The latest exhibition of the wonders of the University’s Special Collections opened last week and will be on display until 31 August.

All the Year Round: Exploring the Nineteenth-Century Periodical tells the story of the rise of the British periodical. The exhibition charts the rapid expansion of periodical publication from the early years of the nineteenth century, when writers like Lord Byron and John Keats were reviewed and reviled, to the last decades of Queen Victoria’s reign, when ‘decadent’ journals caused controversy, the Boy’s Own and Girl’s Own Paper catered to an expanding young readership, and Sherlock Holmes’s appearance in The Strand inspired a devoted following across all classes.

All the Year Round takes its title from Charles Dickens’s weekly journal, which reached tens of thousands of readers and featured many of his now classic novels. The exhibition’s strongest presence comes from the satirical London journal Punch, whose columns and cartoons mocked prominent politicians and celebrities and shaped middle-class attitudes. Colonial spinoffs, like Otago Punch, soon spread across the British Empire.

While the exhibition primarily features holdings from the University of Otago’s Special Collections and the Hocken Library, it also includes works kindly lent from the Dunedin Public Library and the Olga and Marcus Fitchett Collection.

Although not strictly a Centre for the Book event, we know Jane Austen events have been popular in the past, so I’m posting this one.  The Department of English and Linguistics is pleased to welcome Professor Sheryl Craig of Central Missouri University to speak about “Jane Austen and the Women’s Rights Movement in Georgian England.”  Professor Craig is a member of both the English and Philosophy Departments at Central Missouri and is the author of author of Jane Austen and the State of the Nation (2015).  Here is how she describes her topic:

“Jane Austen was 17 years old when A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published, and the legal, financial, and educational inequalities Mary Wollstonecraft identified directly affected Jane Austen.  It is, therefore, not surprising to find Austen’s fictional characters discussing women’s rights talking points.  Unfortunately, modern readers, even twenty-first century feminists, may not fully appreciate the impediments Austen’s characters are struggling to overcome or the women’s rights’ positions they defend.”

We hope you can join us.

At long last, here are the details for this year’s symposium, to be held 1–2 November.  The attached PDF gives full details, so feel free to download it and broadcast widely.  I’ll be taking copies to SHARP in Sydney next month.

The thems is “Translation and Transculturation in, through, and by Print.”  Relevant topics might include, but are not limited to:

• The impact of print in NZ in languages other than English
• The impact of print in scripts other than the Roman alphabet
• Collectors and collecting across cultures
• How books travel from one language to another
• Whether transculturation is separable from translation, e. can ideas travel irrespective of language?
• The extent to which print communicates across cultures more or less effectively than other media
• The effects of national language policies on the power of translation
• Any aspect of technologies for cross-cultural printing and/or translating
• The extent to which print records or distorts cross-cultural encounters
• Motivations for translation (evangelisation, education, propaganda, support)
• Whether translation inhibits or facilitates transculturation

Abstracts are due by 1 September, so put on your thinking caps.  We look forward to a lively occasion, as usual.

Our very own Co-Director, Dr. Donald Kerr, was interviewed yesterday on Radio NZ.  Well worth a listen for a little-known aspect of NZ history.  Congratulations to Donald on his recognition.