Adam James Smith
Lecturer in Literature & Liberal Arts at York St John University.
Former Teaching Associate and Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/elementaladam
Location York
Activity
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Mary, this is remarkable, thank you for sharing this incredible story. I'm so pleased our course was able to play a part in this, thank you for your commitment and enthusiasm during what must have been a very difficult time. I look forward to seeing you again on future courses! x
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Adam James Smith replied to Stephen Whitehead
I've actually been campaigning for Addison's return to print for a while. Recently I wrote this post a our where he went and why we need him back. It is called "Are Addison and Steele still Dead?"
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Adam James Smith made a comment
Dear all,
I just wanted to write a brief note to convey my gratitude to all of you for your commitment and enthusiasm. Working on this course has been an absolute delight, and I speak on behalf of everyone on the teaching team when I say that it is humbling to see so many people engaging with our work and ideas.
The discussions that I've witnessed over...
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Adam James Smith replied to Stephen Whitehead
Fantastic -- thank you Judy!
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Adam James Smith replied to Gael A
It really is. Not satisfied with archiving all of literature they are now also archiving... The INTERNET!
http://archive.org/web/ -
Adam James Smith replied to Gael A
That's great Gael!
Don't forget, if it's 19th-Century novels your after and they aren't available on Project Guttenberg, there might be versions free to download from archive.org
Enjoy!
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Adam James Smith replied to Stephen Whitehead
Thank you for these kind words Stephen, and for your commitment, enthusiasm and excellent comments throughout the course.
It is my life's goal to get Addison back into print. I'm actually just this week in discussions to get a monograph contracted about Addison's political prose. A new critical edition of his works would compliment that nicely. The real...
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Dracula is an excellent suggestion! I haven't read it in a while, but isn't Jonathan Harker some kind of estate agent or property surveyor? I certainly remember being suprised last time I read it by how much time they spend discussing London House prices. I guess Stoker was quite the prophet when he imagined a world in which wealthy ancient vampires from...
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I'll put it on my To-Watch list, if I can get a copy today i'll watch it tonight!
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Great suggestions - Atonement in particular is a really good shout as it often gets forgotten, thanks Debra!
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Hi Andy,
You're in good company as a fan of The Little Stranger - if you go to 8min 20ish of this video from 2014 you'll see our former mentor, PhD student Carly Stevenson, recommending it as her favourite novel:
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"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” I absolutely love Rebecca.
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Hi Chester,
Thank you for your kind comments -- and yes, I think we can definitely count Tess!
We've rounded up some top suggestions for further reading on the blog:
http://soeblog.group.shef.ac.uk/the-literature-of-the-country-house-your-recommended-further-reading/Amber and I also met to discuss learner's suggestions in a bonus video, during...
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That's another great suggestion, thanks Lydia. Has anyone mentioned Mapp and Lucia yet, the series of novels by E. F. Benson?
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Good sleuthing Lyn -- these definitions certainly correspond with my own reading on Bunburying! I've always enjoyed it as a device because it is a euphemism but we don't ever get a clear explanation what it is for, rendering it an empty signified that could plausibly be used in any context -- a great comic device!
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Adam James Smith replied to Joan R
Hi Joan,
Thanks very much for this! I might be able to help on the reading list front -- Over on our blog we have collated a short-list of recommended further reading if you'd like to continue this journey through country house literature:
http://soeblog.group.shef.ac.uk/the-literature-of-the-country-house-your-recommended-further-reading/Amber and I...
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Hi all,
We've collated some of the most often recommended examples of country house literature after 1900. You can read an overview of our findings here, many of which have been mentioned in your comments on this step:
Amber and I also met to...
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Adam James Smith made a comment
I've just discovered this wonderfully detailed blog, 'Comment-Ed', in which one of our learners has been keeping track of their experience of the course across a series of very engaging and entertaining post. I especially enjoyed the entry about Week 5's Gothic authors and characters:...
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I really like that adaptation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeOQqyAlwoA
You're right though, it is a very loose adaptation and it is definitely over-sentimental. I wonder if Stewart had a contract with Hallmark in the late '90s, I seem to recall he was also in a very sentimental Hallmark adaptation of Scrooge around the same time... -
Intriguingly there was a film version of The Canterville Ghost in 1986, two years before Burton's Beetlejuice hit the screens in '88.
