Beachy Head Publication and Reception History

Charlotte Smith

“Beachy Head”

1807.

Background Information:

•         Born May 4^th 1749
•         Was married off to Benjamin Smith at age 16.
•         Gave birth to 12 children between 1765 and 1785.
•         Was in prison with her husband for seven months.
•         In 1785 was legally separated from her husband.
•         Charlotte Smith died at the age of 58 in 1806.
•      Beachy Head was later published in 1807.

Composition:

•           In 1805, Smith wrote a letter to her publisher, negotiating for a new edition of sonnets.
•   Intended for Beachy Head, with Other Poems to be published after her death as the third volume in a tenth edition of Elegiac Sonnet.
•         In her letters to Davies, Smith mentions that she had been working on a long poem for several years,
•         She also writes that the work is a “local poem of near 700 lines…which is the only part of the work that is not actually ready.”
•         Beachy Head has 731 lines in published form.

      Publication:

•         The poem was printed as a collection of poems. Readers thought they were misplaced, so the publisher decided t have them included in this volume.
•         There was a heading with the title of the poem on every page which gave easy access to look at another poem.
•         Had “Notes” instead of appendices.
•         There was an advertisement instead of a preface explaining the delay of the publication and Charlotte Smith’s death.

Criticism:

•       Admirers of Smith included:
•        Sir Walter Scot
•        Queen Caroline
•   William Wordsworth
•   Samuel Taylor Coleridge
•         “…her use of the topographical and narrative mediation in blank verse (in Beachy Head was revolutionary and influential (Terence Allan Hoagwood).
•         “Beachy Head is more historically ambitious and more attentive to natural history (Theresa M. Kelley).” 
•         One autobiographer called Smith a “woman of her times, but she was truly an exceptional one.”
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      Bibliography: 

            Beachy Head and Other Poems. http://books.google.com/books?id=M-MyAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=beachy+head&source=bl&ots=7f8jFwq98G&sig=6WcjwXzjzkPcPU2k1ghnshLPQLs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8AdxUPHFDKGO2wXuhoDwDw&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ

            The Old Manor House, Volume 1. http://books.google.com/books?id=37UNAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=manor+house&source=bl&ots=WjZT9qDxnO&sig=DMR4T3y2kkIIZ3wu3b32L27j7OM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YghxUM-WI8LQ2wW0m4CgBg&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=manor%20house&f=false 

Not A Fan

Okay, I am just going to say it: I'm not a fan of Charlotte Smith.  I didn't like the sonnets we read last time, but I thought I might walk away with a different opinion after the class discussion.  No.  I tried to convince myself that I would like her "happier" stuff, but I've realized it is simply not my thing.  Not to say I don't appreciate it.  I enjoyed a few passages in "To the fire-fly of Jamaica, seen in a collection" and some of the imagery in "Beachy Head" but I still found it tedious to read either of these passages.  I think my issue is with the repetitive language and imagery.  I feel like I read the same thing over and over.  I would draw comparisons between "Beachy Head" and Sonnet XLII.  I think the poetry is "nice" but it doesn't draw me in. Maybe I simply don't like being confused.

Charlotte Smith, What?

"To the Fire-Fly of Jamaica" was rather difficult to understand, but I still thought it was beautifully written. It somewhat reminded me of Erasmus Darwin's "The Love of Plants" in the way she used scientific foot notes to describe the indigenous plants in Jamaica. I believe it is about the plight of the slave, but I am unable to draw anymore conclusions than that. I definitely enjoy Charlotte Smith, and maybe this is because I am not gifted in the way of poetry, but I have a hard time figuring out what she is trying to say.

The Mystical Firefly

Smith jammed a loot of good stuff in Firefly, but at present I can't decipher it all on my own. Here's a case where the notes at the bottom were very helpful because without them I probably wouldn't have even gotten what meaning I did out of the poem. In a nutshell, it's all about slavery in Jamaica and what those slaves go through on a daily basis. The poem is beautifully written and, personally, I'm not so concerned with what a poem means to the poet because it can mean something completely different to the reader and I think that's the best part: different perspectives and interpretations.

