Byron Society of America
BSA Member News: December 2007

GIVE A GIFT FROM THE BYRON SOCIETY COLLECTION
At this festive time of year, we invite members of the Byron Society to consider purchasing gifts from the Byron Society Collection catalogue. The Collection has items for sale among its holdings. Please visit the Collection and email Charles Robinson for further information. Members can also support the Byron Society Collection by purchasing an $8.00 gift card for a colleague or loved one. To read more about this option, visit here and email BSA Director of Membership and Academic Services Robin Hammerman for inquiries.

SPONSOR A GIFT MEMBERSHIP
The Byron Society of America's 2008 membership drive will soon be upon us. Members of the Byron Society are encouraged to sponsor gift memberships for students or colleagues. To find out more about this exciting membership drive, please contact Robin Hammerman.

PROFESSOR NAT LEACH RECEIVES THE BYRON ESSAY PRIZE
In October, the first annual Byron Society of America Essay Prize was awarded to Professor Nat Leach, of Cape Breton University, for his essay, "Historical Bodies in a 'Mental Theatre': Byron's Ethics of History," published in Studies in Romanticism 46 (Spring 2007). The prize, which includes an honorarium and complimentary membership in the BSA, is meant to honor an outstanding essay on Lord Byron published in the previous year by a North American scholar. This year's prize was presented by Professor Jonathan Gross at the Leslie A. Marchand Memorial lecture held at DePaul University Humanities Center.

YASH NANDAN COMPLETES THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL SEDUCED BY LIBERTY
Seduced by Liberty is one of several autobiographical novels by BSA member Yash Nandan. In the novel, which will be published by Xlibris in January 2008, Nandan traces a complex, fascinating epoch in Indian history, including India’s struggle for independence and the creation of Pakistan. Nandan, a professor emeritus of French Sociology and a survivor of the Indian Partition Holocaust in 1947, is a writer of fiction and poetry.

NEW MEMBER DIMITRI KARKOULIS INVITES
CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION IN WESTERN ONTARIO

New BSA member Dimitri Karkoulis, who is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Western Ontario, invites members to submit paper proposals for an upcoming conference at the University of Western Ontario. The conference is part of the Western Romantic Research Group, a reading and research forum under the organization of professors Tilotamma Rajan, Angela Esterhammer, and Joel Faflak. The call for papers is listed below:

CFP -- Finding Time: Romantic Temporalities University of Western Ontario London, Ontario (12-13 April 2008). Keynote Speakers: Thomas Pfau (Duke University) Eads Family Professor of English & Professor of German and Germanic Languages & Literature David L. Clark (McMaster) Professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies Associate Member, Health Studies Programme. This year, the Western Romantic Research Group is focusing on the idea of finding time in Romanticism. We are interested not only in how "the times they are a changing" as evinced by the French Revolution, but how time itself —— as narrativity, historicity, sensibility, experience, philosophy, identity —— is changing in and with Romanticism. This tangent touches on the upcoming North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference at Duke University on Romanticism and Modernity (2009), which encourages us to think about Romantic "pro-jects" —— perhaps in an Heideggerian and Sartrian sense —— as events engaged in the complex tissue of history and temporality. To be sure, it introduces the temporal category of modernity and brings the concept of the modern as a moment of coincidence or immediacy to bear on Romantic thought and vice versa. That said, "Finding Time" is interested in the various ways that time and temporality emerge in Romanticism, as well as how we "find" it: What are the methods of inquiry such a study demands? What kinds of pro-jects can we formulate to gather together this (t)issue? Hence, we propose the following lines of questioning: What is romantic presence, or what is the pre-sense of prophetic rhetoric, in a phenomenological register? What kind of time structures intuition? What are the signs of the time——what is the time of the sign——in Romanticism? What kinds of times govern the novel? The lyric? The idyll? (Or, for that matter, the idle?) What is "healthy" time and what happens when time becomes "ill," inauspicious——perhaps fated or contagious? What is dramatic time, or "play time"? How do notions of identity——piecemeal, rehearsed/repeated, performed, authentic, constructed——function together with time and in history? How does Romantic memory function? What or who re-members? How does the repetition implied in re-volution touch on trauma’s a-temporality? And, finally, where do we begin and where do we end? That is, how do we respond to the "enormous abridgement" (Benjamin) of Romanticism's fascination with immediacy, youth, newness and the coincident fascination with death, ruin, apocalypse? We invite abstracts of 250 words (due Jan 17, 2008) that engage this Romantic le temps retrouvéé. Please send abstracts to: westernromantics@gmail.com Website: http://publish.uwo.ca/~jking65/conference/

MARILYN GAULL ANNOUNCES OPPORTUNITIES
FOR EDITORIAL RESEARCH IN BOSTON

Byron Society member Marilyn Gaull writes: As editors, we often encounter students, graduate and undergraduate, with those special editorial gifts, a good eye, good taste, wide and eclectic learning, mechanical skills, a list that grows every year. There are few places, however, where they could find training to combine these gifts with a range of essential skills that would prepare them to be editors in the most comprehensive sense of the title. The Editorial Institute at Boston University is one of the few places that offers both ranging and intense training by academics and professional editors. Attached a flyer to share with students and colleagues. The Institute is also a very hospitable place, wonderfully arranged to encourage a sense of community. Editors in CELJ are welcome to visit.

