Wednesday 22nd May, 5pm, University of Surrey

Dr. Tatiana Kontou, Senior Lecturer, Oxford Brookes: ‘Florence Marryat and Material Impressions’. This seminar is also a meeting of the ‘Long Nineteenth-Century Studies Group’.  The group is made up of scholars working in this period in a range of universities across the South East. It is kindly hosted by the ‘Cultures in Contact’ forum. For further information on the ‘Long Nineteenth-Century Studies Group’, or to be added to the mailing list please contact Dr Beth Palmer (Lecturer in English Literature at Surrey) on b.palmer@surrey.ac.uk.

For more information, please visit the University of Surrey website.

Although Florence Marryat is now moderately well-known as a novelist, she was also an editor, most notably for the journal London Society. In Women’s Authorship and Editorship in Victorian Culture, Beth Palmer examines her role, alongside Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Ellen [Mrs Henry] Wood, who also maintained dual identities as author-editors. The depth of research and extensive use of archival material make this an invaluable and welcome book.

Women’s Authorship and Editorship in Victorian Culture is available through Amazon.

Now that there are a few academics researching Marryat, she does tend to pop up more frequently in published work. Acts of Memory: The Victorians and Beyond is an engaging collection of essays on nineteenth-century concepts of memory, edited by Serena Trowbridge and Ryan Barnett. It includes ‘”Nothing Can Wipe out the Memory”: Remembering the Dead in Florence Marryat’s The Box with the Iron Clamps‘ by Georgina O’Brien Hill. This poignant short story is one of Marryat’s finest, and Georgina sets it within the context of Victorian mourning rituals.

Acts of Memory is available through Amazon, and The Box with the Iron Clamps can be downloaded as a PDF.

Unusually, this year’s Victorian Popular Fiction Association Conference featured only one paper on Florence Marryat, and that was by me. It was entitled “Who Pays for the Butter? Florence Marryat and the Married Women’s Property Acts”. The curious can download a copy.

It’s not too late to register for the Victorian Popular Fiction Association’s annual conference. There’s a cracking programme this year, including two papers on Florence Marryat:

Éadoin Agnew, ‘”The Juggernaut of English domestic life”: Mimicry and Marriage in Florence Marryat’s Veronique’

Greta Depledge, ‘Experimental medicine and marital harmony: Florence Marryat’s In the Name of Liberty’

If you’re interested in only a particular session or paper, then discounted rates can be organised on the day. Just turn up, and we’ll accommodate your needs.

The atmosphere is friendly and relaxed, and anyone with an interest in Victorian fiction is welcome.

I hope to meet some of you there!

Victorian Popular Fiction Association – 3rd Annual Conference, 18th & 19th July 2011 – Institute for English Studies, University of London

Theme: Sex, Courtship and Marriage in Victorian Popular Culture

Keynote speakers: Andrew King (Canterbury Christ Church University) and Jennifer Phegley (University of Missouri-Kansas City)

For the full conference programme and details of how to register, please visit the IES website.

I’m pleased to announce a forthcoming Victorian Popular Fiction Association study day at the Institute of English Studies, London on 13th November 2010 (2-5pm).

It is the aim of this study day to explore issues of thematic interest in the work and lives of Victorian popular novelists.  We are using the life and work of Florence Marryat as a starting point for this exploration but would hope that the nature of the themes under discussion – female detectives, identity, the Victorian press, marriage reform – would be of interest to academics working in similar areas in the work of other Victorian popular novelists.

Speakers:

Greta Depledge (Royal Holloway)
Female detectives in late nineteenth-century fiction and Florence Marryat’s ‘In the Name of Liberty’

Georgina O’ Brien Hill (University of Chester)
(Re)claiming Identity in Florence Marryat’s ‘Her Father’s Name’ and Wilkie Collins’s ‘No Name’.

Tatiana Kontou (University of Sussex)
1865: Literature, culture and Florence Marryat

Beth Palmer (University of Surrey)
Florence Marryat and the Victorian Press

Catherine Pope (University of Sussex)
“The chain that galls”: Florence Marryat and the campaign for marriage reform

This event is free but if you wish to be kept informed of events organized by the Victorian Popular Fiction Association, then a membership form can be downloaded from the VFPA website.

I have added a short synopsis and some background material for The Prey of the Gods.

I have just added a synopsis of My Own Child, a curious novel in which Florence Marryat explores Spiritualism, Catholicism, and maternal love.

I’ve just added a detailed synopsis of The Strange Transfiguration of Hannah Stubbs, one of Florence Marryat’s most entertaining novels.

I have just uploaded Marryat’s preface to Veronique, in which she defends her use of the sensation genre and denounces her critics.