The Waterfall Trail, Queen Elizabeth Forest Park — Photo credit: Paula Dumas
From the (pay-to-park) parking lots of the Lodge Forest Visitor Centre in the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, north of Aberfoyle in Scotland, you’ll find a range of walking trails that vary in length, difficulty, and scenery. These photos are from the short, lovely Waterfall Trail.
The Waterfall Trail, Queen Elizabeth Forest Park — Photo credit: Paula Dumas
Readers’ Entrance, Jefferson Building – photo credit: L. Flewelling
My experience researching at the Library of Congress is fairly extensive and I was most recently there this past February. I’ve used the Main Reading Room, Newspaper & Current Periodical Room, Geography & Map Reading Room, and Microform Reading Room over the past few years. The experience there can be highly dependent on the individual. It may depend on who you come into contact with in the library and certainly which reading room you are using. Overall, though, I think my experiences can be helpful for people preparing to go to the Library of Congress for the first time.
LOC Layout: Maps and Floor Plans
The main building at the Library of Congress is the Jefferson Building. Researchers enter under the stairs pictured above. The Madison and Adams buildings are across the street. They are all connected through a tunnel system.
Reader Registration: LOC Reader Registration Website
The Reader Registration Station is in the Madison Building and you can pre-register online before going there in person to get your picture taken and card printed out. I’ve also had to renew my card. Both times the process was straightforward and even though you might have to wait in line for a few minutes it goes quickly. They’ll also answer any basic questions about directions around the buildings etc for your first visit.
Accessing the Reading Rooms: List of Reading Rooms
It’s most helpful to determine beforehand which reading room you’ll need by looking up your materials in the catalog. The experience in each of the separate reading rooms is completely different so you just have to go to that room and ask at the information desk how things work in that area if you’re not sure.
For the main reading room, leave your belongings at the cloakroom desk by the main entrance to the Jefferson Building (or the downstairs cloakroom depending on what time of day it is – see signs posted at main cloakroom desk). Then you walk to the back of the entrance hall and wind your way along the hallways to the elevator, go up a floor, and you’re right outside the main reading room and the microfilm room. Honestly, it is pretty easy to get turned around. Once while attempting to leave I had security guards yell at me through a closed door not to go that direction, which was a strange experience to say the least.
If you’re going from the Madison Building to the Jefferson Building, you can avoid going through security a second time by crossing through the tunnels in the basement. They also have a Dunkin Donuts and Subway down there if you need a food break.
Accessing Your Materials:
Once you have your card you can order materials before you go to the library for the day for some of the reading rooms. Others you need to fill out a slip in person. The delivery times can vary greatly and may take more than a day.
If you’re tight on time, I highly recommend emailing ask a librarian before you go to see if you’ll be able to access your materials. Actually I would recommend doing that even if you think you have a lot of time. My main caution would be to not rely on the catalog to tell if materials are going to be available (for historic materials particularly, rather than secondary sources). For example, I discovered some interesting materials on the last day of a trip one January, and decided to plan another trip to be able to work with those particular materials more thoroughly. I came back the next May assuming I would be able to order them as before, but as it turned out those materials had been dinged for preservation when I had looked at them previously. There was no way to access them.
Luckily there were other materials that I could work with to fill my time and I had the opportunity to return a few months later. This time I emailed with a librarian and had her assurances that my materials would be available. I printed out her email, which was useful when I was again told that my materials were in preservation after ordering them through the online system. Luckily one of the people working at the main desk in the reading room was able to track everything down, but only because she had the name of the librarian I had emailed with and was able to talk to her personally.
Historic newspapers are one type of material where it is especially important to talk to someone about what is available because the date listing in the online catalog seems to generally be for the whole run of the newspaper, not necessarily what the library actually holds.
The Main Reading Room:
The Main Reading Room is gorgeous and I would recommend going on the tour of the Jefferson Building even if you are not researching there. Materials that you order online will be delivered to the desk you have selected or to the main desk. You can ask for permission to take pictures of the materials (you aren’t supposed to take pictures of the actual reading room though). Overall the reference librarians and support staff are helpful, but are especially so if you can be specific about what you are looking for and as prepared as possible ahead of time.
Amazingly extensive collections allowing you to stumble upon things you’ve never heard of before; contrasting the lovely Main Reading Room with the sparse winding basement tunnels and Dunkin Donuts; all that plus you can wander around the outside of the Capitol, Supreme Court, and the US Botanic Garden when you want to take a study break.
Jefferson Building – photo credit: L. Flewelling
Saturday marked the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, so I decided to pull together some resources that celebrate and promote further understanding of his work, his life, and his legacy. Here’s a few ideas that might inspire us to think about him and his work in new ways:
Shakespeare Lives is a global programme of events and activities celebrating Shakespeare. They also have a MOOC, study aids, travelling performances, a newsletter, and much more.
Network visualization: mapping Shakespeare’s tragedies
11 images that map networks of characters in each of Shakespeare’s 11 tragedies with a brief introduction and explanation, laid out to facilitate comparisons.
An archive of links to video clips of films and performances of Shakespearean plays and adaptations from around the world, with descriptions about each clip.
What Shakespeare Sounded Like to Shakespeare: Reconstructing the Bard’s Original Pronunciation
An article and embedded video that discusses the search to understand what Shakespeare’s texts would have sounded like at the time he was writing.
London Underground Tube Map Gets Shakespeare Makeover
Transport for London and Shakespeare’s Globe have teamed up to create a Shakespearean London Tube Map. Details can be found in an article in The Huffington Post.
“What is Past is Prologue”: Outside the National Archives Building in Washington, DC – Photo credit: L. Flewelling
William Shakespeare died four hundred years ago, on 23 April 1616. Here is just another reminder of how his influence can still be felt pretty much anywhere you look for it.
This coming Sunday marks one hundred years from the actual date of the Easter Rising’s commencement. But in Ireland, the Easter Rising is commemorated on Easter week, not on 24 April. True, it is known as the “Easter” Rising and not the “April 24th” Rising or “April” Rising. But what does this say about the political, cultural, and religious contexts in which the rising is commemorated? How much do those contexts differ from (or coincide with) those of 1916 itself?
We will have to wait a few years until this year’s commemoration of the Easter Rising’s one hundredth anniversary can be properly analyzed and viewed as part of (or a divergence from) the continuum of historical remembrance in Ireland. For now, it’s useful to turn to the sources on Irish historical memory that analyze eras prior to our own.
The study of historical memory in Ireland is dominated by analysis of remembrance of the Famine, the Easter Rising, and World War I, as well as the 1798 Rebellion, the Civil War, and the Troubles. I myself have been particularly interested in the ways in which historical events and memories from other countries – such as the American Civil War – have been recounted, commemorated, and used for political objectives in Ireland. Continue reading
Oh brave new world,
That has such people in’t?
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
It seems that William Shakespeare is all over the news lately as the 400th anniversary of his death approaches (or is it just my news feed?). I’ll be honest — I hold a deep appreciation for his work. I have my favourite plays and my not-so-favourite ones and I’d love to act in a full-length production of one of his works someday.
I had the opportunity to work with Shakespeare’s plays for a few years at the University of Guelph in three different ways: as a drama student, as an actress, and as an English student. In my third year of undergrad I took Shakespearean Receptions, an English course that looked at how “Shakespeare” has become what it is today and how William Shakespeare’s work has been used, understood, transformed, and incorporated into both our language and our lives. It was fascinating. It was also very hard work, particularly for a non-English major, but definitely worth the time and energy.
I’ve always been fascinated by The Tempest. I was lucky enough to see William Hutt in the role of Prospero at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada in 2005. I think it’s a very meaningful play and have always been interested in its reception, which has changed over time. The Tempest is thought to have been the last play that Shakespeare wrote on his own, and this gives it added significance to analysts of the text.