"Contemplation Here"

I too, found this poem extremely confusing it is littered with cultural and political references that I know nothing about. While I am usually a fan of blank verse I find it kind of stressful in this poem. The first half is alright because she personifies nature and I enjoyed the descriptions (although perhaps a little much at times) and thought it flowed well but. Then you get to the stanza where she says" "Then Lost in shadow, contemplation here." And it all just goes over my head. Also, I absolutely hate that she uses the line "contemplation here" I may be missing the point of what she's trying to do with this but to me the phrase seems pretentious. It's like she's trying to be deep but also telling the reader they need to think deeply. I feel like a poem shouldn't out right tell you to think deeper. After this point we go into a long description of what seems like political history that disconnects it from the first half of the poem for me. However, this disconnect sort of falls in line with the trickle down theory used in her sonnets. We have left the sublime and entered the scene. Despite the poem's difficulty I do still like this style. However, the poem also talks of her own personal struggles but it is so cluttered with references and depiction's of nature that poem becomes difficult to read and her point becomes lost. I preferred her sonnets which as someone else said were very deep and emotional. This piece feels like its trying to accomplish to much and just leaves me feeling frustrated.

EllieChan221--Beachy Head

Beachy Head was definitely one of the toughest pieces I've read in class thus far.  Her use of blank verse threw me in for a loop multiple times and I ended up finding myself reading a line over and over again without really understanding what it meant. From my understanding, however, this poem is supposed to represent Smith's views on events and the politics of her time, which is another reason why this poem was difficult to understand.  Despite this, I did find it interesting how she used nature in correspondence to the turbulence during this period.

Fuzzy Head: A Confusing Poem

Beachy Head is by far one of the most difficult poems I've ever read. I think this is mostly due to its' length and the historical/cultural references that I don't understand . I loved Smith's sonnets; they were full of emotion and had depth. However, Beachy Head seemed to be written by someone else, someone who was trying to cram many things into one poem. Half way through the poem it seemed to me that Smith was trying to create one "big picture"as it were, by using many details, i.e. historical, political, spiritual and personal details.This was an interesting concept to me, having just read Schor's article on Tuesday. Unfortunately this made the poem even more confusing for me. Also, as stated before, I loved reading Smith's sonnets because of the emotional depth; Beachy Head did not seem to have any of that emotion until the hermit's death at the end of the poem.

Smith's personal life inside the text

This was difficult for me to read and understand what was going on. I have to do my presentation on Charlotte Smith so there are parts that remind me of her own life. For example, her childhood was spent in a town, but she and her family had to move to London to live a better life and so she could be married off. In Beachy Head she says:

 "I once was happy, when while yet a child,/ I learn'd to love these upland solitudes," but then she says "And evil unforeseen: Early it came,/ And childhood scarcely passed, I compar'd/ With the polluted smoky atmosphere/ And dark and stifling streets...". 

This seems like what she was trying to say is that she was happy around such beauty in the town she lived in. but was no longer happy in London.  

Lost the light

I found myself liking "To the Fire-fly of Jamaica, seen in a collection" because of all of the vivid imagery. I read through the poem twice and could really sense the feelings of nature and preserved beauty. It was only after reading Kninni's post that I got the concept of "a preserved insect." Maybe I'm not good at poetry, but this poem was hard to decipher. None the less, it was one of my favorite poems that we have read thus far because of its sensory descriptions

Use of Senses in "fire-fly"

     In Smith's "To the fire-fly of Jamaica, seen in a collection," I found a surprising amount of sensory imagery, most of it relating to either sight, which easily coincides with the idea of a firefly, and smell, particularly of the firefly's original surroundings.
     The appeal to the sense of sight is perfectly understandable, seeing as the identifying characteristic of fireflies are their luminescence. Every stanza refers to light or color in some way. When it comes to light itself, the descriptions are usually having something to do with brightness itself, ("light," "dark," "bright," "glancing," "shady," "gleams," "glow," "radiant," "faded," "lucid," "glare," "dazzling," "flashing," "pale") or with the time of day and its resulting effect on light itself ("moonless night," the "sun" "sinking" away, "midnight beauty"). While the use of light and its resulting imagery is expected, I believe that Smith may have gone a little overboard here.
     In addition to light, however, we also have emphasis on the reader's sense of smell, particularly in the first two stanzas. I think Smith's intentions here were to give the audience a better picture of the firefly's natural environment in Jamaica, judging by the footnotes included, perhaps to incite us with more sympathy later in the poem. She describes several spices and fruits, wood, flowers, and goes so far as to describe the colors of some of these things (the grass, for example) which automatically connotates smells for some people.
     Not only was Smith's sensory imagery prevalent, but it was also effective, and I applaud her on her descriptions that brought me further into the poem than I expected, allowing me to perhaps delve deeper into her meaning.

