Enfilade

From Oxford University Press:

Richard Hingley, Hadrian’s Wall: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 416 pages, ISBN: 978-0199641413, $150.

In Hadrian’s Wall: A Life, Richard Hingley addresses the post-Roman history of this world-famous ancient monument. Constructed on the orders of the emperor Hadrian during the 120s AD, the Wall was maintained for almost three centuries before ceasing to operate as a Roman frontier during the fifth century. The scale and complexity of Hadrian’s Wall makes it one of the most important ancient monuments in the British Isles. It is the most well-preserved of the frontier works that once defined the Roman Empire.

While the Wall is famous as a Roman construct, its monumental physical structure did not suddenly cease to exist in the fifth century. This volume explores the after-life of Hadrian’s Wall and considers the ways it has been imagined, represented, and researched from the sixth century to the internet. The sixteen chapters, illustrated with over 100 images, show the changing manner in which the Wall has been conceived and the significant role it has played in imagining the identity of the English, including its appropriation as symbolic boundary between England and
Scotland. Hingley discusses the transforming political, cultural, and religious significance of the Wall during this entire period and addresses the ways in which scholars and artists have been inspired by the monument over the years.

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From Christopher Catling’s review, “Vandals and Hanoverians,” for TLS (14 December 2012): 27.

. . . in Gildas [writing around 540], the Wall is explicitly about “them and us” – civilization versus beastly paganism. The Wall is a genetic and cultural boundary, an idea that Hingley shows to be surprisingly long-lived: it recurs in nineteenth-century historical paintings of the Wall’s construction destined for the walls of the Houses of Parliament, in the illustrations to Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906), and even in a cartoon published in The Times in 1997 referring to the devolution debate. Civilization versus beastly paganism The idea that there is something different (for which read hostile and culturally inferior) about the people who live north of Hadrian’s Wall recurs every time political relations between the English and the Scottish come to the fore. . . .

Scotland really did turn hostile with the Jacobite uprisings of 1715. There was much talk about building a new Hadrian’s Wall, as roads, bridges and garrisons were constructed between 1725 and 1737 to militarize the Borders and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. One result was the first accurate mapping of the Wall and its associated landscapes, undertaken by military surveyors; another was the use of the Wall as a quarry for road stone and the construction of a military road right on top of the eastern section of the Wall, from Newcastle to Sewingshields.

The antiquary William Stukeley was horrified by this act of desecration. Lobbying the Princess of Wales, he asked her to be his patron and champion in the work of protecting “this most noble, most magnificent work from further ruin, not from enemies, but from more than Gothic workmen, quite thoughtless and regardless of this greatest wonder, not of Brittain only, but of Europe.” Now, for the first time in the history of the Wall, it was the English who were cast in the role of the barbarians; Hanoverian military engineers were no better than the Goths and Vandals who had sacked Rome. . .

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For the Wall’s ongoing influence, we can also add The Game of Thrones, as George R. R. Martin acknowledged in 2000 (as quoted in The Guardian). Hadrian’s Wall as civilization’s boundary will presumably be with us for a long time.

Oscar Kenshur Book Prize
Applications due by 31 January 2013

The Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University is pleased to announce its annual book prize, to be awarded for an outstanding monograph of interest to eighteenth-century scholars working in a range of disciplines. The prize honors the work of Oscar Kenshur, professor emeritus of comparative literature at Indiana University, a dix-huitièmiste par excellence, and one of the founding members of the Center.

Submissions in English from any discipline are welcome; authors can submit their work irrespective of citizenship. Multi-authored collections of essays and translations, as well as books by members of the Indiana-University-Bloomington faculty, are not eligible. The Kenshur prize of $1000 will be awarded together with an invitation to the Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies for a workshop dedicated to the winning book, in which several colleagues will discuss the book from different disciplinary perspectives. The Center will cover the author’s expenses to attend this event.

To be eligible for this year’s competition, a book must carry a 2012 copyright date. Submissions can be made by the publisher or the author: three copies must be received at the ASECS office by the 31st of January 2013. Please send the books (clearly marked for Kenshur Prize) to ASECS, 2598 Reynolda Rd., Suite C, Winston-Salem, NC 27106. For further inquiries please contact Professor Mary Favret, Director of the Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University (email favretm@indiana.edu).

From Boydell & Brewer:

Ian Waites, Common Land in English Painting, 1700-1850 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012), 216 pages, ISBN: 978-1843837619, $90.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, much of England’s common land was eradicated by the processes of parliamentary enclosure. However, despite the fact that the landscape was frequently viewed as unproductive, outmoded and unsightly, many British landscape painters of the time – including Constable, Gainsborough and Turner – resolutely continued to depict it.

