A long-lost will threatens the future of a book collector and his daughter.
A stuffy gentleman becomes jealous of his fiancee's previous love.
An anarchist bomb plot terrifies a cathedral.
A mother is determined her daughter will never have an unhappy marriage like
her own.
A barrister plans revenge upon his unfaithful wife.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Richmond - the previously unpublished paper given
by Jennifer Carnell at Richmond Museum; an Edwardian essay about Braddon by
Edmund Downey; an interview with Braddon; and four articles published after
her death.
Limited to 100 centenary copies signed and numbered by Jennifer Carnell.
The previous 2005 Braddon Keepsake is now rare.
CHRISTMAS 2014 NEW YEAR 2015
In 2015 there will be a Braddon Keepsake, a major Mary Elizabeth Braddon publication and numerous pages will be added and restored from earlier years.
The Obscure
Origins, Wonderful Life, and Shock Death of The Railway Library in British
Fiction
Seminar by John Spiers on 10 December 2013
A seminar by Sensation Press
friend Professor John Spiers will be held at Senate House at 6pm on Tuesday
10 December 2013. All are very welcome.
Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
'The December 2013 seminar in the book-collecting series organised jointly by the Institute of English Studies (London University) and the Rare Book Society will be given by Professor John Spiers, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute and a Visiting Professor at the University of Glamorgan. He is also a distinguished publisher, having founded the Harvester Press in 1969. Beyond all that, he is a very serious book-collector, especially of Victorian books.
He is the editor of Gissing and the City : Cultural Crisis and the Making of Books in Late Victorian England 2006; Serious about Series : American 'Cheap' Libraries, British 'Railway' Libraries and some Literary Series of the 1890's 2007 and The Culture of the Publisher's Series : Authors, Publishers and the Shaping of Taste 2011 - and these titles reflect the theme of the seminar - The Obscure Origins, Wonderful Life, and Shock Death of The Railway Library in British Fiction.
The seminars are aimed at a
broad audience including book-collectors, book-dealers, historians of all
kinds, librarians, indeed at anyone with an interest in collecting any sort
of text from the sixth-former to the retired professor. The atmosphere will
be informal, as will the presentations. They are held in the University of
London's Senate House and run from 6.00 to 7.30 pm on the second Tuesday of
each month.'
6 December 2012
A new book about Braddon by Sensation Press friend Anne-Marie Beller has
been published by McFarland and is warmly recommended.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction
'This companion to Braddon's mystery fiction is the definitive reference on
this provocative but overlooked writer'.
Anne-Marie Beller, a lecturer at Loughborough University, has published articles
on Wilkie Collins, Amelia B. Edwards and Mrs. Henry Wood. She is on the editorial
board of the Wilkie Collins Journal.
15 October 2012
New Perspectives on Mary Elizabeth
Braddon
Edited by Jessica Cox
A new collection of essays about Braddon has just been published by Rudopi.
The essays were originally presented at the Braddon conference at the University
of Swansea organised by Jessica Cox.
Contents:
Acknowledgements
Introduction by Jessica Cox
Blurring Boundaries: The Fiction of M.E. Braddon by Jessica Cox
To the Mad-House Born: The Ethics of Exteriority in Lady Audley's Secret by
Tabitha Sparks
Imperial Attitudes in Lady Audley's Secret by Nancy Knowles and Katherine
Hall
"To Go Boldly Where No Woman Has Gone Before": Alicia Audley and
the New Woman by Michelle Lin
Homelessness in the Home: Invention, Instability and Insanity in the Domestic
Spaces of M.E. Braddon and L.M. Alcott by Grace Wetzel
"Drink it Up Dear; It Will Do You Good": Crime, Toxicology, and
The Trail of the Serpent by Andrew Mangham
Sensational Bildung? Infantilization and Female Maturation in Braddon's 1860s
Novels by Anne-Marie Beller
To "Serve God and Mammon": Braddon and Literary Transgression by
Juliette Atkinson
The French Connection: Gender, Morals and National Culture in Braddon's Novels
by Joanne Knowles
Re-Plotting Inheritance: The Triangulation of Legacies and Affinities in The
Fatal Three by Tamara S. Wagner
"If I Read Her Right": Textual Secrets in Thou Art the Man by Laurence
Talairach-Vielmas
Sensationalism on Trial: Courtroom Drama and the Image of Respectability in
His Darling Sin by Kate Mattacks
"The Stage! Oh, Flora, the Very Idea Frightens Me!": Representations
of Professional Theatre in Rupert Godwin and A Lost Eden by Carla E. Coleman
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
15 July 2012
FREE EXHIBITION & OPEN LECTURE
Victorian Rebel: The Many Faces
of Mary Braddon
16-22 July 2012
To be held at Augustine House, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury
The International Centre for Victorian Women Writers at Canterbury Christ
Church University is led by Dr. Carolyn Oulton and Professor Adrienne Gavin.