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I hadn't considered this before but now that you've mentioned it, yes, Canterville Ghost bears a striking resemblance to Beetlejuice! I just did some quick sleuthing on Google and the IMBD entry for the film does seem to confirm that it was conceived as a 'very loose adaptation of Wilde's Canterville Ghost.'
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Adam James Smith replied to Sara Lewis
Sara, The Buccaneers is an excellent example. In 2014 Carly Stevenson and I came up with a short list of texts we would recommend as further reading and The Buccaneers was one of my suggestions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFZ_W6Xbz-g
It poses another great editorial dilemma, what do you do about that ending (or lack of, therefore)? -
Hi Heather,
It was Zafloya, a novel by Charlotte Dacre:
https://archive.org/details/ZofloyaOrTheMoorEnjoy!
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Hi Judy,
That third novel was Zafloya by Charlotte Dacre:
https://archive.org/details/ZofloyaOrTheMoor -
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Adam James Smith replied to V L
Hi Vanessa,
That final recommendation waa for Zafloya, a novel by Charlotte Dacre. -
Adam James Smith made a comment
If you've enjoyed the ‘Material Conditions’ thread of the course you might also enjoy PhD student Rosie Shute’s fun appraisal of using experimental archaeology techniques to learn about book history over on the School of English blog: http://soeblog.group.shef.ac.uk/experiencing-print-experiments-in-book-history/
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Week 4 educator Dr Joe Bray also returned to share an academic article on the subject of Samuel Richardson’s stylistic influences on the prose of Jane Austen
(http://soeblog.group.shef.ac.uk/literature-of-the-english-country-house-richardson-austen-and-stylistic-influence/).Finally Sheffield graduate, Jessica Yates, shared a post which discusses the...
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Adam James Smith made a comment
Don't forget to check out our blog, we've had lots of related features on there this week!
Amber has written a post for us which discusses the significance of *other* houses in ‘Great Expectations’ (http://soeblog.group.shef.ac.uk/literature-of-the-english-country-house-doubles-foils-and-the-houses-of-others-in-great-expectations/)
School of English...
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Hi Jill, Not to worry, you can re-live all the action with the recording on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25ygY0QF96g
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Thanks Christina!
Angela's recommendation was The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/696) and mine was Zafloya by Charlotte Dacre (https://archive.org/details/ZofloyaOrTheMoor). Enjoy! -
Hi all,
I'm pleased you found a copy of the 1848 review. You can also view it here, on the British Library website:
http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/review-of-jane-eyre-by-elizabeth-rigby
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Hi all,
This is a fascinating thread. I just wanted to chip in to pick up on Martha's question about why you can't have a blend of the two positions, and say that you absolutely can, and many other variations in between. The school of criticism to which I most belong is called New Historicism, which respects the author but is not inhibited by him/her:... -
That's a remarkable connection! I have seen this film, I agree, it fits very neatly into the same aesthetic.
I remember reading a hoax news story the other day about students being outraged by the novel adaptation of the musical Oliver! not having any songs in it... Unfortunately I can't find it, but my search did throw up this other equally amusing story:...
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The Woman in Black is a superb example. Again, the (recent-ish) film version is really interesting - for me it stops being scary as soon as we start to see her. When you're not sure what is happening I find the scares far more effective.
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I absolutely agree here, I saw the David Lean version for the first time last year and it was wonderful. There's something really special about those early 20th-century adaptations that captures the imagination far more than any film produced in the last 30 years. Amber Regis spoke recently on a Q&A panel at a screening of the 1944 adaptation of Jane Eyre,...
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Angela, I love this description of Catherine!
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This is the question I always come back to in the classroom when teaching Northanger Abbey -- to what extent is Catherine the target, and to what extent is her story intended as a cautionary tale..?
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Adam James Smith made a comment
Angela and Amber are both looking forward to the Hangout tonight! Don't forget, even if you can't tune in live you can still leave a question on this step we'll try an answer it tonight. The video will immediately appear on Youtube and Google Hangout, so you'll be able to check in later and see if your's got answered!
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It is horrible, isn't it? Quite a contrast to Pope's Rape of the Lock or Heywood's Fantomina.
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Fantastic, I love it!
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Haha, thank you Staci-Jill. I'm intriged that you are evoking the author as the ultimate authority, as is fairly standard practice. That makes Great Expectations even more interesting - all of them come from Dickens in one way or another, so which would you choose?
