It’s a Small World After All

December 14, 2020

Although for many of us there is nothing like connecting with colleagues face to face, the changes brought about by the pandemic and subsequent stay-at-home orders have opened exciting scholarship to audiences across the world. Unlike location-bound conferences and lectures, online presentations and performances enable wide participation. At the forefront of contributors to the myriad online initiatives established in the last three quarters of the year are Lewis Walpole Library Fellows. What follows is a selected playlist of sorts to get us all through the dark winter ahead by shining light on a range of fascinating topics relevant to the long eighteenth century. So many events are online, in fact, it’s hard to keep up with them.

Lectures, Workshops, Seminars

ODSECS Open Digital Seminar in 18th-Century Studies,” convened by Dr. Rebecca Bullard, Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Reading, UK

Seminar 1 Sophie CoulombeauUnlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers.”   

Seminar 2 Eugenia ZuroskiHaywood’s fascinum

Seminar 4 Freya GowrleyAnna Seward and the Poetics of Exchange: Portraiture, Poetry and Gift Culture

Seminar 6 Rebecca Anne BarrThe Good Man on trial, or, male virginity and the politics of misogyny

Seminar 7 Robbie RichardsonSacred Medicine at Strawberry Hill: British Antiquaries and Indigenous Objects

Upcoming:

Seminar 9: Friday, 26 February 2021 (4pm UK time; 11am Eastern time; 8am Pacific time) Julie ParkThe Camera Obscura and Built Environments of Inner Life in 18th-Century England

Seminar 10: Wednesday 17 March 2021 (4pm UK time; 12pm Eastern time; 9am Pacific time) Madeleine PellingDigging Up the Past: Contested Territories and Women Archaeologists in 1780s Britain and Ireland

The “Twickenham Luminaries Virtual Lecture Series,” created by five Twickenham Historic organizations

Judith HawleyAlexander Pope and His Villa

Michael SnodinHorace Walpole and Strawberry Hill

London Art Week

Silvia Davoli So Eminently a Classic Genius”: the British Sculptor Anne Seymour Damer (1748-1828)

Manchester Metropolitan University Department of English series of short films to celebrate LGBT History Month (February) 2020

              Dale Townshend “Horace Walpole

              Dale Townshend “Matthew Lewis

Clarence Brown Theatre “Theatre Thursdays”

              Misty Anderson Theatre as a Social Tool

British Association of Romantic Studies Digital Events Programme

              Sophie Coulombeau on “Digital Editions in Romantic Studies

Online Publication

Art & The Country House, edited by Martin Postle, Deputy Director for Grants and Publications at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art,

Jocelyn AndersonVisiting and Writing on Country House Art Collections in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Esther ChadwickPatterned with Paper Pictures: The Print Room at Petworth House

Jonny YarkerContinuity and the Country House: Preservation as a Strategy of Display from 1688 to 1950

Jonny Yarker’The Noblest Pyle Among Us’: Raynham in its Local Context”  

Jonny YarkerTrewithen and Its Cornish Context in the Early Eighteenth Century”  

Performance

Emperor of the Moon by Aphra Behn, adapted by Misty Anderson, Charlotte Munson, & Charles Pasternak.

Fellows have been very busy, and more details about their scholarly work are in the Fellows News section below. Because of the Lewis Walpole Library’s intimate reading room, personal service, and on-site residential accommodations, we feel a special bond with our Fellows and they with each other. There are, of course, also many valuable contributions to scholarship by researchers who have not been Fellows. We hope to welcome them in Farmington as Fellows or researchers in the future. The above is surely not a comprehensive list, and we welcome additions and suggestions.

by Susan Walker