Sunday 24 October 2010

You've never seen the The Prince Wales like this!!!!!

Mordern tube station. The bottom of the Northern Line.

Cherry Pie Music, South Wimbledon.

Old milestone. Ten miles to Whitehall (and St Paul's Cathedral.)

"Georgie Porgy"

Young's beer is lovely. I have a pint once in a while!!!!!!!!!!

Such a nice day today I went out for a run around South Wimbledon. I always take a small digital camera with in case I see anything i would like to snap.

I came across The Prince of Wales. You've never seen him like this before. Would Jane have warmed to him more if she knew he was a pub?????

By the way, Youngs, is a great South London beer. It used to to be brewed in Wandsworth but they have moved their brewing premises out of London to a brand new modern complex.

Beer had been brewed on the site in Wandsworth since 1581.

Also a local, old milestone. It is a Georgian mile stone. The main road through the London Borough of Merton would have been the main coaching road to Portsmouth and Chichester. Originally it began as the great Roman road, Stane Street, that lead from the Roman, London Bridge, to the south coast.

The small local South London recording studio, Cherry Pie Music. Maybe, just maybe, the next great singer or band might come from here. You never know.

The tube station at Mordern, is the southern most station on the Northern Line. You can only go north from here.

LINKS:

The Prince of Wales: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/george_iv_king.shtml

Young's Brewery: http://www.pub-explorer.com/realale/youngsbrewery.htm

Saturday 23 October 2010

Jane Austen Day at the Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library Oxford has put a digital archive of Jane Austen's handwritten manuscripts, brought together from collections around the world, on line for us to read and enjoy. These are Jane's original manuscripts before editing; blots, spellings mistakes, crossings out,lack of punctuation, they include the lot.

For one day only..........................."Volume the first."

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/news/2010_oct_22

Friday 22 October 2010

Jane Austen, The Original Writing

After studying over a thousand items of Jane's original, handwritten manuscripts, Professor Kathryn Sutherland, of Oxford University, has reached the conclusion that Jane's final, published works, were the result of extensive editing, and not by her.

"The manuscripts,.........., "reveal Austen to be an experimental and innovative writer, constantly trying new things."

I wonder if we will get a new set of her novels published, the unedited version?

Now, that WOULD be interesting!!!!!!!!!!

Jane Austen's style might not be hers, academic claims

Austen completed six novels in her lifetime

The elegant writing style of novelist Jane Austen may have been the work of her editor, an academic has claimed.

Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University reached her conclusion while studying 1,100 original handwritten pages of Austen's unpublished writings.

The manuscripts, she states, feature blots, crossing outs and "a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing".

She adds: "The polished punctuation and epigrammatic style we see in Emma and Persuasion is simply not there."

Professor Sutherland of the Faculty of English Language and Literature claims her findings refute the notion of Austen as "a perfect stylist".

It suggests, she continues, that someone else was "heavily involved" in the editing process.

She believes that person to be William Gifford, an editor who worked for Austen's publisher John Murray II.

The research formed part of an initiative to create an online archive of all of Austen's handwritten fiction manuscripts.

The three-year project - in which King's College London, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the British Library in London were involved - is due to be launched on 25 October.

Professor Sutherland, an Austen authority, said studying her unpublished manuscripts gave her "a more intimate appreciation" of the author's talents.

The manuscripts, she went on, "reveal Austen to be an experimental and innovative writer, constantly trying new things."

They also show her "to be even better at writing dialogue and conversation than the edited style of her published novels suggest."

Jane Austen (1775-1817) completed six novels in her lifetime, two of which were published posthumously.

Analysis

Rebecca JonesArts correspondent, BBC News

Jane Austen is widely celebrated as a supreme stylist - a writer of perfectly polished sentences.

Yet after studying more than a thousand handwritten pages of the novelist's unpublished manuscripts, Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University has concluded that Austen's style was far more free-flowing and featured a limited range of punctuation.

Letters between Austen's publisher and an editor who worked with him acknowledge the untidiness of her writing.

According to Professor Sutherland, they suggest it was the editor who then intervened to sharpen the prose of one of English Literature's most popular writers.

NOT ALL IS LOST!!!

HALF AN HOUR AFTER FIRST POSTING THIS ARTICLE 8.30 am Saturday 23rd. October.

Just listened to an interview on the radio with Professor Kathryn Sutherland. She quoted some letters from Murray which prove that Jane's works were heavily edited but she also states that the original manuscripts show much greater emphaisis on dialogue. They are written as though somebody is actually talking, with pauses and reemphasise of words and phrases. It's like actual speech which includes colloquialisms and regional speech. Professor Sutherland thinks that people didn't write again like this until Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Jane was far ahead of her time. Professor Sutherland thinks this shows Jane to be a greater, more innovative writer than we first thought. The professor has been able to come to these conclusions by digitally bringing together all of Jane's original manuscripts from around the world and studying them together.This is the the first time they have been able to be looked at, as a whole body of writing, since 1845.

PHEW!!! So Jane is a greater writer than we all thought. There you are!!!!

Later still. Now 10.15am here is the I-Player radio link for the TODAY programme on Radio 4. The interview with Professor Sutherland about Jane Austen's works.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vg88h/Today_23_10_2010/

Thursday 21 October 2010

Mary Anning, the fossil hunter from Lyme

A contemporary sketch done of Mary Anning at work. By Henry de la Beche.

Mary Anning

Mary Anning lived at the same time as Jane Austen, in Lyme Regis in Dorset. A place Jane knew well. Part of Persuasion is set in Lyme. Jane's father, The Reverend Austen, knew Mary Anning's father. Whether Jane ever met Mary is unsure.

Here is a quote from the Wikipaedia article about Mary Anning.

"Mary Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was a British fossil collector, dealer and palaeontologist who became known around the world for having made a number of important finds in the Jurassic-era marine fossil beds at Lyme Regis where she lived.^[2] Her work contributed to the fundamental changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the earth that occurred in the early 19th century."

It is interesting to note that Mary was inspired to prove her local vicar in Lyme wrong.He was what we might term a "creationist," today. He thought the world was created in six days.Mary's work later inspired people like Charles Darwin. At the time of Mary Anning and Jane Austen people thought the world was only a few thousand years old. Mary Anning's discoveries contradicted this idea.

She struggled throughout her life to be recognised. This Wikipaedia article does her justice and I think is worth reading. It not only gives an incite into the life of Mary Anning but also the beliefs of her time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning

The BBC and The Royal Society, are commemorating 200 years since Mary Anning discovered her first fossil on the Dorset coast near Lyme.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11590505

Monday 11 October 2010

The Reverend Charles Dodgson

LEWIS CARROLL(self portrait)

The grave of The Reverend Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in Mount Cemetery on the steep side of the hill opposite Guildford town centre.

Me and Lewis.

The Reverend.

The clock in Guildford High Street late autumn 2007.

The chapel next to Lewis Carroll's grave.

Lewis Carroll was the great mathematician, logician, philosopher, photographer and writer of fantasy. He died on 14th January 1898 at the age of 65 in the home of his sisters in Guildford Surrey.

I love reading his "Jabberwocky" out loud. It's sounds, rhythms and patterns are so uplifting. It makes me feel good.

BELLOW IT OUT TO THE WORLD!!!!!!!!

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

dshaw@jabberwocky.com

Thursday 7 October 2010

Another little gem from the BBC website.

I hope you can all access these clips.

Lets try anyway.

Tony

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/11497455

The Bodleian Library Oxford

Oxford University has apparently run out of book space so it has built itself a new library.

Here is an article from today's BBC website.

Vast bookstore opens as

famed library runs out

of space

The book storage facility has been built on the outskirts of Swindon

A warehouse big enough to store eight million books and maps for Oxford University's overflowing Bodleian Library has been unveiled.

The £26m site near Swindon, Wiltshire, has 153 miles (246km) of shelving.

The library, which is entitled to a copy of every book published in the UK, had been running out of space to store works for decades.

With 1,000 new books arriving each day, the head librarian said the situation had become "desperate".

The new warehouse has enough space to support

the Bodleian for the next 20 years.

Over the next year, nearly six million books and

more than 1.2 million maps will be transferred from Oxford to

the storage facility.

It will be predominantly low-usage books and maps which will

be stored at the 13-acre site, 28 miles from Oxford.

More popular items and special collections - including

four original manuscripts of the 13th century

Magna Carta - will remain in Oxford.

High-density shelving means there is space to store 8.4 million books and maps

The warehouse, which can be expanded in future

if needed, has 3,224 bays with 95,000 shelf levels.

There are 600 map cabinets which will hold 1.2 million maps and other larger items.

The floor space of the unit is the same as 1.6 football pitches - although the total shelf surface area is 10 times that, thanks to high-density shelving.

Students have been told that if they order a book from

the new unit by 1000 in the morning, it should be delivered

to the Oxford reading room of their choice by 1500 that afternoon.

Library staff will use forklift trucks to retrieve books which

will then be transported to Oxford by road in a twice-daily service.

Some items will be scanned and sent to students' computers electronically.

It is estimated there will be 200,000 requests for items each year.

Librarian Dr Sarah Thomas said it was important to preserve

all the books so that future generations could have access to the recorded knowledge of the past.

"The BSF will prove a long-awaited solution to the space problem

that has long challenged the Bodleian," said Dr Thomas.

"We have been running out of space since the 1970s and the situation has become increasingly desperate in the last few years."