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Miss Havisham appeared in this Guardian feature earlier this week as an example of a fictional 19th-century Monomaniac (interpreted here as someone with an obsession). I'm slightly uncomfortable about anachronistic diagnosis of mental illness, particularly when applied to fictional characters, but this still makes for a fun little...
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I've put your question on the list, be sure to tune in tomorrow! Congratulations on finishing the A-Level Emilie, I'm pleased to hear that you enjoyed Northanger Abbey.
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Thanks Fiona, I knew there was something I'd forgotten to do. Here it is, A Beautiful Young Nymph Goes to Bed: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/50580
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I agree, FID doesn't appear to occur here, the narrator never literally slips into Emily's own internal narration. And yet, I vividly feel like I know exactly what Emily is feeling.
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Hi,
Oops, sorry Lane! The 1996 version is absolutely beautifully shot. I wonder what it was about 1995-96 that led to so many adaptations of Emma all coming out at once? -
Incidentally, carrying forward last week's discussions, what do you think about the extent to which Emily's experience is bleeding into the narrative voice in this extract?
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Excellent, yes - this is all very convincing! For anyone who would like to read Pope's Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady in full you can access it here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44891 -
Thanks all for these comments! I haven't seen The Living and the Dead yet but I had been meaning to watch it, thanks! Miz, is the original Haunting of Hill House the one with Vincent Price?
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This is an excellent point. So, Radcliffe uses the intertextual reference to Othello to draw a parallel between Catherine and Shakespeare's titular antagonist, implying that they are similar in that neither properly interrogates the information they are given, rendering them both partial to misdirection and confusion?
I guess Thompson and Gray tell us...
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Absolutely!
As I understand it, two 'schools' (for want of a better word) of Gothic literature emerged in the the late 18th century, which became known as Horror and Terror. Terror, of which Radcliffe was an expert practitioner, relied on the imagination of the reader, inviting us to image things far worse than she could ever actually depict in words....
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Adam James Smith made a comment
Over on our blog this week PhD student Jamie Morgan explores the homes of the wealth in the 19th century, with a post on novelist and newspaper man G. W. M. Reynolds: http://soeblog.group.shef.ac.uk/literature-of-the-english-country-house-g-w-m-reynolds-and-the-homes-of-the-wealthy/
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This is a good point about technology, Pooja. I wonder if a similar criticism could have been levelled against coffee house users in the eighteenth century? They all would have been reading magazines and periodicals, only made possible by relatively recent advances in technology that facilitated mass-produced cheap print...
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I'm fasciated by the authors Catherine has been reading as part of her 'training to become a heroine'. To an extent we see the literary canon here, but a lot of these are also notable for their shared interests.
Alexander Pope - the most famous satirist of the 18th century. Why might Austen be doffing her cap to Pope at this early stage in the...
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This is actually something I'm really interested in, both personally and professionally. Way back in 2013 I wrote a blog post for the School of English in which I attempted to identify the same strategies at work in contemporary horror films. If you'd like to see it, here is the link:...
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A fantastic point, very much in fitting with late 18th-century ideas of Terror. Famously, Edmund Burke - a direct influence on Radcliffe - wrote in 1757 that:
"Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, […] or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest...
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That is a very wise choice Jessica, and really the only option that satisfies my own conscience. In practice I imagine that the publisher might be a little resistant to including all of the endings, due to issues of time and money. That said, in the current digital age you could probably direct readers to an only appendices containing all of the endings?
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Hi Lane,
Was that the glossy cinematic outing of 1996 starring Gwyneth Paltrow? For reasons that are less than academic (mostly a very impressive Netflix algorithm) I recently watched 4 Emma adaptations in a week, starring Paltrow (1996), Kate Beckinsale (also 1996), Romola Garai (2009) and -- of course! -- Alisia Silverstone in Clueless (1995). I'm still...
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Adam James Smith made a comment
This video, of course -- as many of you have commented -- is filmed on location at Chatsworth House (my own favourite filming location!!). The relationship between Chatsworth and Pemberley is one that gets a lot of coverage and is always a joy to discuss and debate.
Over on the blog we were joined by Lauren Nixon (author of The Complete World of Jane...
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Excellent, thanks for sharing these Barbara!
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It is interesting that Chatsworth as Pemberley seems a popular choice in this thread. Regardless of the actual extent to which Austen *did* base Pemberley on Chatsworth, Chatsworth certainly seems to have come to represent Darcy's estate in the popular imagination. I really enjoyed the BBC adaptation of P. D. James' 'Death Comes to Pemberley', which also goes...