Quick plot summary: The Tempest (another word for large storm) is about a storm that causes several characters, including Alonso (the King of Naples and sworn enemy of Prospero’s) and his son Ferdinand, to be shipwrecked near a small island. Prospero, the usurped Duke of Milan, had been banished to the island years ago with his daughter Miranda. The island is inhabited by spirits and creatures, including Ariel, a magical fairy, and Caliban, a “misformed beast,” whom Prospero has enslaved. Prospero has magical powers and created the storm to cause the shipwreck and bring the men on the boat to his island. During the course of the play Ferdinand and Miranda fall in love and get engaged. Ariel is forced to perform tasks for Prospero with the promise of freedom always hanging in front of him. Ariel and Caliban are eventually freed and Prospero, having chastised the shipwrecked men for the past wrongs, is granted his freedom by the audience to return to Naples and reclaim his position as the Duke of Milan.
What draws me to The Tempest is how it has been interpreted in a post-colonial manner. This interpretation rids us of the idea of Prospero as the great man taming the wilderness in his efforts to recreate his rule in a new land, and instead places him firmly in the role of a power-hungry tyrant who, with the help of his powers, has enslaved the land to which he’s been exiled and the people and spirits upon it. Prospero controls his enslaved spirits, his daughter (he runs her life and orchestrates her one romantic relationship), the creatures, and even the weather.
This interpretation invokes visions of Britain’s concerted efforts to extend its Empire across the centuries and bring “civilization” to the people who were there before Britain laid claim to their territories. For example, there’s a great piece of dialogue in Act 1 Scene 2 where Miranda is complaining to Caliban that he doesn’t appreciate her efforts to teach him “language,” to which Caliban replies, “You taught me language, and my profit on’t Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language!” Prospero chastises him for speaking to Miranda in such a way and threatens to fill him with pain so intense he’ll be doubled over screaming.
The question of Prospero: Great man or tyrant? is a very interesting question indeed. However, recent studies also point out that by looking at The Tempest through a post-colonial lens, we might be missing out on a richer understanding of the work and the idea of “the other”, in this case embodied by the role of Caliban.
For more on interpreting The Tempest, check out:
Francis Barker and Peter Hulme, “Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish: The Discursive Con-Texts of The Tempest,” in Alternative Shakespeares, ed. John Drakakis (London: Methuen, 1985), 191–205.
Stephen Orgel, “Shakespeare and the Cannibals,” in Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance, ed. Marjorie Garber (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 40–66.
Julia Reinhard Lupton, “Creature Caliban,” Shakespeare Quarterly 51, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 1–23.
Meredith Anne Skura, “Discourse and the Individual: The Case of Colonialism in The Tempest,” in Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, ed. Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan (New York: G.K. Hall, 1998).
Stephen Greenblatt, Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (New York: Routledge, 1990).
Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
The An Caenn Mor lookout, Inveruglas — Photo credit: Paula Dumas
An Caenn Mor, a beautiful wooden lookout structure at the northern end of Loch Lomond, was officially opened in 2015 and provides visitors with beautiful views of Loch Lomond and the surround mountains, including the Arrochar Alps and Ben Lomond. With a tiny tourist centre and cafe nearby, it’s the perfect stop on the drive north from Glasgow and Balloch along Loch Lomond’s western shores.
To find out more, visit Scenic Routes in the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park.
An Caenn Mor, Inveruglas — Photo credit: Paula Dumas
Loch Lomond as seen from An Caenn Mor — Photo credit: Paula Dumas
Find my previous post on Maud Gonne here.
In November 1900, Maud Gonne and Arthur Griffith, the two main organizers of the Irish Transvaal Society, heard the surprising news that John MacBride had returned from the Transvaal. MacBride, famed for his leadership of the Irish Transvaal Brigade, had been in South Africa since 1896. “It was shortly after the Jameson Raid that my own attention was first turned seriously to the course of events developing in the South African Republics,” he wrote. He had been angered to learn that Irishmen in South Africa had supported the British during the Jameson Raid. “My own view as to the manner in which Irishmen should act in such a crisis ran, of course, on altogether different lines, and although the Jameson business fizzled out in so contemptible a fashion, I felt convinced that the English would not allow it to be their final attempt on the rich republics of the Vaal; and I was also very anxious that our countrymen in South Africa should not, on the next occasion, be found on the side of the would-be grabber and oppressor.”
Once in South Africa, MacBride worked to organize the local Irish community, including establishing an Irish society in Johannesburg with Griffith. Irish immigrants in Africa were soldiers, missionaries, civil servants, miners, and adventurers. By the 1890s, about 15,000-20,000 Irish were in southern Africa, many spurred to immigrate by the discovery of gold in 1886. When war broke out in 1899, an estimated 28,000 Irishmen served in the British army in South Africa. In response to Queen Victoria’s visit to Ireland in 1900 to boost recruitment numbers for the British army, Gonne wrote an impassioned attack against her in the form of an article entitled “The Famine Queen.” The article was first published in a special edition of Gonne’s own journal, L’Irlande Libre, and reprinted in the United Irishman, which was suppressed by the authorities to prevent people from reading it. “Taking the Shamrock in her withered hand she dares ask Ireland for soldiers – for soldiers to protect the exterminators of their race!” Gonne criticized. “And the reply of Ireland comes sadly but proudly, not through the lips of miserable little politicians who are touched by the English canker but through the lips of the Irish people: ‘Queen, return to your own land; you will find no more Irishmen ready to wear the red shame of your livery.’” She avowed that any Irishmen who entered the British army would no longer be considered Irish.
Hundreds of Irishmen joined the war effort on the side of the Boers to fight against the British. Donal McCracken writes, “A basic idea uniting the movement was the belief that Boer aspirations to national identity mirrored Ireland’s own and that consequently to support the Boers was to advance Ireland’s cause.” The Irish Transvaal Brigade, founded and co-led by MacBride, operated from September 1899 to September 1900 and helped to galvanize the Irish nationalist movement. Gonne compared the Irish Brigade to the Wild Geese (embodying the historic tradition of Irish soldiers fighting for foreign armies), who “upheld Ireland’s honour by fighting for the enemies of England even as to-day John MacBride and the Irish Brigade organised by him saved Ireland’s honour in the Transvaal.” She declared that the Irish Brigade had done more for Ireland’s honour than any nationalist at home, “for it is action that counts.”
By September 1900, the war had entered a new phase of guerilla fighting. Most of the Irish left South Africa, the majority going to America and many settling in mining camps in the western United States (as they had been miners in South Africa). MacBride, who could not go back to Ireland, traveled to Paris, where he was met by Gonne, Griffith, and the Paris Young Ireland Society. This was the first time MacBride and Gonne met, though they had previously corresponded with each other concerning the Irish Brigade. Gonne wrote, “We sat up all night talking. MacBride said he had come back hoping there would be something doing in Ireland. The war in Africa is not over and England had still De Wet to deal with, but most of the foreign volunteers had been sent back and the Irish Brigade had been disbanded because the war was entering on another phase. There would be no more regular battles; and in guerilla warfare only those who knew the country and spoke the language would be of use.”
MacBride told her and Griffith that John Blake, the Irish-American co-leader of the Irish Brigade, was staying on, and indeed, a few dozen Irishmen continued to fight as part of the Boer war effort. MacBride himself hoped to return to Ireland to help lead a nationalist resurgence, writing, “Though at present the weapons have fallen from our hands, we hope to pick it up in our own island home, and never let it drop till, by union and strength, we blot out the last vestige of the ‘Empire of Hell.’” However, MacBride realized through talking to Gonne and Griffith that the only current hope for movement on revolutionary nationalism lay in America. They determined that MacBride would undertake a tour of America, hoping to spark Clan-na-Gael enthusiasm. Griffith himself wrote a lecture for MacBride to deliver on his tour, using MacBride’s memories of his experience in South Africa. Gonne recounted, “After a reception by the Paris Young Ireland Society and talks with a few friends from Dublin MacBride went to America. In a few weeks, he wrote to me, urging me to accept an invitation to come on another lecture tour arranged by the now united Clan-na-Gael. He added that he could not get things going unless I came.”
Gonne, who had toured America previously under the auspices of the O’Sullivan faction of the Clan-na-Gael, joined MacBride in the United States in February 1901. “He was with a crowd of friends belonging to both sections of the united Clan who met me when I came off the French Trans-Atlantic liner at the docks in New York; and there was a great meeting in the Academy of Music the night after my arrival,” Gonne wrote. “MacBride gave his lecture on the work of the Brigade and I spoke of Ireland. We had a splendid press.”
Still, the American tour did not go as they hoped. While Irish-Americans felt solidarity with the Boer people, the high point of Irish-American support had been the year before. MacBride turned out to be a rather poor public speaker, and Gonne herself managed to alienate several prominent Irish-American leaders. She was criticized for attacking the United Irish League and constitutional nationalists in her speeches.
The pair mourned the fact that lawyers and politicians, rather than revolutionaries, controlled the Irish-American nationalist movement. “They could be counted on to exert their influence against an Anglo-American alliance, which England was always trying for. That in itself was a great thing, for to make the holding of Ireland injurious to England is one of the means toward securing freedom,” Gonne recounted. “No doubt they would back up the fight in Ireland when it started, but they were happier supporting constitutional leaders like Parnell and were hard to convince that there was nothing to hope from men like [John] Redmond or John Dillon.” Despite lack of concrete support for revolutionary nationalism, she felt that the rank-and-file of Irish-American nationalist organizations were “ready for anything.”
Gonne returned to Europe at the urging of Griffith in May 1901, leaving MacBride in America. “I didn’t feel I had accomplished much,” she reflected, “but I still hoped MacBride might succeed in setting the match to the inflammable fighting forces of the Clan-na-Gael, in spite of the politicians.” As she returned to Paris, she managed to smuggle out a baby alligator from America as a present for her seven-year-old daughter. After completing his tour of the American west coast, MacBride decided to return to Europe as well, working as a journalist in Paris while still hoping to help spark a revival in revolutionary Irish nationalism. He wrote to a group of Limerick nationalists, “Depend not on aid from America or France. God helps those who help themselves. Let our motto be – ‘Ourselves! Ourselves alone! Sin fein! Sin fein!’ The brave doctrine of fight must not be allowed to be hushed in the land. It is not by frothy speeches from platforms in Ireland and America and by academic motions in Westminster that our country shall be made ready for the chance that will surely come again – the second chance that comes to those who prepare for it.”
While constitutional nationalism was on the rise in the early years of the twentieth century, Gonne, MacBride, and Griffith’s experiences show that the undercurrents of revolutionary nationalism remained, biding time and preparing for that chance.
Selected Reading:
Norman Jeffares and Anna MacBride White, eds., The Autobiography of Maud Gonne: A Servant of the Queen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Written 1938.
Anthony J. Jordan, ed., Boer War to Easter Rising: The Writings of John MacBride (Dublin: Westport, 2006).
Donal P. McCracken, Forgotten Protest: Ireland and the Anglo-Boer War. (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2003). Originally published as The Irish Pro-Boers, 1877-1902, in 1989.
Donal P. McCracken, MacBride’s Brigade: Irish Commandos in the Anglo-Boer War (Dublin: Four Courts, 1999).
Margaret Ward, ed. In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism (Cork: Attic, 1995).
Margaret Ward, Maud Gonne: Ireland’s Joan of Arc (London: Pandora, 1990).
I was recently finishing up an article on 19th century (early Victorian) periodicals. I had presented an early, shorter draft of the work at The Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies in Baltimore a year ago (where a fellow presenter was none other than Isles Abroad’s co-founder Lindsey Flewelling, I might add). I spoke second on a panel of three unrelated papers. After our presentations and a formal reply came the typical Q & A session, during which I was asked an excellent question.