'Alongside the exhibition will be a free open lecture by visiting research
fellow and Braddon Archive expert, Gabrielle Malcolm, at 5.30pm on Monday
16 July'.
26 NOVEMBER 2011
Series 6 of The Dickens
Magazine is now complete. Editor Alan S. Watts, Publishing Editor George
Gorniak and it is published by Grayswood Press.
Issue 1: David Copperfield by David Parker, Dickens
at 37 by George Gorniak, The Young David Copperfield by Tony Williams, Clara
Copperfield by Thelma Grove, Phiz Illustrations by Philip V. Allingham, Born
with a Caul by Alan Dilnot, The Bottling Factory by Philip V. Allingham, Nature
Versus Nurture by Joanne Eysell, The Seaside: Work and Leisure by Anita Fernandez-Young,
The Great Yarmouth Boat-House Controversy, The Fighting Temeraire by Lucinda
Dickens Hawksley and Dickens and Tennyson by Leonée Ormond.
Issue 2: David Copperfield by David Parker,
Wilkins Micawber by Philip Allingham, Miss Betsey Trotwood by Thelma Grove,
Barkis by Alan S. Watts, Phiz Illustrations by Philip V. Allingham, "I
falll into Captivity": Dickens's Rhetoric of Love, Portrait of a Novelist
by Alan Dilnot, Doctor's Commons by Philip Allingham, Dickens's Writing for
Children by Andrea Holm Allingham, Humphrey House by Donald Hawes and Nikolai
Gogol by George Gorniak.
Issue 3: David Copperfield by David Parker, Uriah
Heep by Tony Williams, Mr. Omer by Alan S. Watts, Rosa Dartle by Thelma Grove,
Miss Mowcher by Philip V. Allingham, Phiz Illustrations by Philip V. Allingham,
Uriah Heep: Villain of the Piece by Gareth Cordery, Dickens, Phiz and "The
Fallen Woman" by Philip V. Allingham, Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd by Philip
V. Allingham, George Müller by George Gorniak, Dickens and Canada by
Philip V. Allingham and Augustus Dickens: Part One 1827-1856 by Lucinda Dickens
Hawksley.
Issue 4: David Copperfield by David Parker, The
Adult David Copperfield by Tony Williams, Mr. Dick by Alan S. Watts, James
Steerforth: David's Secret Hero by Gareth Cordery, The Role of Music by Alan
Dilnot, Phiz Illustrations by Philip V. Allingham, Assorted Characters Down
Under by Alan Dilnot, Copperfield on Screen, Stage and Book by David Smith,
Philip V. Allingham and Donald Hawes, James Townsend Saward by Jennifer Carnell,
Augustus Dickens: Part Two 1856-1866 by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, The Future
of Dickens by Michael Hollington and Copperfield, Dickens and Myself by Alan
S. Watts. Each article is illustrated.
It costs £28 for the four issues.
April 2011
A new book has just been published
by The Sensation Press.
James Townsend Saward, Criminal Barrister: The True Story of Jim the Penman
by Jennifer Carnell is a biography of the Victorian barrister and forger who
was described as a 'real-life' Professor Moriarty.
James
Townsend Saward, Criminal Barrister
A new sales sections has been added to The Sensation Press webiste:
Victorian Theatre Posters and Playbills
March 2011
A book co-authored by a Sensation
Press customer that may be of interest to others is William Newman A Victorian
Cartoonist in London and New York by Jane E. Brown and Richard Samuel
West.
It is published by Periodyssey Press.
A
set of 17 Braddon novels in leather bindings
14 July
2010
Special offer: the remaining copies of the limited edition Lady Audley's Secret Play by George Roberts are now free with a purchase of The White Phantom
1 July 2010
Forthcoming Publications for 2010 and 2011 to be announced.
Adverts from the Victorian Advertising pages feature in two new television programmes for BBC2: Ben Fogle's Escape in Time and Victorian Pharmacy.
26 January 2009
Professor Sally Ledger, who
was my PhD supervisor, has died. She was such a wonderful person, and I could
not have
asked for a better or more understanding tutor. The Birkbeck College English
Department has an obituary page:
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/news/sally_ledger
She had recently joined the
English Department at Royal Holloway as Hildred Carlisle Professor in English
and was Director of the Centre for Victorian Studies: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/English/
Obituary in The Guardian by Tom Healy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/28/obituary-sally-ledger
20 December 2008
Two more plays:
Aurora
Floyd by William Suter, click here.
Lady
Audley's Secret by William Suter, click here.
20 November
2007
A new Sensation Press title is published today.
A limited edition (100 copies) of the 1863 play Lady
Audley's Secret by George Roberts. For more details click here.
16 September 2007