Representing Leigh Hunt’s Autobiography

CHAPITRE DE LIVRE

« Representing Leigh Hunt’s Autobiography »

Michael E. Sinatra

dans Virtual Victorians : Networks, Connections, Technologies, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, p. 107-119.

Pour citer ce chapitre :

S

INATRA

, Michael E., « Representing Leigh Hunt’s Autobiography », dans Veronica Alfana et Andrew Stauffer (dir.),

Virtual Victorians : Networks, Connections, Technologies, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, p. 107-119.

106 ALISON BOOTH

. . the short-lived Tuscan At/Jmae11111 liber.li sicle of the Italy queslltlon_ ml. torical articles and such books as

. j" m as WC as m US j

and otl1er 1ourna is ' A T d Frances Eleanor Trollope co -T11scany in 1849 a11d 1859. T. .

;h:~talian

Pocts(l881).

laborated on Homes and

Hatt~~s ~!"The

Apprenticeship to the Laurel" 20. Thus begins tl1e

cha~~er ~nt!

e ge Wikipedia site shows an image of the (DIW2:393). The Ita ia_n-an~ua , . "Qui Abito Corilla Ne! Secolo bouse, with the plaque m capital letters.

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. I /" L "bcrty (London. 1apman ' '

of t/Jc Old ta tan t 08640645 Quoted in Lawrence Poston, catalog.hatl1itrust.org/Record/O . .

~.

glo-Florentine " Bulletin of

h T Il p •. A V1ctonan nil '

"Thomas Adolp us ro 0 e." J. • •• ₄9 (1966): 133-64. 143. d U . . . "t 'Ltbmry of Mane mte1 . t/Je ]o/Jn Ryla11 s 111Pem ) .- .

~he

famil ' in Cincinnati briefly m 1828, 22. Mr. Troll ope and T. A. T.l

'is1lte~

tl e

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sojourn and business venture

Ailthony remaining at sc 100 ' ut l

· ~1 T ollope's bands. d

were mostly m " rs. r e key e\·ents (standard ate,

. of a persona we nam Id b

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t11ese facts are ea ' _{I l d only t lree no e 1} t ller mai· or navels. Her mar-Trollope's move to ta y, an l 1 · . ortant

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writing other tl1an

l l band's deatl lCr imp ' Il l"d d riage or 1er ms . ' d deaths ofher children are a e 1 e Domestic Ma1111ers, and tl1e b1rths an .

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d · es are descn e m · l d th 24. Her classes an s01re _{· · 626 frequen} tl b . '''1tl1 birth and end w1t l ea ; _{Y egm}

chapter headmgs ma . · b .d s Trollope have their life-spans in Abbot's collection, too, sub1ects es1 e

traced in detail (aOOl),; _

863,, Ditto VIAF, ID: 34551336 http:// 25. LC n 50012547 says, 1780 1 1 · l. . the Bristol Record Office.

. f I collow the ODNB, w llC l cites via .org. 1•

CHAPTER 5

REPRESENTING LEIGH HUNT

1

_S

A

UTOBIOGRAPHY

Michael

B.

Sinatra

ln

bis biography of Leigh Hunt, Anthony Holden asserts, "Along-side "Wordsworth, who largely eschewed literary London, Hunt's was the longest nineteenth-century literary life, with the widest circle of acquaintance and as large a claim as any to the shaping of literary opinion" (2). In my earlier monograph, Leigh Hunt and the London

Litcrary Sccne, I illustrated the kinds of change that Hunt's reputation

went through over a 30-year timespan. Thar study attempted to elab-orate the problematic of his position within the London literary and political scene between the years 1805 and 1828, the contributions he made to British literature and journalism, and bis public standing at the end of the romantic period. Since Hunt's life is obviously tao complex to be rendered fülly in any single study, the idea was not to attempt an exhaustive history, but rather to present a starting point for fürther inquiry into Hunt's career as a writer and Pl\blic figure under the reign of Queen Victoria.

The trajectory of Hunt's life and work traced in the years 1805 to

1828 appears to fall off rather steeply toward the end, leaving Hunt as a failed author, with neither a dependable, receptive audience nor any clear füture as an author in sight as the third decade of bis pub

-lic 1-ife cames to an end. To conclude this account of Hunt's early carêer abruptly at this point, however, would be to create a mislead·-ing impression of his career as a whole. Hunt survived the setbacks of The Liberal and Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries, and he remained more or Jess t:rue to his principle of independence. The

108 MICHAEL E. SINATRA

- f' lfill' g cor Hunt both personally

If f 1 · l'fe was very u 111 11 ' .

-second lu o 11s 1 1 . deserve more attention from

. c · Il , Hunt's ater years . _ .