“Do you know who was reading the articles?”
At the time I had a very general idea of the “typical” reader: male, British, literate, likely of the upper classes, interested in politics. They were possibly politicians with the same political leanings as the journals they were reading, or maybe part of the wider population who would soon receive the vote with the Reform Act of 1832.
But I had not yet considered the real meaning of the question and its importance. The question of readership was fundamentally a question of impact.
Who was reading these articles and reviews? Could I prove that anyone was reading them? Did they make a difference? How could they have had an impact upon anything if no one was reading them? If I couldn’t find evidence of readership, then I would not be able to show that the authors and these journals had made any difference to the popular support and understanding of contemporary issues.
I went home and decided to approach the question in three ways: 1) go back and look for information about readership in the studies of the specific periodicals I had already utilised in learning more about the genre; 2) look for studies of readership, literacy, and audiences in 19th century Britain; and 3) look for evidence that the specific articles were being discussed by contemporaries in published works including newspapers, pamphlets, and other periodicals. I’ll focus on 1 and 2 here.
To paraphrase a former supervisor, I knew that I probably didn’t need to reinvent the wheel, and in a short time I had discovered that there have been some great studies published on readers in Britain in my time period and on the potential readership and impact of the periodicals. Readership became a topic that I wanted to discuss in my work as a way of showing that these articles and these periodicals mattered.
In the end, I discovered that the potential readers of the works I’d been looking at were far more varied than I’d expected, and also much more varied than the periodicals had planned on having. Studies of readership have shown that the journals knew that they couldn’t be sure of who exactly their readers were or even of the numbers, as subscription numbers didn’t reflect the number of readers per physical copy now that they could be found in cafes and coffee houses, circulating libraries, clubs, and reading rooms, as well as in the home where growing female literacy rates meant that both men and women were now more likely to be able read.
In case any of our readers find themselves needing to assess the potential impact of the 19th century sources they’re studying, here’s a list of some of the studies I found:
David Allan, A Nation of Readers: The lending library in Georgian England (British Library, 2008)
Jonathan Cutmore, Contributors to The Quarterly Review: A history, 1809-25 (Pickering & Chatto, 2007)
John O. Hayden, The Romantic Reviewers, 1802-1824 (Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1969)
David Higgins, Romantic Genius and the Literary Magazine: Biography, celebrity and politics (Routledge, 2007)
*Jon P. Klancher, The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1790-1832 (University of California. Los Angeles, 1980)
Mark Parker, Literary Magazines and British Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
Mark Schoenfield, British Periodicals and Romantic Identity: The ‘literary lower empire’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Joanne Shattock, Politics and Reviewers: The Edinburgh and the Quarterly in the early Victorian age (Leicester University Press, 1989)
David Stewart, Romantic Magazines and Metropolitan Literary Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
Kim Wheatley, ed., Romantic Periodicals and Print Culture (Routledge, 2004)
*Klancher’s study was particularly useful to my work and has received praise from some of the later authors listed here.
Note that this list contains bibliographic details of the editions I looked at. Newer editions are available for some of these studies. This list is by no means exhaustive — it served my specific needs and I hope it might be a starting point for others looking to address readership and impact in their work, too. Suggestions for more resources are welcome in the comments!
Belfast City Hall – photo credit: L. Flewelling
Belfast City Hall was planned in response to Queen Victoria’s grant of city status to Belfast in 1888. Architect Sir Alfred Brumwell Thomas designed the building in the Baroque Revival style, with the exterior constructed out of Portland stone. The building took eight years to complete.
Belfast City Hall from Donegall Place – photo credit: L. Flewelling
Belfast City Hall was the site of the signing of the Ulster Covenant in opposition to Home Rule on Ulster Day, September 28, 1912. Ulster Unionist leader Edward Carson led a military procession to the hall, where he was the first person to sign the covenant pledging to use “all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland.”
Belfast City Hall – photo credit: L. Flewelling
Isles Abroad 