Smith's "Beachy Head"

It seems as though Smith is experimenting with her writing style a bit with "Beachy Head"- it differs quite a bit from her sonnets by using a narrative technique. I think the fragmentation and thus the notion of wandering is well established and by using this fragmented style, Smith frees herself from the bounds of time. I love the description of the cliff and the "chalky clefts"-I think portrays the sublime really well. I thought, and maybe I'm wrong, that Smith plays with reality and the ornamental and extravagant (what is actually there and what is made-up memory). The stanza below further establishes the idea of wandering, because not only is the reader wandering through a sublime setting, but also a mind that wanders. 

"...the floating clouds
Suspended, move upon the evening gale,
And gathering round his orb, as if to shade
The insufferable brightness, they resign
Their gauzy whiteness; and more warm’d assume
All hues of purple. There, transparent gold
Mingles with ruby tints, and sapphire gleams,
And colours, such as Nature through her works
Shew only in the ethereal canopy."

Not sure how to feel about "Beachy Head"

After reading the posts that reference "Beachy Head," I'm gonna take the less-popular road and say that I found "Beachy Head" to be a convoluted mess. By saying "mess," I don't mean to give the word a negative connotation, because I think this was Smith's intention. She wanted the poem to flow in a more natural way in terms of thought, which means skipping from one scene to another without clear transitions. However, in my opinion, writing in this way makes her work fascinating but frustrating to read. She flows from historical anecdotes to internal commentary and onto other subjects with less grace than preferred, but I also praise her for this. If one thinks about how thoughts develop, the beginning thought would be at a point that's completely different from the ending one. So in this sense, I appreciate her commitment to this style, but in long format, it's hard to easily decipher her writing.

Wandering through Beachy Head

Beachy Head was somewhat difficult to read because of the meandering nature of the poem and the constant digressions. I didn't find the rest of Smith's poems that were assigned as difficult, but they were all shorter so I think length might have had something to do with it. There were a lot of individual sections of the poem that I really enjoyed, but it was hard to picture the poem as one unit. I kept mentally dividing it into sections. I especially enjoyed the section about the hermit, particularly these lines:
                                                                                "Just beneath the rock
                                                Where Beachy overpeers the channel wave,
                                                Within a cave mined by wintry tides
                                                Dwelt one, who long disgusted with the world
                                                And all its ways, appear’d to suffer life
                                                Rather than live"

                                               "Near the lone Hermit's flint-surrounded home,
                                                Claim'd unavailing pity; for his heart
                                                Was feelingly alive to all that breath'd;
                                                And outraged as he was, in sanguine youth,
                                                By human crimes, he still acutely felt
                                                For human misery."

Clarity in Smith

When reading "To the fire-fly of Jamaica" I found myself wondering what was going on. The clarity in that poem is tremendously different form the clarity in "Beachy Head". In "Beachy head" I found it to be very descriptive of the nature and the surroundings of the beach. I could see how she used personification to explain a lot of movements within nature and scenes that were taken place among the beach. She talks about wanting her mind to return to a state of peace. She describes nature so precisely that I can almost picture myself right there watching everything happen by seeing what she sees through her writing.

Paige Lollie: Clare vs. Smith

As I am reading Smith, I am reminded a bit of Clare as his works.

Similarities: Smith and Clare both seem to appreciate adjectives and embrace the typical romantic word-structure. There is also a sense of a positive reaction to the nature around them. It doesn't seem like nature is a neutral world, nor does it seem evil. It is like the lost, untouched paradise where the true meaning of peace and reality lay. Though I like them, I can also see how they could easily be parodied. It almost seems that they are taking everything a bit too seriously (Smith in particular).

Differences: I think it shows through their work that Clare was self-educated. But, compared to Smith, you would think that she would sound less educated than Clare given her own history. However, Smith's choice of words just seem to carry a more refined, nobel air. In simple terms, she wrote smart. There also seemed to be a sense of seriousness to her work, like this wasn't just about natural surroundings and its beauty. With Clare, it felt very simple and a bit light-hearted. With Smith, I am getting a feeling there is a moral or a message hidden behind everything. Like everything she wrote was carefully considered before she placed them on paper.

What is Smith talking about?

I really enjoyed Smith's sonnets. However, the poem "To the Fire-fly of Jamaica, seen in a collection" has me quite baffled because I honestly have no idea what Smith is talking about. Upon further research about this poem I discovered that Smith is talking about an insect preserved in a glass frame. After rereading the poem with this in mind I still do not fully grasp what Smith is saying. Only a few lines of the poem seem to pertain to an insect and the rest sound more descriptive of nature in a general sense. Admittedly, poetry is not something I favor in the sense that trying to understand the meaning behind the verse is occasionally hard for me. Overall, this poem was not very enjoyable.