This book is the first full study of how they did so, using evidence drawn not only from art-historical picture analysis, but from contemporary poems and novels, and the contemporary pamphlets, essays and reports that advanced the rhetoric of both agricultural improvement and new theories on landscape aesthetics. It highlights a deep-rooted social and cultural attachment to the common field landscape, and demonstrates that common land played a significant but – until now – underestimated role in both the history of English art and of the formation of an English national identity, reflecting what are still highly sensitive issues of
progress, nostalgia and loss within the English countryside. Recasting common land as a recurrent facet of English culture in the modern period, the numerous paintings, drawings and prints featured in this book give the reader a comprehensive and evocative sense of what this now almost wholly lost landscape looked like in its hey-day.

Ian Waites is Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Design at the University of Lincoln.

This may be a list less of possible gift ideas than one of small self-indulgences, especially for those of you who struggle to fit in fiction. I make no claims for literary accomplishment (I haven’t read any of these — yet!), but it is interesting to see the eighteenth century put to fictional purposes or, in the case of the biography of Samuel Foote, to see how fiction could serve life within the eighteenth century. -CH

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Donna Leon, The Jewels of Paradise (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-0802120649, $25.

Donna Leon has won heaps of critical praise and legions of fans for her best-selling mystery series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. With The Jewels of Paradise, Leon takes readers beyond the world of the Venetian Questura in her first standalone novel.

Caterina Pellegrini is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she’s had to leave home to pursue her career. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Manchester, England. Manchester, however, is no Venice. When Caterina gets word of a position back home, she jumps at the opportunity.

The job is an unusual one. After nearly three centuries, two locked trunks, believed to contain the papers of a baroque composer have been discovered [the real-life Agostino Steffani (1654-1728), whose arias have recently been recorded by Cecilia Bartoli]. Deeply-connected in religious and political circles, the composer died childless; now two Venetians, descendants of his cousins, each claim inheritance. Caterina’s job is to examine any enclosed papers to discover the “testamentary disposition” of the composer. But when her research takes her in unexpected directions she begins to wonder just what secrets these trunks may hold. From a masterful writer, The Jewels of Paradise is a superb novel, a gripping tale of intrigue, music, history and greed.

In the judgment of Jane Jakeman, writing for The Independent (10 October 2012) . . .

Leon shows us the balancing-act required to mediate between the world and the spiritual life as a feature of the present as well as of the 18th century. From Steffano’s patchy biography, Leon has forged a fascinating historical mystery. Full of authentic detail and wittily recounted (Caterina’s sojourn at a British university with its badly dressed scholars is a joy), Leon’s 22nd novel has a freshness which indicates her delight in her subject, and perhaps celebrates a release from the treadmill of the Brunetti stories.

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Robin Blake, A Dark Anatomy (London: Pan Macmillan, 2011), 368 pages, 978-1250006721, $25.

Bloodshed and mystery in 1740s England

The first Cragg and Fidelis mystery begins with Coroner Titus Cragg being called to the corpse of a lady, the wife of the local squire, when it is found in woods near Preston. Her throat has been cut. It is his job to call an inquest that will reach a right verdict, and the investigation that follows has a number of twists and turns as Cragg tries to discover the evidence the jury will need to consider . His friend Dr Luke Fidelis provides medical and scientific knowledge and his wife Elizabeth gives him staunch moral support, in face of determined opposition to his methods from the town’s corporation.

Christopher Fowler writes in The Financial Times (4 April 2011):

Beer and beef for breakfast, and the Devil come down to earth: we are in 1740s Preston, Lancashire. Titus Cragge, the local coroner, has been summoned to investigate the death of a “rough riding hoyden”, the squire’s wife Dolores Brockletower, who has plunged through a tree to lie gashed, bashed and part-buried in the soil at its roots.

George II might hold the throne in the capital, but out in the wilds superstition and hearsay rule. Cragge teams up with energetic young doctor Luke Fidelis and the pair take faltering steps into the as-yet-unknown science of forensic pathology. Soon they’re crossing swords with the victim’s husband, and discovering that the corpse has taken a walk.

Despite hinging on an improbable act of physics, coupled with an 11th-hour surprise that makes Preston seem rather exotic, this is rollicking stuff. . .

More information on the book and Blake are available at his website»

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Ian Kelly, Mr. Foote’s Other Leg (London: Picador, 2012), 462 pages, 978-0330517836, £17.

