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Literary Anniversaries
Lady Chatterley's Lover2010 is the fiftieth anniversary of the trial of Penguin Books for publishing the unexpurgated text of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. Lawrence had the book privately printed in Italy in 1928, and since then only a censored text had been legally published in the United Kingdom. The trial was a test case for the recently passed Obscene Publications Act, and focussed on the sympathetic portrayal of an adulterous relationship, explicit accounts of sexual acts, and most notoriously the use of the two 'four-letter words', which it was then against the law to publish. Numerous distinguished academics, including Richard Hoggart, whose papers are in the library at Sheffield, and other notable figures such as the Bishop of Woolwich, testified for the defence. The prosecuting counsel notoriously asked the jury if this was a book they would like their 'wives and servants' to read. As this suggests, the trial had as much to do with class as with sex. The failure of this prosecution is often cited as the inaugurating event of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Emeritus Professor Neil Roberts is a well-known Lawrence scholar and author of D.H. Lawrence, Travel and Cultural Difference (Palgrave, 2004). He lectures on Lawrence in the School and is keen to work with graduate students on this author. Ms Understood: Women's Liberation in 1970's Britain
It's forty years since Germaine Greer published The Female Eunuch and Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (1970). Ms Understood: Women's Liberation in 1970's Britain Staff in the School of English welcome postgraduate research students to work in related fields of gender, sexuality and literature.
Elizabeth Gaskell
2010 is the bicentenary of the birth of Elizabeth Gaskell, the Victorian novelist and author of a wide range of fictional works, the best known of which is Cranford. She was born on 29 September 2010 and on 25 September 2010 a specially designed piece of glass will be dedicated to her in the memorial window in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
John Rupert Firth (1890-1960)
Firth was a native of Yorkshire and a history graduate of Leeds University. He went on, via a post as Professor of English at the University of the Punjab, to become the first Professor of Linguistics in this country, at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He was the founder of the London School in Linguistics and taught most of the next generation of Linguistics professors, and was a key figure in the development of the discipline of Linguistics in this country. As a celebration of the 120th anniversary of his birth, and to mark fifty years since his death, there will be a day of talks and remembrances at SOAS on 17 June. The Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas |
