The Orlando Project

Scholarly Introduction

igrundy — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:39:54 +0000

Lisa A. Freeman in The Scriblerian

igrundy — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 21:33:47 +0000

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the number of digital Restoration and eighteenth-century archives and databases has proliferated. . . . . With diminishing resources for many universities, however, distinctions need to be made. Worth the investment, Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present . . . should be considered indispensable for all scholars of literary history. . . . Much to their credit, the project’s editors, Susan Brown, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, have given great consideration to Orlando‘s macro- and micro-organizational principles. Ranging across factual, conceptual, critical and interpretive tags, their customized markup system provides in-depth information on the lives and works of women writers as well as their political, literary, economic, and cultural contexts. With the goal of creating a “comprehensive scholarly history of writing by British women,” it provides individual investigators with a productive tool for generating chronologies and “herstories” that we could only have dreamed of writing in an earlier era . . . . Fortunately, the editors here do more than most to explain their choices and to discuss the potential implications of their markup system. Thanks to their collective intellectual labors, users will have access to as many rooms of their own as they can imagine.

Lisa A. Freeman in The Scriblerian, 44: 2, 45: 1 (Spring and Autumn 2012), 87-9.

Toni Bowers in The Scriblerian

igrundy — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 21:16:03 +0000

Most readers of this journal will be familiar already with Cambridge University Press’s magisterial database, Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present, overseen by Susan Brown, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy. The database . . . has changed the parameters of the scholarship and teaching of British women’s writing. . . . The information on the Orlando database is nothing short of priceless, breathtaking in its scope and endlessly useful.

Toni Bowers, “Exploring the Richardson Circle using the Orlando Database”. The Scriblerian, 44: 2, 45: 1 (Spring and Autumn 2012), 56-8.

Feminism at Oxford

igrundy — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:49:14 +0000

We loved this update on student feminism.

Aimée Morrison on Social Media and Autobiography

mpolea — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:55:34 +0000

The University of Waterloo’s department of English recently posted on its blog some remarks by Professor Aimee Morrison, former Orlandian, about her research, and the use of social media as composing autobiography:

Aimée Morrison, professor in the department of English at University of Waterloo, shares her thoughts on the future of social media, including Facebook. Professor Morrison also discusses her current research projects.

Source: Words in . . . Read more

Mary Ward

mpolea — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:04:34 +0000

Mary Ward, seventeenth-century religious reformer and founder of a religious Order, used her writings (letters, autobiography, prayers, notes, and speeches) as a means to forward her radical ecclesiastical administration. She also wrote devotional works for her own spiritual life, and familiar letters. Go to Orlando>

Mary Robinson

mpolea — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:44:27 +0000

Mary Robinson, scandalous woman and Romantic poet, was also a forceful and emotional, radical writer in many other genres: novels, scholarship, memoirs, drama, periodical essays, and translation. During the last two years of her life her level of productivity was almost frenetic, and the quality of her writing was adversely affected. Go to Orlando>

Iris Murdoch

mpolea — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:46:23 +0000

Iris Murdoch, active from the second world war till almost the end of the twentieth century, was best known as a philosophical novelist with a wild sense of comedy. Her twenty-six novels foreground philosophic issues similar to those discussed in her well-regarded academic publications. She contributed to many periodicals, and wrote plays for stage and radio, an opera libretto, and poetry. Go to Orlando>

Vera Brittain

mpolea — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:39:36 +0000

Vera Brittain From her university days before the First World War, Vera Brittain was determined to be a writer. Her career as a novelist never fulfilled her own expectations; it was not until the publication of Testament of Youth, the first of her volumes combining autobiography with social and cultural history that she achieved significant success. She also wrote both poetry and pamphlets. Much of her oeuvre is politically engaged, from her feminist journalism and social criticism of the 1920s to her pacifist writings of World War II. Go to Orlando>

Emmeline Pankhurst

mpolea — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:32:01 +0000

Emmeline Pankhurst‘s writings, produced during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, range from published political speeches to autobiography. All concern her lifelong struggle for women’s emancipation. Go to Orlando>