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Great point, Sheila!
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That's a great question Jeanne! I'm not sure enough to say that no one had ever blurred the boundary's between character perspective and narrator before, but certainly Austen was the first to use this technique so extensively. For discussions of F. I. D, Austen is still very much the go-to example, and she is generally regarded as the innovator of this...
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Ha, well, quite! That is a scene I would like to see :)
Free Indirect Discourse and the Stylistics Vocabulary we are using this week offer us a way of describing and discussing a phenomena that occurs in Austen's prose, but this is a 20/21st-century terminology being used to discuss a 19th-century text. One of my students once likened it to Gravity - Issac... -
Adam James Smith replied to Sue W
It is pretty scandalous, enjoy!
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I am intrigued by your theory Cristina, why a French novel?
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I find the abrupt ending endlessly fascinating. On the one hand, it renders the story safe - the promiscuous heroine is punished for her actions and conservative order is restored. But if this is a morality tale, or some kind of conduct literature, why are does it take such gleeful pleasure in describing the heroine's nocturnal adventures and perceived...
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Though an 18th-century scholar might pause before acknowledging these as 'novels' - in the way that Austen would have understood the term - there is no denying that they extending and imaginative works of prose fiction.
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Hi Rona,
This is a great point, and though there is an awful lot of scholarship which talks about the emergence of 'the novel' as a distinct and discrete form in the 18th century, this wasn't the first time extended prose fiction had been written or circulated. And, to actually also draw on your second point, one of the best known examples of a...
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Hello Joan,
You raise a vital point, thank you. Watt's novel, though the foundational text for many decades, has been thoroughly revised over recent decades. In addition to Spenser's counter that is also Michael McKeon's Origins of the English Novel (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Origins-English-Novel-1600-1740/dp/0801869595), which not only highlights the...
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I do think you raise a vital point John, and one that is often raised in seminars on the degree programme.
Though Austen wouldn't have called it Free Indirect Discourse the term does provide a lexis for describing a technique she employs regularly. To echo what Thomas and Lindsay say, it really depends on the way you want to read the text and and what you...
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Adam James Smith made a comment
Hi all,
Towards the very end of the discussion we were discussing satirical prints, with specific reference to Rowlandson and Howgarth. If you'd like to see some of the Howgarth prints I just found this catalogue online:
http://www.michaelfinney.co.uk/catalogue/category/index.cfm?asset_id=1389 -
Adam James Smith made a comment
Hi everyone,
Around the 30min mark Susan and I talked a little about Eliza Heywood's short novella Fantomina. If you'd like to read this astonishing and scandalous tale yourself it is freely available here:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/haywood/fantomina/fantomina.html
Enjoy!
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Hi Immy,
Great comment - I also can't really imagine Darcy in this situation. I guess he would have been visiting the city a little later, and as the really helpful article you've linked to highlights, the coffee house as imagined by Addison began to wane in popularity by the mid 18th century, giving way to the private Gentleman's Club -- where I absolutely...
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Thanks for this - I second Stephen's recommendation of Ophelia Field's The Kit-Kat Club, it is an outstanding text - both erudite and incredibly entertaining. I remember eagerly reading it cover-to-cover right at the start of my PhD, I can't emphasise enough what an influence it was on how I conceive of my period. That book and Abigail Williams' 'Poetry and...
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Hi Lyn,
Have you seen our accompanying blog post on manuscript hands? There's an opportunity here to see Jim's MS in closer detail:
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Thanks for the link Mark. The session itself has been recorded for posterity over on the Youtube for you to enjoy, endlessly, at your leisure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDgLQpl1fl0 -
Hi Emilie,
This was a great question, which - with your permission - I'll pass onto Amber and Angela for the Gothic MOOC in Week 5?
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Hi Sasha,
Great question - and yes, we absolutely can! Last year we canvassed learners and asked them to recommend their favourite examples of Country House Literature, the results were incredible.
We compiled a short list on our blog:
http://soeblog.group.shef.ac.uk/the-literature-of-the-country-house-your-recommended-further-reading/I also...
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Britannica offers a pretty detailed yet very accessible history of newspaper journalism which might be of interest: https://www.britannica.com/topic/publishing/Newspaper-publishing
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Great question. According to Addison some issues of The Spectator sold up to 3000 copies, which was big units in the 18th century. One of Addison and Steele's greatest commercial innovations was to not only have their papers sold by booksellers and street hawkers, but to also have them stocked in private clubs and coffee houses!