In 1776 Foote’s was the most talked-of name in the English-speaking world. By 1777 it was almost unmentionable. Samuel Foote, friend of David Garrick and Dr Johnson, is the greatest lost figure of the eighteenth century; his story defies belief and has only been forgotten for reasons both laughable and shocking.

Foote’s rise to fame was based on three unrelated accidents: his extraordinary gifts as an impressionist, a murder within his family which he turned into a true-crime bestseller, and the loss of his leg after a disastrous practical joke. Out of this was born the most singular career in stage history. He flouted convention in transvestite roles, evaded the censors by selling his scurrilous satires as ‘Tea Parties’, wrote a series of plays for one-legged actors – accordingly not much revived – and established London’s Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Then came two scandalous trials that rocked Georgian high society. Trials of such magnitude they kept America’s Declaration of Independence from the front pages of the London papers.

In a unique conflation of biography and social and medical history, award-winning historian Ian Kelly uncovers the hidden world of ‘the Hogarth of the stage’. From Sheridan to Dickens to Dudley Moore, Foote’s influence continues, but Mr Foote’s Other Leg is not just a tragicomic tale of this Oscar Wilde of the eighteenth century, it is also the story of the first media storm, the first true-crime bestseller, the first victim of celebrity culture, and a joyous hop around the mad theatre of London life – high and low.

Anne Sebba writes in The Telegraph (24 October 2012):

This is a stunningly good and long overdue biography of a man largely forgotten today. Why he has been out of the limelight for so long remains a puzzle. His plays may be conceived as dated, yet Kelly makes the case that they are important for the way they ridiculed vanity and class pretension. But his real claims on posterity come from his courageous refusal to bow to convention or artistic safety, which, in the end, destroyed him. It is this trait that commands our attention, Kelly insists. It is hard to think of anyone who could have written his life story with greater sympathy, understanding of his talent and the difficulties he faced.

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P.D. James, Death Comes to Pemberley (New York: Knopf, 2011), 304 pages, 978-0307959850, $26.

A rare meeting of literary genius: P. D. James, long among the most admired mystery writers of our time, draws the characters of Jane Austen’s beloved novel Pride and Prejudice into a tale of murder and emotional mayhem.

It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy’s magnificent estate. Their peaceful, orderly world seems almost unassailable. Elizabeth has found her footing as the chatelaine of the great house. They have two fine sons, Fitzwilliam and Charles. Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; her father visits often; there is optimistic talk about the prospects of marriage for Darcy’s sister Georgiana. And preparations are under way for their much-anticipated annual autumn ball.

Then, on the eve of the ball, the patrician idyll is shattered. A coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister, who with her husband, the very dubious Wickham, has been banned from Pemberley. She stumbles out of the carriage, hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered. With
shocking suddenness, Pemberley is plunged into a frightening mystery.

Inspired by a lifelong passion for Austen, P. D. James masterfully re-creates the world of Pride and Prejudice, electrifying it with the excitement and suspense of a brilliantly crafted crime story, as only she can write it.

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Lloyd Shepherd, The English Monster: or, The Melancholy Transactions of William Ablass (London: Simon & Schuster, 2012)2012), 432 pages, 978-1451647570, $16.

From Penn State UP:

Richard Taws, The Politics of the Provisional: Art and Ephemera in Revolutionary France (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2013), 232 pages, ISBN: 978-0271054186.

In revolutionary France, materiality was not easily achieved. The turmoil of war, shortages, and frequent changes in political authority meant that few large-scale artworks or permanent monuments to the Revolution’s memory were completed. On the contrary, as this book argues, visual practice in revolutionary France was characterized by the production and circulation of a range of transitional, provisional, ephemeral, and half-made images and objects. Addressing this mass of images conventionally ignored in art-historical accounts of the period, The Politics of the Provisional contends that widely distributed, ephemeral, or “in-between” images and objects were at the heart of contemporary debates on the nature of political authenticity and historical memory. Provisionality had a politics, and it signified less the failure of the Revolution’s attempts to historicize itself than a tactical awareness of the need to continue
the Revolution’s work.

Richard Taws is Lecturer in the History of Art, University College London. (more…)

From the University of Illinois Press:

Christoph Wolff and Markus Zepf, The Organs of J. S. Bach: A Handbook, translated by Lynn Edwards Butler (Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2012), 240 pages, cloth ISBN: 978-0252036842, $80) / paper ISBN: 978-0252078453, $30.

The Organs of J. S. Bach is a comprehensive and fascinating guide to the organs encountered by Bach throughout Germany in his roles as organist, concert artist, examiner, teacher, and visitor. Newly revised and updated, the book’s entries are listed alphabetically by geographical location, from Arnstadt to Zschortau, providing an easy-to-reference overview.