1

and pr 01ess1ona ) · . . d

_{1 ,}

offer mJny tapies of resea1c1

twenty-first-century scholais,.an lt1e). Hunt made new friends

. f ·tl r Dunng t 1at time,

worth pursu111g m 1e . . 1 . d ·11g age also had an impact on

fi· es· 11s a vano · •

and lost most o 11s enem1 '. 1·· . r\' proi· ects su ch as running

. h Id . west 111 new 1te1 a '

the stam111a e cou 11 • • 'gl1t His reputation as a

. . . · the theater eve1 y 111 ·

a penod1cal or go111g to ₁. ·e''' dlir·ing these years and

d ·t d persona 1ty gr ·

well-known an respec e - d tl e countr)' as well as from

· , ' 'tors trom aroun 1 .

brought h1m

mai~)

'1s1 . ularl ' u blished and rev1ewed

America, where h1s works had been reg! ) pf Coleridge and

Word-.1. . ₁ me W:L)' that t 1ose o

since ]ttvcm ta, 111 t 1e sa • d 1850 Yet ail throughout the

sworth had been between 183? adn. kee11 p. ol1't1'cal sense and a sharp

f h. !'fi H t reta111e a •

second half o 1s 1 e, un . d

1 . to promote new poetical

. d ri . -h motivate 11111

critical ]li gment, \\ 11c . d D G. Rossetti, as well as past authors,

voices, such as

Tenny~on

an . '. bna i11ation and Pancy ( 1844 ),

in his critical antholog1es and

ed~tiofins

t? Italian Poets ( 1846 ), and

Wit and Htt11wttr (1846), Stones rom Je

Bca1m11mt a11d Fletcher ( 1855

~·

f"

1

n1plex poli tics of authorial

c a reJd111g o t 1e co ·

My essay lOcuses on . - H ' 1850 A11tobio11mphy

1 t' 1 h1story of unt s ~ . '

revisions and t 1e recep 101 . . ·e tl1is is arguably Hunt's

- - The Exa11m1cr s111c

with some reterence t? d' . . J tl1e work tl1Jt gave him a

- bl' ·at1on as e 1tOL anu

most famous pu IL . _1.1· od 1 The importance

- . ,.thin the romantlc pe . .

Place of prom111ence "1 _ _{d · Hui1t's earlier work 111}

_ . · d t first expresse 111 .

of 111dependent JU gmen ' . fl d Hunt's

1·0urnalist1c career

. . ...,...1. N, 'S clearly 111 uence

journahsm 111 J.,Jc CJl ' f . 1. periodical (included at the

in The Exa111i11er, as the

pros~ec~us ~r. t11~1e

first issue of T71c

E'lêam-back of Critical Essays .and L eplr111tde i_nt1'stement also serves as further

. d . t s This lengt1y a ve1 . . .

i11er) emonstt a e · .

1. . f Hl111t's theatncal

cntl-1 · 1 · t' cal 11np 1cat1ons o

evidence of t 1.e soo.opo 1 _1 .. al Essavs constitutes the first instance of

cism, the way 111

'~

·

h1c~1

C::1 tttc n i;1de endence from external

pres-Hunt's longstand111g

ll1S1s~en~.e

o .

i~al

or olitical), and his early

sures (whether they be ed1tona\

~e1so

Hunt

~inks

critical and

politi-engagement in sociJI and

cul~ura if~sues.

f'or· ...,...(,., Examiner: "Party

· 1 · -1 _{1ce o motta} J.f,. ~

cal independence 111 11s c_ 10 . f ce'''" He th us effectively

f- , for the ga111 o a 11 · •

is the madness o

m~n~

- . ' .· dical by using bis current

advertises the impartiality of h1s. ne\\ .P~!IO

reputation as an impartial theatncal cntlc:

. . ' - d - cd the THE:\TRIC\L DEP:\RTMENT The Gentleman \\'ho t1ll latcl) rnn u~t 1 • . '·!INER' and as the Public

·11 · · · ] • Theatre m t 1C EX:\,. '

in the N!:.WS, \\'t cnttctsc t 1c - - . , . tl at Dcpartment we

'bT ' f IMP:\R1 l:\Ll1 \ 1l1 1 '

have ,11lowed the posst t t~ o_ . . ' be obtained in POLITICS.

do not sec why the same poss1b11t~· m.l) not

(Hunt, 2003 1, 31)

...,

.

.

REPRESENTING LEIGH HUNT1

S AUTOBIOGR!IPH\' 109

Hunt distinguishes The E'lêaminer further by describing the

contem-porary tendency of the press: "The newspaper proves to be Jike the

generality of it's species, very mean in it's subserviency to the follies of the day, very miserably merry in it's puns and it's staries, extremely furious in politics, and quite as feeble in criticism" (Hunt, 2003 1,

31). Hunt asserts in the conclusion of the prospectus that, just as

he had cleared the way for a new, unbiased drama criticism when he

started writing for The News, so too would he change political

journal-ism and provide a new, neutral voice within the contemporary press

with the founding of T71c Examiner.

