Michael Diamond - Victorian Sensation

[jamesdoig]

May 26, 2021 9:20:53 GMT dem bones said:

Not an anthology, wasn't sure where to post, so this section will have to do.

Gee, I never knew this book existed - I must get hold of a copy. And by an odd coincidence I've recently written short articles on Boucicault and the Banim brothers for Brian Showers' Green Book - all Irish writers who dabbled in the supernatural.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

This gives an idea of the impressive staging the Victorians and Edwardians were capable of:

www.theatrecrafts.com/pages/home/shows/the-whip/

They must have been great spectacles to witness. I wonder if they did any with sinking ships.

I also wonder how they staged the horse race.

[dem bones]

May 27, 2021 11:24:19 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

This gives an idea of the impressive staging the Victorians and Edwardians were capable of:

www.theatrecrafts.com/pages/home/shows/the-whip/

They must have been great spectacles to witness. I wonder if they did any with sinking ships.

Michael Diamond again. "To qualify as sensation drama, a play had to contain one or more 'sensation scenes' showing some overwhelming experience, often a disaster — a fire, an earthquake, an avalanche, a shipwreck, a train crash. (Murder had always featured in melodrama of all kinds)."

[dem bones]

Unusual find among a £1 box of oversize hardbacks at yesterday's market. A scrapbook of news & magazine articles, compiled over 1996-2006, selling for £1. Book and classical music reviews predominate, subjects include military history, Charles Dickens, ballet, 'fifties nostalgia, disability campaigning. Wasn't until arriving home that I noted sticker on front giving compiler's name/ address/ telephone number. Would likely have realised that sooner or later, as the bulk of the articles are by him or about his work.

Here's who meticulously kept the scrapbook.

Obituary

And among the reviews.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

dem bones that's a wonderful find. It's also sad isn't it, that someone's personal possessions are no longer valued when they die. All that personal history is lost. Using mobile so the images aren't showing up (is there a reason for this?), will look when I can get to laptop.
He did a book on Tobias Smollett as well!

books.google.nl/books/about/Tobias_Smollett.html?id=GTNMAAAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Doesn't Tobias Smollett have the most amazing name!

Edited to say I wonder if the reviews I can't see are for the book. In which case my post will seem odd.

[dem bones]

May 31, 2021 10:43:10 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

dem bones that's a wonderful find. It's also sad isn't it, that someone's personal possessions are no longer valued when they die. All that personal history is lost.

It is heartbreaking. Thing is, if someone hadn't bought it yesterday, the book would have been pulped today, which is even worse. If/ when National Express is up and running reliably, I'm due a visit Bournemouth, so will contact the Uni and see if they want the scrapbook for their archive.

Don't own a smartphone/ mobile or anything like that, but having seen what this site looks like on those tiny screens - oh dear. Bothering with Vault in any shape or form is inadvisable, but at least by viewing it on a laptop you get some pretty pictures to look at.

[helrunar]

Dem, that's an extraordinary find. As Ingrid Bergman said (if my nearly fifty-year-old memory of hearing the line in the film Murder on the Orient Express isn't playing me false), "Gott vill gif you an emolument" for rescuing that from the rubbish bin. 

As I creak further into old age I am astounded that anything at all from the past has survived. Of course, so much that made it safely to the earlier part of the 20th century wound up being torched, smashed, demolished or blown sky high in the various scenic events of the subsequent decades.

cheers, Hel

[helrunar]

Also, I think I need Wordsworth's delightful phrase "savage torpor" to describe something or other that happens to me at certain moments of the day.

H.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

I can see the review now. Wow. Another of those happy coincidences that come along. I should try to trace this book too.

[Dr Strange]

May 26, 2021 17:21:06 GMT dem bones said:

From chapter 7, The "Sensation Drama"

The play (The Colleen Bawn) was still going strong in November 1861, when another Irish sensation drama, clearly inspired by it, took London by storm. ... The sensation scene did not disappoint. As with The Colleen Bawn, it showed the spectacular rescue of a young woman from the clutches of a would—be murderer.

Michael Diamond, Victorian Sensation

My current non-fiction reading is The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders (2011) and I have just come across a reference to The Colleen Bawn (which is very loosely based on a real murder that happened in Ireland in 1819). The play was written by Dion Boucicault in 1860, and starred Boucicault and his wife in the lead roles. Here's what it says about the "sensation scene" -

"The attempted drowning of Eily, with Myles' dramatic leap, routinely stopped the show. It is not entirely clear how this was done: the lake was blue gauze, manipulated by twenty boys standing in the wings, through which the drowning Eily dropped into an open trapdoor. Boucicault's leap from the cliff, routinely described as a 'header', was probably carefully aimed between the gauzes at an open trap lined with a mattress or padding, onto which he would somersault. However it was done, it was thrilling enough that the Boucicaults had to stop and take a bow each night before proceeding."

There is then a footnote, which says -

"In 1896, Bernard Shaw saw a production at the Princess's Theatre in which real water was used, which he felt destroyed the illusion, although 'the spectacle of the two performers taking a call before the curtain, sopping wet, and bowing with miserable enjoyment of the applause' was something 'I shall remember ... while life remains'."