Includes detailed organ-specific information:
• High-quality color photographs
• Each instrument’s history, its connection to Bach, and its disposition as Bach would have known it
• Architectural histories of the churches housing the instruments
• Identification of church organists

Lynn Edwards Butler’s graceful translation of Christoph Wolff and Markus Zepf’s volume incorporates new research and many corrections and updates to the original German edition. Bibliographical references are updated to include English-language sources, and the translation includes an expanded essay by Christoph Wolff on Bach as organist, organ composer, and organ expert.

The volume includes maps, a timeline of organ-related events, transcriptions of Bach’s organ reports, a guide to examining organs attributed to Saxony’s most famous organ builder Gottfried Silbermann, and biographical information on organ builders.

Christoph Wolff is Adams University Professor at Harvard University and director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig. Markus Zepf, a musicologist and organist, is on the staff of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg. Lynn Edwards Butler, who has published numerous articles on the organ, is a practicing organist with special expertise in restored baroque organs in north and central Germany.

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From Rizzoli:

Jeremy Musson, English Country House Interiors, foreword by Sir Roy Strong, photographs by Paul Barker (Rizzoli, 2011), pages, ISBN: 978-0847835690, $60.

A highly detailed look at the English country house interior, offering unprecedented access to England’s finest rooms. In this splendid book, renowned historian Jeremy Musson explores the interiors and decoration of the great country houses of England, offering a brilliantly detailed presentation of the epitome of style in each period of the country house, including the great Jacobean manor house, the Georgian mansion, and the Gothic Revival castle. For the first time, houses known worldwide for their exquisite architecture and decoration–including Wilton, Chatsworth, and Castle Howard–are seen in unprecedented detail. With intimate views of fabric, gilding, carving, and furnishings, the book will be a source of inspiration to interior designers, architects, and home owners, and a must-have for anglophiles and historic house enthusiasts.

The fifteen houses included represent the key periods in the history of English country house decoration and cover the major interior fashions and styles. Stunning new color photographs by Paul Barker-who was given unparalleled access to the houses-offer readers new insights into the enduring English country house style. Supplementing these are unique black-and-white images from the archive of the esteemed Country Life magazine.

Among the aspects of these that the book covers are: paneling, textile hangings (silks to cut velvet), mural painting, plasterwork, stone carving, gilding, curtains, pelmets, heraldic decoration, classical imagery, early upholstered furniture, furniture designed by Thomas Chippendale, carved chimney-pieces, lass, use of sculpture, tapestry, carpets, picture hanging, collecting of art and antiques, impact of Grand Tour taste, silver, use of marble, different woods, the importance of mirror glass, boulle work, English Baroque style, Palladian style, neo-Classical style, rooms designed by Robert Adam, Regency, Gothic Revival taste, Baronial style, French 18th-century style, and room types such as staircases, libraries, dining rooms, parlors, bedrooms, picture galleries, entrance halls and sculpture galleries.

Houses covered include: Hatfield – early 1600s (Jacobean); Wilton – 1630/40s (Inigo Jones); Boughton – 1680/90s (inspired by Versailles); Chatsworth -1690/early 1700s (Baroque); Castle Howard – early 1700s (Vanbrugh); Houghton – 1720s (Kent); Holkham – 1730s-50s (Palladian); Syon Park – 1760s (Adam); Harewood –  1760s/70s (neo-Classical); Goodwood – 1790s/1800s (neo-Classical/Regency); Regency at Chatsworth/Wilton/C Howard etc – 1820/30s; Waddesdon Manor – 1870/80ss (French Chateau style); Arundel Castle -1880s/90s (Gothic Revival); Berkeley Castle – 1920/30s (period recreations and antique collections); Parham House – 1920s/30s (period restorations and antique collections). The range is from the early 17th century to present day, drawn from the authenticated interiors of fifteen great country houses, almost all still in private hands and occupied as private residences still today. The book shows work by twentieth-century designers who have helped evolve the country house look, including Nancy Lancaster, David Hicks, Colefax & Fowler, and David Mlinaric.

Jeremy Musson is a leading commentator and author on the English country house. He was architectural editor of Country Life from 1998 to 2007, for which he wrote hundreds of articles on country houses and is still a contributor. As a former National Trust assistant curator he redecorated state rooms at Ickworth Park and curated Anglesey Abbey. Musson is the author of several books including The English Manor House, Plasterwork, How to Read a Country House, The Country Houses of Sir John Vanbrugh, and Up and Down Stairs: The History of the Country House Servant. A contributor to World of Interiors, The British Art Journal, and Cornerstone, he has interviewed many figures in the world of heritage, arts, and interior design, and he co-wrote and presented The Curious House Guest, a BBC2 series on important country houses in 2005-2006. Art historian Sir Roy Strong is the former director of London’s National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Paul Barker is one of the U.K.’s leading architectural photographers.