T71e Eva1ni11cr rapidly rose to success, and the sales were very sti·ong in the first decade of the newspaper's existence, with a circula-tion of approximately 2,200 issues by November 1808, rising to a peak of between 7,000 and 8,000 in the 1810s. These circulation figures are quite impressive when one bears in mind the limited num-bers of copies solé1 by ail the publications of that period; for instance, the Edinb111;gh RcPicw's circulation was 12,000 and T71e Times's 8,000 (Deguchi, 1996 vii). This success can be ascribed in part to the shared commitment to reform of both Hunt and his brother John, and in part to Hunt's personality as editor. Indeed, Jeffrey N. Cox and Greg Kucich rightly explain that part of the success of the newspaper, in terms of both longevity and influence, cames "from the power of Hunt's writing, which is by turns chattily erudite and aesthetic,

clev-erly satirical, and filled with political rage" (Hunt, 2003 1, xxxvii).

The Examiner played a major role in the London political scene, as \\'ell as in the literary periodical world. The new weekly also had an important impact on Hunt's life and career. As Kenneth Neill

Cam-eron notes, "The Examiner became not so much a weekly paper as an

institution and Leigh Hunt was transformed from an obscure poet and essayist into an influential editor, a man whose opinions were read and admired by thousands of readers week by week for some thirteen

years" (1961-70 1, 263). Hunt's periodical came to have a major

influence on an entire generation of\\'riters in the early decades of the nineteenth century, from a political as well as a literary perspective.

Studies devoted to Shelley, Keats, and Hazlitt frequently include a

dis-cussion ofHunt's newspaper, since it played such an important role in

their writing careers. The fa:amii1e1· also provides modern readers with

the proper contextual information for Keats's and Shelley's poems, as

Nic_holas Roe and Cameron, among others, ha\'e persuasively argued.

<Jn June 8, 1850, the three-volume edition of The

Atttobiogm-phy ,of Lcigh H1111t; with Remi11isccnees of Frimds m1d Co11tcmpomries

~ppéared

under the imprint of Smith, Eider, and Co. Although based

110 MICHAEL E. SINATRA

. work of bis later life. White a large sec-probably the mas:

in:port~n~

in Hunt's Atttobiography cornes from tian of the matenal mclu e . the tone is greatly altered.

.1· h. Contemporanes, . "fi

Lord Byron and Some o1 ts h statement of persona! JUStl ca-Whereas Lord Byron was very mue ka H t had suffered in

publica-f th ·aus attac s un h

tian in the face o e var1 . t the fulsome praises that t e tians on Byron, and a

reactionr~~~1~~e

country, the

Attt~biography

dead poet now garnered from a ' !"fi "mbued with an obvious sense

d . t" n of Hunt s 1 e, 1 . H ' offers a calmer ep1c 10 . f ents and friendsh1ps. unt s of pleasure in the recollect1on o

pas~ e~ther

allude or explicitly refer revision pleased reviewers, for severa e1F r example The Palladium

t of Byron. o '

to Hunt's gentler treatmen t nd reproduces passages

b

1

nt treatmen a .

notes Hunt's more enevo e . R er)s Neiv Monthly Magazine

of "the apologetic remarks" ( 138), arpl828 and 1850 by noting similarly marks the difference

betwe~~

of bis nature gently worn k h "the asperltles ·a1 that the later wor s ows h . fluence of a k.indly and geru

. · d b ught under t e m · · away, and h1s mm ro . l highlights Hunt's rev1s1ons humor" (572). The Methodtst

Qttarte~:y

that for Hunt "the chief

th iews assert1ng ' '

the most of these ree rev .

~

h" wn life seemed to result from . h . d in wntmg is o . d delight wh1ch e enJoye . fi th motives once m1sconstrue ' the opportunity afforded ofsettmgl o;ndiscretions" (253).

and expressing ma?IY_ regret

·fo~ :~!ncle

"Editing and Noting: Vision As Ken A. BugaJsk.i notes m

~

L" s " "Even Hunt's best and

fL .

1

H nt's L1terary ive ' and Revisions o e1g 1 u

1

Examt"ner does not escape · d"

1

deavor t 1e '

most successful peno ica en ') I Hunt's 1828 volume, Lord

· · · · 1850" (n.p. · n d" revisionary cnt1cism m . h h d described the foun mg

Byron and Some of his Contemporanes, e a of The Examiner thus:

. m brother John and myself set _up

At the beginmng of the year 1808,. y . ·01"nt partnership. The spmt

f the Examiner m J al

the weekly news paper 0

1

·n the News for sever

. . . ti ued the same as ' . . d

of theatrical cnt1C1sm con n_ d th ociety of better cnucs, ha

· h · fl cuon an e s h ·

Years· by wh1c urne re e ' . sted 1 was very mue m

' 1. · 1 on got mtere · · ·

made me wiser. In po mes

s~

. 1 1 did on ail subjects when

. Il 1 \Vrote 1 thmk prec1se y as

earnest ma · · ·

1 Jast wrote in it. ( 411)

. e into the 1850 Atttobiography, he When Hunt reworked th1s

p~ssag

. he verbatim section he used significantly cha~ge~ its tone m recastmgJ:

in a more neganve hght:

J h d myself set

1808 my brother o n an

At the beginning of the

ye~r

he

Ex~miner

in joint partnership. It was up the weekly news

p~per

of St "ft d bis brother Tories .... 1 thought named after the Examiner o w1 an

REPRESENTING LEIGH HUNT'S A UTOBIOGRAPHY 111

only of their fine writing, which, in my youthful confidence, 1 proposed to emulate . . . I wrote, though anonymously, in the first person, as if, in addition to my theatrical pretensions, I had suddenly become an

oracle in politics .... 1 blush to think what a simpleton I was .... The

spirit of the criticism on the theatres continued as it had been in the News. (2, 1-3)

Thus, Hunt now "views the name of the periodical as an arrogant usurpation; he discounts the certainty of his politica] beliefs; and his wideJy respected theatrica] opinions have become pretension" (Bugajksi n.p.).

InterestingJy, just as Hunt's work after 1828 tends not to be con-sidered by modern critics, Hunt himself is curiously silent about the Jater part of his Jife. To some extent the rather abrupt truncations of the account q.f his literary career may be due to the practical necessi-ties of producing copy under pressure of rime. The process of revision was certainJy eut short by Smith, Hunt's publisher, who insisted, in a new contract dated February 7, 1850, that Hunt shou]d produce the manuscript within three months.2 _{Stephen Fogle comments on}

Hunt's financia] motivation for publishing his autobiography in 1850 when he asserts that "the circumstances of the composition of the book, that is, the need to make good on his contract . . . go far to expJain this emphasis [on Hunt's ear]y Jife]. Much of the material Jay ready to his hand, suitabJe for reprinting once the rights were cleared"

(vii-viii). Indeed, the pressure to meet his contractual obligation with the firm in rime may also have been a motivation for Hunt to bor-row heaviJy from his previous publications, principally Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries, the essays on Italy he published in The Liberal, and some articles from The Examiner. 3 However, Hunt may also have been attempting to recuperate his stance of independence by revisiting and revising this earlier controversial materia] into more temperate terms. Since it was in the early period ofhis Jife when he was most fiercely independent, it is that period that he sp{\nds the most rime revisiting.

Thomas Carlyle's enthusiastic reaction to Hunt's Atttobiography,

in a Jetter dated June 17, 1850, is one of the most positive comments that the volume gathered after its publication:

• I call this an excellently good Book; by far the best of the autobio -• graphie kind I remember to have read in the English Language; and

1 _{indeed, except it be Boswell's of Johnson, I do not know where we}

have such a Picture drawn of a human Life as in these three volumes.

112 MICHAEL E. SINATRA

If the reviews of Hunt's book were generally mixed, they were

nev-ertheless very numerous: the Autobiography received no less than 15

reviews in Britain and Ireland, and 5 in America. The style of Hunt's

Autobiography is heavily criticized, particularly for what the review-ers feel to be dullness, in the North British Review, The Palladium,

and the Dublin University Magazine. 5 _{The anonymous reviewer for}

The Spectator acclaims Hunt's Atttobiography as an enriching source of

information on literature and society,6 _{and the anonymous reviewer}

for The Times observes that Hunt's life is an interesting subject for a book, even though the financial problems that figure so prominently argue for an origin in pecuniary motives rather than an interest in literary history.7 _{Hunt's central place in the London literary scene is}

recognized favorably in the reviews for Tait)s Edinbttr.gh Magazine

and for The Literary World,8 _{and Hunt's appreciation of his fellow}

authors is commended in Chamber)s Edinbttrgh Magazine and in The

Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres.9 Alongside Smith's offer to publish Hunt's recollections, these reviews attest ta Hunt's widely respected position \vithin the London literary scene and the consider-able interest in his memoirs.

Hunt's choice of material for discussion in his Atttobiography

might suggest that he never considered himself ta be part of what

is now called the Victorian period. It might also simply indicate that

Hunt was primarily interested in reflecting upon what he thought of as the best years of his life, including of course his friendships \vith

Keats and Shelley. In any case, one can legitimately question whether

Hunt should be considered as a Victorian autobiographer as well as a key romantic figure whom modern periodization tends ta overlook. His life and success under the reign of Queen Victoria complement

his pivotai role during the romantic period, and his Atttobiography

contains much undiscussed material that is relevant ta bath literary

periods. Nevertheless, Hunt's Autobiography does not give, ta adopt

Anthony Trollope's words, "a record of [Hunt's] inner life,"10 and

one needs to turn ta his 1853 book, The Religion of the Heart, ta find

a detailed expression of Hunt's persona! beliefs, as I have explored

elsewhere. 11 _{Commenting on the revisions Hunt made in the}

Attto-biography, Timothy Webb-in the words of Bugajski-"argues that [ they] result from a conscious change in philosophical perspective

through which Hunt begins ta look at fdlow humans more charitably.

Webb writes, for example, that Hunt's 'graduai process of revisionary evolution ... strongly suggests that for Hunt the process of revision

was not only a matter ofstylistics or even oftruth to history and ta self

but ta an activity whose deepest resonances were moral and religious"'

REPRESENTING LEIGH HUNT'S A _{UTOBIOGRAPHY 113}

(Bugajski n.p., quoting Webb 299) Th · · .

however, always welcomed b ' . e rel1g1ous sentiment was not,

by the anonymous reviewer

fo~~~e;pora~y

readers,

~s.d.emonstrated

perceived as ami-Christian sen .

a~ladtum

who cntic1zed what he

and by a similar anonymous

c~:e~t~

m ;:unt's Autobiography (137)

The Rambler, a Catholic Journal

pa~;t a~

appeared a year later in

Literatttre) Politics Music and th v· ARevzew of Home and Foreign

p · . . ) e .rtne rts(47).

or mclus1on m the planned Lei h H . .

prepare an edition of H ,

?

unt Archive webs1te, I will

1860 editions)· th1's

onl~nt

s

Autobtogr~phy

(bath the 1850 and the

' me resource w1ll al · l d

collection of ail Hunt's criti al . . sa me u e an annotated

mary and secondar 'works be wntings, as well as a selection of

pri-literary circles.

Th~se

works

\v~~~:~~~t

other writers involved in his

Clarke and Vincent Novella B . . Re e letters by Charles Cowden

Hazlitt's esszys in the

Rou~d efa:1~ndobert Hay~?n's

diary, William

in Hunt's periodicals, a selection of

Joh~~r '~1ntin1i

he published

Charles Lamb's contributions to the Lo d ami

ta~

eynolds's and

phy of Madame Vestris alo . h n on Magazine, and a

biogra-. biogra-. ' ng w1t several other memo· d ..

wntings on drama Ali thes _{. e wor s w1 provide a} k ·11 _. irs an crmcal _. reading environment for th d' .

1 . umque mtertextual

e 1g1ta vers10n of Hunt' · · _{1 ..}

Furthermore, the Leigh Hunt Arch· . . s crmca wntmgs.

along the lines of Jerome M G , Rive we?s1te w1ll be constructed

c ann s ossettt archive " th ·

tents and its webwork ofrelati (b h . , so at 1ts

con-indefinitely expanded and

deve~~s d'?~~~ernal

and external) can be

have a "central text hypermediaF,;3_ c ann ~·P· ). ~2_The idea is to

entire critical corpus with ap d d an electromc edmon of Hunt's

. h

r

k ' pen e notes and hypertext j' k l

w1t m s to historical-critical editions Th' b . . m s, a ong

exploration of a new facet of H , ... Is we site w1ll allow for an

contribute to an ongoing effort

t~~tos c:~ticalh produ~tions,

and it will

called minor literar fi u ns1 er t e true importance

ofso-a decofso-ade thofso-at (ofso-as

~c;ar~ezas

.well as to further study of the 1830s,

ary period but instead gets lorotnbm notes) does not constitute a

liter-d s etween two others 14

s·

d

an scholars alike need access to . . . mce stu ents

will

be crucial in making 'bpi nmary texts for the1r work, the site

. . poss1 e a proper re l " f

Wntmgs in the first half f th . eva uation o Hunt's

Hunt's own literary

ne~vorke

mbnet;enth. century. It will also encode

h s Y 1eaturmg biogr h · l ·

Ot er writers \VÏthin h' j' . ap !Ca notices of

and

~ ~etailed chronol~~terary

c1rcles, along with reviews, notices,

· D1g1tal editions due ta th ffi d

• by the compound 'platforms

~;

thor

an~es

and constraints established

,Wide Web, are learnin e ma. ern computer and the World

within which active

pr;c~~:si:~~~h~~~t~enbtary

hudbs, urban squares

114 MICHAEL E. SINATRA

rapidly broadcast, recorded, collected, preserved, and shared. If digital editions are to take full advantage of their environments (rather than simply emulating print traditions), they need to visibly include bath process and product, and to offer opportunities for editorial diligence, contribution, perspective, contrai, and debate to their knowledge

-community of users. The Leigh Hunt Archive intends to incorpo

-rate the work of Stéfan Sinclair on data-mining tools (specifically the implementation of his Voyant tools in the varions electronic editions prepared during the course of the project) and

J

on Saklofske on visu-alizing data (specifically through his NewRadial prototype).

15

Data mining offers many opportunities to bring together different sets of data which, when prepared to the highest standard of text encoding, can yield new and innovative results that encourage further reconsid-eration of preconceived notions regarding the transfer of ideas from one author to another, or one literary genre to another. Furthermore, the results of the research undertaken in the Leigh Hunt Archive will be presented in a collaborative, visual context that reimagines the digital scholarly edition as a transparent workspace layer in which established primary abjects from existing databases can be gathered, organized, correlated, annotated, and augmented by multiple users in a dynamic environment that also features centralized margins for secondary scholarship and debate. New Radial is a site for the genera-tion of social edigenera-tions and for a more public and open process of edi-tion formaedi-tion, pluralizaedi-tion, and persistent growth. It is also a site of scholarly process, discussion, and development. It has the abilit:y tore-present database material in a sandbox environment, thus encouraging iterative experimentation, hosting methodological and interpretative debate, and supporting new juxtapositions and connections. Most important, adapting New Radial for specific use with this project will place the Leigh Hunt Archive database in conversation with efforts relating to the idea of the semantic web. NewRadiaI's use of an RDF (Resource Description Framework) data mode! to organize and export any secondary scholarship that grows out of user interactions with its primary database makes it extremely useful for prosopography- and placeography-related data manipulation, and for compatibilit:y poten-tial with other RDF-oriented applications such as NINES.16

Ultimately, the Leigh Hunt Archive will be useful for anyone work-ing on the romantic and Victorian periotls because it will provide access to important contextual information that allows for a better understanding of the key literary and historical events between 1800

and 1850. The biographical notices that it will include-along with a

planned series of recorded interviews of scholars discussing Hunt and

REPRESENTING LEIGH H UNT S ' AUTOBIOGRAPHY 115

the other authors under considerati ' .

on tapies such as the method f on, a_s

"~li

as relevant information and the evolution of Hunt'

r

s o

p1~bhcat1ons

available at the time important resource fior res s ltherary c1rcles-will make this website an

. earc ers students d 1 ·

It w1ll feature contextual . c. .' ' an t 1e public at large. m1ormat1on useful fi .

(say) freedom of the press tl . f . 0

~

anyone mterested in cal plays, antiwar poetr)' or' a1et rb1s_e o thhe. h1stor_1cal nove! and

histori-k

' u o iograp JCa] wnt" Th b . ma e these texts available for the fi . . mg. e we site will more, the site itself throu h th rst t1me m electr?nic format; what's tem (GIS), will gederate

c~sto

e_

us~Iof

?eograph1c Information Sys

-ary circles and their contrib

tm1zaT~

v1sua_I maps ofLondon's liter

-the encoded material i·

~

_ors!.

es~

w1Il allow users to explore n ongma and mno , t"

beyond Hunt himself and . 'a ive ways that extend . yet reassert h1s ce 1t

r

1

and V1ctorian periods. Thanks to h 1.

r~

ity to t 1_e

ro~nantic

tools to be implemented . h t_ e data-mmmg and v1suahzation

m t e proiect the L · h H

feature cutting-eëige meth d _{o s 1or searchmg a d} c. ' . eig unt Archive _{1 ·} will

body of data that will have b n ana yzmg the large E

. een scanned and pre d h

ncodmg- Initiative standard ( h . pare to t e Text

-other electronic resources s '\1

~s ensur~ng

full com.patibility with sibility). Mass-digitizat1"0 as '.'e ong-term preservat10n and

acces-n proiects such as Go J B k d

researchers the same Ievel of ₁ og e oo s o not offer and thus there is still the ne Jr;nu ar

~earches

or visualization tools, from the ground up. e or suc a database to be consn·ucted

Thinking f d" o e itona representation · 1 d 1

~he

complex relationship between di ital

~o

ay

~~ds

one. to consider 1es, bearing in mind th t ,. h . g _umamnes and hterary

stud-. a ' "it its emphas1s on t 1 d" .

nes can seem to be deta h d c. . . oo s, 1g1tal humani-c e 1rom trad1t10 1

r

though it arguablv b . na iterary methods even

) ecame promment th k . . .

ary studies. Howard Besser ass t . h an s to its ongm in

liter-H

. . er s m t e 2 004

c

p ·

. .

11ma111t1es that om muon to Digital

though the promise of digital tecl 1 .

to let one do the same tl . ldn_o ogy m almost any field has been 1mgs one 1d b fi b b

more fundamental result has often be e ore ut . _errer and faster, the new things. (558) en the capab1hty of doicg cntirely

~ interdisciplinary field that before th W

Ill electronic concordances d" . e .e?

a~peared

to specialize

d~nts

in disciplines ranging' c. 1g1talh.II1umamt1es is now training stu-irom p 1 osophv to 11· .

cate through the Web d . - ) istmy to communi

-h an use 1ts powerful r F

\.!ffianists are working ,,,1.th 1·b . d esources. urther, digital h

i ranes to evelo th 1 . . t at are the durable h p e e ectromc archives

116 MICHAEL E. SINATRA

. . The fundamental restructuring of th_e

themselves and their h1story. d rn1"zing opportunity that is

d sents a vast mo e d

research recor repre d . the ever-increasing dominance an

a necessary step forwar g1ven .

. c fthe digital media. f

enablmg leatures o . .

1

h manities projects have grown out o ' or

A large number of

~1g1t~

.

~

humanities centers around the world.

found a happy home_

i~,

dihg1t 11 tion of essays Debates in the Digital

As Neil Fraistat puts Jt m t e co ec

Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold:

. for bridging the daunting gap

digital humanities centers are key s1r_e~ holars serving as the

cross-h 1 and humamtJes se ,

between new tee no ogy d where scholars learn how

walks bet:ween cyberinfrastructure an users,_ 1 methods encoding

. h · rch computationa '

to introduce mto t e1r resea f di ·rai resources can be

trans-practices, and tools and where users o 1 g1model the kind of

collab-d . ducers Centers not on y d fi

forme

mt~ pro . . :

, k that will increasingly corne to e ne

orative and mterd1sc1plmaq wor bl duate students and faculty

. . h 1 h"p· the)' also ena e gra .

