An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Lois Burke ( Digital Scholarship Postdoctoral Fellow 2020-21):
Recovering a Female Canon of Golden Age (1865-1920) Children's Literature in Scotland
Abstract:
Although Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, R.M. Ballantyne, and J.M. Barrie are all well represented in the 19th-century history of Scottish writing for young people, Scottish women’s contributions are still woefully under-represented in contemporary scholarship. Yet during the first ‘Golden Age’ of children’s literature, c. 1865-1920, Scottish women writers published a wide variety of children’s fiction; from fairy tales to domestic adventure novels to New Woman fiction for modern adolescent girl readers.
In this paper I will present my work-in-progress research to 'recover' these women writers of children's works. One way I have sought to achieve this is to quantify and visualise these writers and their works as data, through using Excel, R, and the social network visualisation tool Graph Commons. Online tools such as these have become indispensable for conducting this research, especially since access to in-person archives has been restricted.
I will draw attention to a number of women writers who I would particularly like to see a revival of interest in. I will also discuss how the recovery of women's histories and publications might be more sustainable within the academy and with public audiences and research partners, gesturing to the next steps of this project and my plans for research dissemination.
Please contact iash@ed.ac.uk for a link to join the seminar.