This photograph captures part of my walk home from a supermarket shop in Beeston. I live on campus at the University of Nottingham and this is the first New Year's Day that I have spent in Nottinghamshire. Everywhere is quiet: only a few students and fellow hall tutors are staying here.
Pictured is The Coveny Library at Lincoln Hall and the gates mark the start of The Downs, rolling fields that lead to my own place of residence: Sherwood Hall (although pictured is my walk to Lenton & Wortley Hall). The library, as far as I know, is not stocked with books relevant to the residents' learning, but I suspect the library is used frequently as a study space for students. The path that you can see behind leads to the Hallward Library, which stocks resources for the Arts & Humanities...It is, of course, closed today but I have been in there this week reading an interesting article from The Dickens Studies Annual by Talia Schaffer entitled "British Non-Canonical Women Novelists, 1850-1900: Recent Studies."
Usually I would have boarded a bus to Beeston, but services are not running until tomorrow. I walked for 1hr (in total- there and back) & on arrival discovered all shops closed with the exception of Sainsbury's and Costa Coffee.
I went to buy salmon, white wine, fresh corriander, chocolate, fruit (not all for simultaneous consumption) and a copy of The Times newspaper. Today marks the 225th anniversary of the newspaper and so what better way to celebrate than give readers a free souvenir edition... It starts with a column addressed 'To the Public' and reads:
'To bring out a New Paper at the present day; when to many others are already established and confirmed to the public opinion, is certainly an arduous undertaking; and no one can be more fully aware of its difficulties than I am: I nevertheless, entertain very sanguine hopes, that the nature of the plan on which this paper will be conducted, will ensure it a moderate snare at least of public favour; but my pretensions to encouragement, however strong they may appear in my own eyes, must be tried before a tribunal not liable to be blinded by self-opinion: to that tribunal I shall now, as I am bound to do, submit these pretensions with deference, and the public will judge whether they are well or ill founded.'
The paper anticipates its reception and envisions its "public"-- which, in 1785, an elite group of men must have constituted-- in a heavily qualified and elaborate opening paragraph (which is a one long and spidery, multi-claused sentence). Its demand for an impartial reader exposes the paper's anxiety towards its critical reception. It draws the reader's attention to the difficult production conditions of "launching" a new paper and pleads for an open-minded readership 'not liable to be blinded by self-opinion.' This plea for disinterestedness asks the reader to leave her (or I suppose in this case 'his') personal investments at the threshold of the text (what Genette might want me to call the 'paratext') and from this attitude, ascertain whether the paper is of value 'to the public,' which is later made synonymous with the term 'community.' This is 1785 and so the term 'community' is interesting: before the advent of mass literacy, only a small portion of the community would have been able to read. It follows the logic that underpins Edmund Burke's ideas on Individualism, which, as stated in a slightly later essay entitled 'An Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs" (1791), advocates a hierarchical society whereby 'the wiser, the more expert [...] enlighten and protect, the weaker, the less knowing, and the less provided with the goods of fortune.' The Times had hoped to form part of the educated and wealthy class' subscription to a 'habitual social discipline.' The by-product of their good conduct would supposedly create an enriched, civilized culture for the poor to enjoy too. Does this elitist logic still exist today? Does it still underline the subtle politics of The Times in 2010? Answers on a postcard.
This photograph of a library on new year's day summarises the appeal of new beginnings: the patient archive lets us reflect on the past whilst the future, unseen, invokes anticipation of "the new," which we try to engineer and control through making resolutions. You could say the paper recovered from The Times' dusty archives embodies this appeal too.
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N.B. I usually will not write as much as this. Jeanette Winterson once said it is "rude to write long books." However, it is New Year's Day and rather than work on the article I am writing, I am blogging this whilst watching The Line of Beauty, a screen adaption of Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning novel. I am cringing at Nick Guest: a PhD student studying Henry James (it is hard looking at this decadently- portrayed occupation when it almost perfectly mirrors your own!)
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