1

humamtJes se o ars ' ' . ki projects of common mte

-to learn from each other wh1le wor ng on lectual interest.17

. . and some large-scale digital

I believe that digital

humamt1e~

centers forward but what does this

infrastructures are indeed the est. way '

. d" more spec1fically?

mean for hterary stu ies h bvious since it cornes from the

The first place is probably t ehmost

~

. computing as it was more

. . 1

h "t" s or umamties '

origins of d1g1ta umam ie ' 0 h Father Roberto Busa started

commonly called in the 195 s '':' en h ks of Thomas

Aqui-d e an mAqui-dex to t e wor

working with IBM to pro uc "ti was arguably at first, and some

nas. In other

wor~s,_digital h~~;~~lse~hat

can facilitate some aspects

would suggest sull is, a set 1 1 computational processing. In

1

k b using arge-sca e .

of scholar Y wor Y . . . onl, another step in the

technolog1-that sense, digital

humam~1es l~e h~nd

in band with literary

scholar-cal developments that ha\ e go d from orality to the

c h dred years as we move

ship over the last lew un fr fi ·ng it we should accept its

technologies of literacy. Thus, farh om ear1 an1·e's new forms of

edito-. e one t at accomp

Potent1al as a new resourc ' · ts to print editions set by

. h h hift from manuscnp

rialization, suc as t e s d b 'the steam press.

band and then to

~~ose mass-prod:f~~r n~w

reading and annotating

Digital humamues a_lso does d ( think of the shared ,annotation

tools; some are already implemente b k away from the

skeuomor-in Kskeuomor-indle books), and some try to lrea ·c cormat by introducing

fr · fi mat to e ectrom l• d

phic transfer om pnnt or h tents)1s or new metho s

dynamic tables of

cont~xts

(rather

~- a~Sc~~Cfunded

MCRI project,

of annotation, as Ray Siemens and is

REPRESENTING LEIGH HUNT'S A UTOBIOGRAPHY 117

Implementing New Knowledge Environments, have been prototyp-ing for the past few years.

Lack ofphysical support for literary content, in the form ofprimary or secondary sources, is now common. This should not in itself be a source of concern for literary scholars either (except for those also interested in the history of books), since they tend to focus their anal-ysis on the content of the work, not whether it's published in octavo format. The argument of a democratization of knowledge is one that should support the happy marriage of literature and digital humani-ties. Indeed, which author doesn't dream of reaching a \vider audi-ence among the readers who may look for or simply stumble across the millions of books made available by Google in the last few years?

Yet there is the argument that new ways of reading, as described by the notion of "distant reading" whereby scholars can analyze millions of books for patterns, also correspond to the end of literary studies as we know it, in that attention to details (the traditional method of so-called closè reading) gets lost in the overwhelming amount of data

now available. It is worth bearing in mind, however, as Eric Hayot

suggests, that

the first thing to say is that distant reading is not really distant, and close reading is not just close. No reading practice ever maintains itself as one "distance" from a text; rather what we cal! a reading practice is among other things a pattern of systems of habituai distances and relations among those distances. So "close reading" is not always close; rather it pairs a certain kind of analysis of relatively small pieces of text

"~th

very

powerful analytic tools-the tools of New Criticism, but also of psy

-choanalysis, deconstruction, new historicism, and so on- that leverage

those small pieces of text into structures that are more "distant" from

the text than is, say, the sentence or the phoneme.19

Thus, digital humanities as a method of reading is once again

simply another way of dealing \vith data- "literature as the site for

the storage lof information," as Hayot puts it- that retains the same intrinsic quality and interest as other literary methods, namely, the pursuit of new ways to explore and understand meani'ngs present in texts that are at the center of our scholarly investigations by retrieving information from the texts studied. In fact, Jerome McGann's latest

book, A New Republic of Letters, quite neatly adds to this discussion:

We see this in and as the emergence of the digital humanities, which both its promoters and its critics regard as a set of replacement

118 MICHAEL E. SINATRA

humanist scholar has not changed with the advent of digital devices. It is still to preserve, to monitor, to investigate, and to augment our cultural life and inheritance. ( 4)

If the textual infrastructure in a digital world is to match the

qual-ity of textual data in the print world, scholars need to take a much more active curatorial role. Forms of "scholarly

crowdsourcing"-comparable in some ways to the practices of dispersed annotation in

genomic research-offer the promise of creating models of data cura-tion that will maintain fundamental primary data and incrementally improve them over time. This is a big task, with progress measured in decades rather than years. It poses important technical challenges for developing new forms of man-machine interaction. It raises insti-tutional questions of where to locate repositories and how to manage workflows and issues of quality contrai. It also underscores how digital humanities has grown from being understood as a tool for a range of disciplinary-based projects to a transdiscipline in itself, including at this point in its history competing definitions of its very meaning. Finally, it raises questions about the "prestige economy" of the academy and the way in which scholarly labor is ultimately allocated and rewarded.