In contrast, Smith's poem "Beachy Head" was not only pretty, but also created a deeper feeling. I could feel the emotion behind the descriptions of the shore, the waves, and the ocean. The feel of this poem seemed more melancholy, similar to Smith's sonnets.

Poetry as escape

I genuinely enjoyed reading Smith's poems. Her poems are packed with interesting facts and at the same time she is able to describe nature in a sensible manner. It seems as though she used poetry as an escape from surpressed feelings of sadness. In Sonnet XLIV she states, "While I am doom'd--by life's long storm opprest, To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest." it indicates to me that she envied the dead because they were freed of the saddness that haunts her. Despite her deppressed tone this might very well be the reason why her work evokes emotion so preceisly and makes her work all the more interesting to read.

I found the beginning of "Reading in Detail" highly reminiscent of Gilpin's sense of the Picturesque. I wrote in my one of my blog posts about how I felt that Gilpin was admonishing the individual throughout "Observations on a River Wye." It was pretty evident, especially by Gilpin's repeated use of the term "deformity" that he felt that the Picturesque was something general and something to be taken as a whole, for most of the deformities he referred to were individual items that strayed away from their general counterparts. 

I can understand how Reynolds sees that detail and detailism can ruin the grandeur of nature and, in relevance to this discussion, the picturesque. Just like with anything of great magnitude, it is the first impression of something as a whole that communicates grandeur. Take that whole apart, break it into its individual, insignificant components, and the grandeur is lost. While I don't necessarily agree with Reynolds, I see the logic behind his argument (and maybe as a woman, it's inevitable that I don't agree, according to the article). I can also see the relationship between this thought and Plato/Aristotle, who were both concerned more about (respectively) essence rather than substance, the one over the many, quality versus quantity. 

The idea that The Sublime is beautiful as a general thing is something I think is reflective of the time. It is, I believe, why Realism (and the explication of the ugly of everyday life) and the significance of the individual in literature and art didn't rise in significance until later. Personally, I believe in the grandeur of both, of the whole and its parts--more so in the parts. For the parts can survive without the whole; it is the whole the is completely reliant on the details that compose it.

Reading in Detail

I struggled with this piece a little, maybe it's the late hour, maybe it was the language, either way as I came to the close, I was struck with the notion that, in order to have a sense of sublime (in writing as opposed to art) there needs to be detail. The imagination is what fills in the gaps between descriptions to make a scene expressly the interpreters own. I feel that this process is what helps strike a reader as sublime. The detail is the focus and the imagination fills in the fuzzy background details.

I wish I could find the spot where it talked about how detail made the foreground become the background, but it seems to be escaping me at the moment. But to me, it seems that the details in effect can become something sublime on their own. Within the closer inspection an even smaller detail could bring a renewed sense and so on.  I don't think the devil is in the details.

Charlotte Smith was seriously underrated.

It is interesting to me that Charlotte Smith’s poetry was not recognized for its brilliance during or right after her time.  She has many Romantic sensibilities and beliefs tucked away in the lines of her poetry. The night and nature were a theme in every poem that we read of hers for Tuesday’s class.  She also alluded to the obvious internal struggle she was suffering, which seemed to vex her more when it was dark outside.  By using high amounts of nature in her imagery and rhetoric, and the focus towards to struggle of the individual, I would Romantics of the time would have loved her poetry.  Like John Clare, she might have been using a very basic form of Romanticism that people did not appreciate as much as those who loved Wordsworth, Byron, and Coleridge.  The fact that she is a woman might have hindered her success as well, and her interesting choice of form that she uses in her poems.

I really enjoyed her poetry.  She seems to be the Emily Dickenson of the British Romantic era.  I need to go and research her life to find out why exactly she was so sad.

Females and Details

I suppose for starters, I do not necessarily agree with Schor's view of art and details.  While an abundance of details cannot make up a story, neither can a lack of them. I believe toward the end, this aspect is conceded but I feel that it was not given its due. Although these are a means to an end, they are an important means and should be respected as such. Unfortunately, this view of inferiority is intimately tied to the gender of the artist and broad speculations about women and their art.  In my opinion, most of the gender based assertions were unfounded, I have read plenty of books by male authors that are grounded in the minute details and female authors or artists easily rank among (and often above) many of their male peers.  The perspective reminds me of "the angel in the house" of the Victorian era where the ideal woman is a dutiful, submissive wife and mother.  Schor does not seem misogynistic in himself but merely reflects the society in which the female is seen as the milder or lesser sex.