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From Yale UP:

Keith Thomson, Jefferson’s Shadow: The Story of His Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-0300184037, $30.

In the voluminous literature on Thomas Jefferson, little has been written about his passionate interest in science. This new and original study of Jefferson presents him as a consummate intellectual whose view of science was central to both his public and his private life. Keith Thomson reintroduces us in this remarkable book to Jefferson’s eighteenth-century world and reveals the extent to which Jefferson used science, thought about it, and contributed to it, becoming in his time a leading American scientific intellectual.

With a storyteller’s gift, Thomson shows us a new side of Jefferson. He answers an intriguing series of questions—How was Jefferson’s view of the sciences reflected in his political philosophy and his vision of America’s future? How did science intersect with his religion? Did he make any original contributions to scientific knowledge?—and illuminates the particulars of Jefferson’s scientific endeavors. Thomson discusses Jefferson’s theories that have withstood the test of time, his interest in the practical applications of science to societal problems, his leadership in the use of scientific methods in agriculture, and his contributions toward launching at least four sciences in America: geography, paleontology, climatology, and scientific archaeology. A set of delightful illustrations, including some of Jefferson’s own sketches and inventions, completes this impressively researched book.

Keith Thomson is Executive Officer fellow at the American Philosophical Society and professor emeritus of natural history at the University of Oxford. He was for five years a visiting fellow of the International Centre for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, VA. He lives in Philadelphia.

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From Rizzoli:

Diane Dorrans Saeks, Ann Getty: Interior Style, photographed by Lisa Romerein (New York: Rizzoli, 2012), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-0847837915, $55.

The first-ever compilation of the luxurious interiors from the influential designer and philanthropist Ann Getty. For those who are passionate about fine interiors, the preservation of antiques, the highest level of craftsmanship, and respect for architectural integrity, this book offers an insider’s view of the exquisite designs of Ann Getty. Fluent in classical styles and periods and known for sourcing her vast array of objects and opulent materials from across the globe, Getty creates interiors that are steeped in historical style yet remain fresh and vibrant for today’s clientele.From the exceptional residence she and her music-composer husband, Gordon Getty, use for entertaining and displaying their world-class collection of art and antiques, to the comfortable yet elegant townhouse she designed for a stylish young family, the book showcases richly detailed interiors that are coveted by design enthusiasts and collectors. Featured are pieces from Getty’s successful furniture line of original designs inspired by the renowned Getty collection as well as her own extensive travel and design studies.This intimate look, Getty’s first-ever monograph, demonstrates how to combine objects from different time periods and styles in a sumptuous atmosphere rich in bold colors, vibrant textures, and classic elegance.

Diane Dorrans Saeks is a noted design lecturer, founder of the design/travel blog The Style Saloniste, and the best-selling author of more than twenty books. Lisa Romerein’s photographs have been featured in many books, including Michael S. Smith: Elements of Style, as well as C magazine, Town & Country, and Elle Decor.

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As Catherine Bigelow writes in her article, “Ann Getty’s ‘Interior Style’,” for SFGate (8 October 2012) . . .

Ann Getty’s San Francisco House. In the foyer, a vignette of Meissen figures sits beneath a painting by  Canaletto. Photo: Lisa Romerein from Ann Getty: Interior Style. For more photos, available at Harper’s Bazaar, click on the image.

“All this time, people assumed Ann was having endless couture fittings in Paris,” said Saeks, a San Francisco design writer who has penned 21 Rizzoli titles. “But actually she was studying 18th-century French antiques and having private tours of hidden collections at the Louvre.”

In the ’60s, Getty studied paleoanthropology and biology at UC Berkeley, and she remains devoted to philanthropic support of science and academic research. But for more than 40 years, she has also been hands-on in designing and running her own well-appointed homes. The book features four, including her Willis Polk-designed Gold Coast manse and the first-ever peek at her childhood home, and most personal redesign, in Wheatland (Yuba County), where the Gilbert family still runs their decades-old walnut ranch.

In addition to her intuitive design sense, Getty also drew upon inspiration and early tutelage from storied designer Sister Parish, her late father-in-law and antiquities connoisseur J. Paul Getty, as well as collections within the Getty Museum. . .

The full article is available here»