NOTES

1. This essay borrows some data from my chapter on The Neivs and takes its premise from the epilogue of my book Leigh Httnt and the London

Liter-ary Scene (Routledge, 2005 ).

2. The arrangement between Smith and Hunt is at the Brewer-Leigh Hunt Collection and is referred to in Landré vol. 1, p. 253.

3. J. E. Morpurgo's edition of Hunt's Atttobiography contains a very use-ful appendix that identifies ail the passages in the Atttobiography that are reproduced verbatim from earlier sources; among these, Lord Byron

and Some of his Contemporaries is the main instance. See Atttobiography,

pp. 496-98.

4. The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, Vol. 25-1850, eds.

Ian Campbell, Aileen Christianson, and Hilary J. Smith (Durham: Duke UP, 1997), 97.

5. Anon., "The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt," North British Revieiv 14 (November 1850): 165; Anon., "[Review of Atttobiography]," Palladium 1 (August 1850): 137; Anon., "Leigh Hunt," Dublin University

Maga-zine 36 (September 1850): 272. •

6. Anon., "Leigh Hunt's Autobiography," Spectator 23 (June 22, 1850), 593. 7. The anonymous reviewer also advances that Hunt was responsible for his own problems, rather than society ("The Autobiography ofLeigh Hunt,"

The Times 20585 [September 4, 1850]: 7).

REPRESENTING LEIGH HUNT'S A UTOB!OGRAPHY 119

8. Anon., "Autobiography of Lei h Hunt" Tl . ' .

(September 1850): 571 · An g "Re . ' att s Edmbm;gh Magazine 17

H tmt, Literary World " 7 (S ' on., b VJew of The A t b' tt 0 tograp h y of Leigh

9 An "[ . eptem er 14, 1850): 210

. on., Rev1ew of Leigh Hunt's A t b. .

bm;gh Magazine 14 (July

13, 1850):

;;~

zograph!.],". Chamber's

Edin-Contemporaries " Literar G ' Anon., Le1gh Hunt and His

(June 29 1850)'. 437 Th y azette and journal of Belles Lettres 1745

' · · e anonymous r · fi

also notes that age has improved H ' ev1ewer or The Literary Gazette

should be popular outside th l' unt s style and predicts that t11e work

10 Anth T e iterary world (437)

· ony rollope, An Atttobiograph d · '.

guin, 1996), 232. y, e ·David Skilton (London:

Pen-11. See my essay '"A Natural Piety': Lei h Hun ' . .

Allen Revieiv 19 (1998): 18-21 g t s The Religion of the Heart," 12. Jerome McGann "Th Ra. _{. th . ' e t:Jona e of Hypertext" (1995) h} .1

.1a .v1rginia.edu/public/i'i'm2f/ . I h · ttp://www2

13 L H rat:Jona e. tml

. ynette unster, "Hypermedia Narr . . . . .

for Methodology" Conl-è Ab at:Jon. Providing Social Contexts

L

. . . :J' rence 'Stracts Assoc. u· c: .

mgmstic Computing /As . . c: · ia on ior L1terary and

C

~ soc1at1on ior Camp t d th

onference, April 1992· quot d . Cl . u ers an e Humanities

L_· . 1terary Theory and Electr . H _· ' _{omc ypertext " in Ele t} e m aire Lamont "An ' _· notat:Jng a Text: _Tl ·

ttons tn Method and Theory d Kath ' c rontc ext:

Jm1estiga-Press, 1997), 60. 'e · ryn Sutherland (Oxford: Clarendon

14. See Richard Cronin, Romantic Victo . . . .

(~ew.York:

Palgrave, 2002). rtans. Engltsh Ltteratttre, 1824-1840

15. Smclair's Voyant tools can be fi d

ske's Neiv Radial is at http'/ /so oun at h:tp:/ /voyant-tools.org;

Saklof-newradial .h tml. . crates.acadiau .ca/ courses/ engl/ saklofske /

16. I am grateful for Jan Saklofske for h' .

project. ts many suggesnons regarding this

17. Neil Fraistat, "The Function of Di . . .

ent Time," in Debates in the . . gitai

Hum~~1t1es

Centers at the

Pres-Gold (Minneapolis:

Universi~tg;~

Hmnantttes, edited by Matthew K.

18. For more on this topic pleaseo

m7es~ta

Press, 2012), 281.

Stéfan Sinclair/Geoffrey' RoclCT

cllo~sutht

. e work of Susan Brown and

Wi .. R ve m etr CFifunded . C

nt:Jng esearch Collaboratory d h Vi proiects anadian

19. Eric Hayot "What

1 D . a~ t e oyant Tools suite.

h ' s ata m L1terary Studi )" (J

ttp://erichayot.org/ephemera/ml - 1 . es. .

a~uary

14, 2014),