Enfilade

Presented by the Lewis Walpole Library and the YCBA:

Horace Walpole’s The Mysterious Mother: A Staged Reading
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2 May 2018

As part of the year-long celebrations of the tercentenary of Horace Walpole’s birth, the Lewis Walpole Library and the Yale Center for British Art are collaborating to present a staged reading of The Mysterious Mother—abridged by David Worrall (Emeritus Professor of English at Nottingham Trent University) and directed by Misty G. Anderson (ReLindsay Young Professor of English, University of Tennessee). Completed just a few years after Walpole’s celebrated gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764), this under-appreciated tale of incest and intrigue was initially circulated only among the author’s friends. Walpole never permitted it to be performed during his lifetime except as a private theatrical. Following the reading there will be a talk-back session moderated by Catherine Sheehy (Professor of the Practice of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, Yale University). This event is free and open to the public. Wednesday, 2 May 2018, 5:30pm, Yale Center for British Art.

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Horace Walpole’s The Mysterious Mother: A Mini-Conference
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 3 May 2018

Organized by Jill Campbell and Cynthia Roman

Diana Beauclerk (1724–1808), The Mysterious Mother, Act 3d, Scene 3, 1776 (The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University).

10:00  Reading The Mysterious Mother
Chair: Jill Campbell, Professor of English, Yale University
• Nicole Garret, Lecturer, Department of English, SUNY Stony Brook
• Cheryl Nixon, Associate Provost, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Massachusetts, Boston
•Matthew Reeve, Associate Professor Art History, Queen’s University
• Dale Townshend, Professor of Gothic Literature, Manchester Metropolitan University
• Nicole Wright, Assistant Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder

12:00  Lunch

1:15  Breakout session with Cynthia Roman, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Paintings, The Lewis Walpole Library, to view Diana Beauclerk’s drawings of The Mysterious Mother. Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required.

2:00  Staging The Mysterious Mother
Chair: Misty Anderson, Lindsay Young Professor of English, University of Tennessee
• Al Coppola, Associate Professor of English, John Jay College, CUNY
• Marcie Frank, Professor of English, Concordia University
• Judith Hawley, Professor of English, Royal Holloway, University of London
• Jean Marsden, Professor of English, University of Connecticut
• David Worrall, Professor Emeritus, Nottingham Trent University