Dr. Marilyn Gaull, Editor, The Wordsworth Circle
Research Professor, The Editorial Institute at Boston University
143 Bay State Road Room 202
Boston, Mass. 02215
phone: 617-358-2896
http://www.bu.edu/editinst

The Editorial Institute at Boston University welcomes applications for the (one-year) MA or the Ph.D. Subject materials may be chosen from many disciplines: philosophy, literature, history, journals and letters, children's books and illustrations, hymns, screen-plays, legal documents, publishing records, and much more. Successful degree work has recently included the 1812-1815 letters and journals of the diplomat James Bayard; the correspondence between the poet Donald Justice and novelist Richard Stern; Elizabeth Barrett Browning's translations of Prometheus; the com-prehensive rewriting by Wyndham Lewis of his modernist novel, Tarr; and the critical essays of William Stanley Braithwaite. Forays into other media are encouraged: examples are the first transcription from audio-tape of Robert Frost's Dartmouth lectures, and a discography of the Harvard Vocarium series of recordings made by mid-twentieth-century poets. Boston University's holdings in its Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center are a rich source of material. The Institute is directed by Archie Burnett (currently editing the poems of Philip Larkin) and Christopher Ricks (editing the poems of T. S. Eliot; general-editing the selected writings of the Victorian judge and controversialist, J. F. Stephen), assisted by Frances Whistler (co-general editor of the Stephen edition). Marilyn Gaull (editor of The Wordsworth Circle) joined in 2007 as Research Professor. The Stephen edition, and other editorial work within BU, has benefited greatly from a generous award from the Mellon Foundation. Students have opportun-ities to work on this and the other major editions housed at the Institute. Editorial Studies students have established a fine record of completing the doc-torate within three years, and of moving into successful careers in publishing, teaching, archival work, and within the world of cultural Foundations. Publica-tions of Editorial Studies work, both MA and Ph.D, include Elected Friends: Robert Frost and Edward Thomas to One Another (Handsel Press, 2004); and "A Discography of the Harvard Vocarium" (Harvard Library Bulletin, Fall-Winter 2004); other single volumes and contributions to large editions are under con-tract with major publishers Applications should be accompanied by a proposal for the MA thesis or Ph.D dissertation. While these commonly involve preparing an edition, we will also consider proposals that have a marked editorial dimension without actually comprising an edition. For more information, please visit www.bu.edu/editinst.

IN MEMORIUM: A FAREWELL TO JACQUELINE VOIGNER MARSHALL,
FOUNDER OF THE AUSTRALIAN BYRON SOCIETY

by Rosa Florou, President of Messolonghi Byron Society

When destiny speaks we are helpless to say why. One year ago when my dearest friend Jacqueline sent me a letter to express her sympathy for my mothers loss, she wrote "But I do know that she will protect you looking down from heaven. Love never dies! Remember this, always, Rosa." Now, I apply that beautiful thought to you my dearest Jacqueline. You will protect us always, because as you told "Love never dies!"

What a coincidence. I had a telephone conversation, the last among many others with Jacqueline, a devoted friend to me and to the Messolonghi Byron Research Center, on Thursday night November 22, just a day before her death. Jacqueline spoke about her declining health and about not fearing death--but also about the books she had so generously donated to the Messolonghi Byron collection, the most extensive gift of books and Byroniana the collection has received up to this day. Her last words to me were "Rosa, We'll talk again I will send more gifts to Messolonghi: good night." Those words still echo in my ear. How can I forget this gifted and beloved friend?

I first met Jacqueline at a Byron Conference in 1993. We became fast friends, and indeed Jacqueline, a pioneer of the international Byron movement, was very dear to Byronists worldwide. Jacqueline visited Greece for the fifth time in April 2006 to present and talk about her gift of books to the Messolonghiots in a Byron event organized by the Messolonghi Byron Society especially for her. Along with the mayors of Messolonghi and Jannina, we had the chance to honour this noble and generous lady, a benefactor who believed in our dream of creating an International Byron Research Center in Messolonghi, the town where the British poet and fervent Philhellene Lord Byron breathed his last. I will never forget you Jacqueline, for your deep devotion to Byronism for your love to Messolonghi and Greece and for your trust in me. Farewell, my dearest friend. Your memory will live for ever among us.

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