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I love this!
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You're singing my song now Stephen - I have been campaigned for years for a new (and not prohibitively expensive) annotated edition of Addison's writing! Although all of his writing is available via various online resources the last critical edition of his political essays (The Freeholder) came out in 1979, published by a division of OUP that no longer exists....
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Hi everyone,
I just wanted to share this post from our companion blog which links to an article Susan has written about changes to the term and usage of politeness throughout the 18th century:
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PS. I used this chart to do the math:
http://www.johnowensmith.co.uk/histdate/moneyval.htm -
This is a great comment Stephen, I especially like the comparison to Goldsmith and Fielding. Historically I think scholars have a tendency to read Addison over-earnestly (especially in comparison to his frequent collaborator, the marginally more avuncular Steele), but when you read issues of The Spectator like this one I can absolutely see him sitting in the...
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Good question Jerry, it is difficult to say... but 40 shillings was roughly worth about £2 and using this chart you can see that towards the mid-18thC £1 was worth approx £100 in current currency (not accounting for BREXIT!), so 40 shillings in 1710-20s is about £200... whilst still doesn't sound like much, but it was enough for a modest estate. Addison's...
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This is a fascinating thread. I was just reading up on the 'Author God', one of Barthes' key concepts, and I found this feature in The Guardian from 2010. I think this is a really neat summary:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/jan/13/death-of-the-author -
Samuel Johnson had this to say of Addison's own political wrangling:
'One slight lineament of [Addison’s] character Swift has preserved. It was his practise, when he found any man invincibly wrong, to flatter his opinions by acquiescence, and sink him deeper into absurdity. This artifice of mischief was admired by Stella, and Swift seems to approve her...
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This is captured well in a posthumous description of his close friend Lord Somers, who he saw as the embodiment of politeness:
"His Stile in Writing was chaste and pure, but at the same time full of Spirit and Politeness; and fit to convey the most intricate Business to the Understanding of the Reader, with the utmost clearness and Perspicuity."
So, I'd...
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Addison saw politeness as offering an alternative to this splenetic model of partisan exchange. And actually, it is here that you can get a real sense of what it was the Addison was thinking of when he talked of politeness. For him, politeness had its origins in Rhetoric -- the art of persuasion -- and specifically in the rhetoric of Cicero.
Addison argued...
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... "The Examiner was a paper, in the last Reign, which was the Favourite Work of the Party. […] Who would not have expected, that at least the Rules of Decency and Candour would be observed in such a Performance? But instead of this, you saw all the great Men, who had done eminent Services to their Country but a few Years before, draughted out one by one, and...
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"When a Man thinks a Party engaged in such Measures as tend to the Ruine of his Country, it is certainly very laudable and virtuous Action in him to make War after this Manner upon the whole Body. But as several Casuists are of Opinion, that in a Battle you should discharge upon the Gross of the Enemy, without levelling your Piece at any particular Person so...
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There is an interesting and potentially useful comparison to be drawn from all of this. In Addison's later periodical, The Free-Holder, he expressed a frustration with what he saw as the 'rage of party' -- he thought political discussion had devolved into the hurling of bitter insults and invective, and that decisions were being made based on whose reputation...
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A few weeks ago, before the unprecedented political events of the past fortnight, I wondered the same and felt compelled to write a blog post about what Addison would have made of the build up to the Referendum:
https://adamjsmith18thc.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/inclusion-collaboration-and-reconciliation-18th-century-advice-on-the-eu-vote/ -
That's a very fine point Rona. Addison is often cited as having egalitarian principles for wanting to "bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea tables and in coffee houses." He wanted culture to be enjoyed and steered by the middling classes, for taste to be determined by those in the...
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Sofia is right, it comes up in 3.6!
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Adam James Smith replied to Sue Donnelly
I would argue that Starbucks deliberately try to tap into a kind of mythology of the coffee house in their presentation and marketing -- although, as we'll discuss elsewhere this week, there were plenty who saw the 18th-century coffee house as quite a cynical enterprise in the first place, so in that sense my Starbucks and Costa have might have even more in...
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Adam James Smith replied to Jacqueline Budris
An important distinction, Jacqueline! This is something I'm very interested in: the applications of politeness. My PhD thesis was interested in how Joseph Addison, who we'll be meeting later this week, was able to use 'polite' strategies to promote his political views and complicate those of his opponents. Indeed, I argued that he was able to use politeness to...
