Nineteen News

How is the nineteenth century making the news lately?

The Texts:
- In The Vancouver Sun, Anakana Schofield extols the joys of nineteenth century novels and their film adaptations;

- The Los Angeles Times's Patt Morrison reviews Becky: The Life and Loves of Becky Thatcher, a new novel that takes for its subject Tom Sawyer's lady friend;

- Students at Montreal's McGill University are mounting a production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler--except they've decided to transplant the story. Instead of nineteenth-century Norway, the story unfolds in the mid-twentieth century United States. Hmmm... I just don't know about that...;

- New bargain editions of nineteenth century novels and stories are seeing the light of day! Joining the incomparable Brian Nelson's new translation of Emile Zola's Le Ventre de Paris in Oxford University Press' spring catalogue are new editions and reissues of books that include Mansfield Park, Emma, Jane Eyre, L'Éducation sentimentale, A Confederate Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Faust, Part Two, War and Peace, a collection of Ibsen's plays, and a collection of Poe's short stories. All these texts will be published under OUP's Oxford World's Classics imprint, which is debuting the results of its makeover this April (the new look is a little reminiscent of that of Gallimard's Folio Classique imprint, non?); and

- I want this. [EDIT: And this.]


The Contexts:
- The 1857 Rebellion: Debates in Indian History is reviewed by Suranjan Das;

- A great little piece by Robert L. Mack. He manages to condense a lot of information about early-Victorian reading habits into a relatively small space;

- The Brits can breathe a sigh of relief: a new study absolves them of wrongdoing in Napoleon's death;

- Ever wonder how people whiled away their free time in the Wild West? Well, wonder no more!

- New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art have renovated the exhibition space that is home to the nineteenth-century pieces in its collection;

- If you happen to be in Manchester between now and April 6, 2008, you're in for a treat: the art of William Blake is being exhibited--and, natch!, for free--at the city's Whitworth Art Gallery;

- Historians are currently compiling archival documents for a collection on the American Civil War and the Ozarks; and

- In honour of the day, check out this post at NineteenTeen for some tidbits about Valentine's cards in our favourite century.