I Enjoyed Charlotte

I can quite honestly say that I have enjoyed reading Charlotte Turner Smith. I am not sure if it is because I researched her and some of her works which allows me to understand her writing a bit more or if there is some other reason why I enjoyed the reading. By knowing a little background on how some of the poems came to be my understanding is greater. I am definitely fond of “To the Fire-fly of Jamaica, seen in a collection” mostly because the language is clear and the weird "s" thing is not present. 

John Clare, "The Village Minstrel" Presentation

John Clare

“The Village Minstrel”

1821

Background Information:

—Born July 13^th 1793, died May 20^th 1864.

— English poet (considered one of the most important 19^th century poets) and prose writer.

—Grew up around agriculture  

—Known to be an alcoholic

—Was confined to a private insane asylum in 1837

Check this out ^ it's John Clare's Cottage!
The Cottage has been restored, using traditional building methods, to create a centre where people can learn about John Clare, his works, how rural people lived in the early 19th century and also gain an understanding of the environment in which John Clare worked.

Publication:

—“The Village Minstrel” was published in 1821.

—Published by the Taylor and Hessey publishing firm.

—John Taylor (of the publishing firm Taylor and Hessey) published Clare’s poems “Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery” in 1820. This poem was highly praised which helped him Clare succeed in publishing “The Village Minstrel”. Taylor played a large role in the publication of Clare's poems. He edited the poems for the press, and added the punctuation that is in the original edition.

“The Village Minstrel”:

—At first, “The Village Minstrel” sold poorly due to a lack of demand for rural verse.

—The poems in “The Village Minstrel” engage in a variety of styles and subjects, but the general theme is the value of country sports and customs with changes to the landscape and the economy (this relates, in particular, to the theme of collecting nature).

-Clare's mental health had begun to deteriorate and thus Clare himself is the hero of his poem. He paints with glowing vigour, through the character of Lubin, the misery in which he then was, and his anxiety for his future fate. It is a fine picture of rural life, and the author luxuriates in his love of natural objects and his desciption of rustic sports and village scenes

—-The sonnets within “The Village Minstrel” demonstrate Clare’s experimentation with his own distinctive style.

"And tales of fairy-land he lov'd to hear"

Composition:

—Clare's Minstrel appears to be without any plan, and is composed principally of detached descriptions, most of which might change places with one another, without the reader's being conscious of the alteration. 

Criticism:

—“The Village Minstrel” was met with few positive reviews. Critics believed Clare to lack education and thought his work “at the utmost, a place above mediocrity.”

—Contemporary critics praise Clare’s descriptions of nature, but his poetry is devoid of the intellectual element that characterizes the works of John Keats and William Wordsworth.

—Others, however, see the diversity of literary voices in his works as well as his deep concern for and love and understanding of the rural environment as evidence of his poetic skill and intellect.

—“The greatest laboring class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood and of the alienated and unstable self.” –Jonathan Bates (Scholar of romanticism and British academic)

Original Visual of “The Village Minstrel”

http://books.google.com/books?id=uiwJAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://johnclaresociety.blogspot.com/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/john-clare
http://www.poemhunter.com/john-clare/
http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?action=GET&textsid=36354
http://www.clarecottage.org/

Schor's Construction and Deconstruction

In the beginning of "Reading In Detail Aesthetics and the Feminine" Schor constructs a solid link between the criticism of the particular and the feminine only to deconstruct "detailism" into a misogynistic euphemism. It was an insightful read that delved into the extent of prejudice against the feminine and the strong social link between the feminine and ornate.

Presentation on John Clare and "The Rural Muse"

Who was John Clare?

•  “The son of Parker and Ann Stimson Clare, both impoverished farm laborers, Clare was born on July 13, 1793, in the rural village of Helpston, Northamptonshire, England, approximately eighty miles north of London.
 

Seriously! I <3 thatched roof cottages!!!

 

•  Because he had to work on the farm to help support his family, Clare attended school only three months a year, he attended school in Glinton church until he was twelve.

•  Pot-boy in the Blue Bell public house
•  Gardner at Burghley house 
• Enlisted in the militia
•  Tried camp life with Gypsies 
• Worked in Pickworth as a lime burner
•  Before writing he was forced to accept parish relief

This is the asylum Clare was a  patient at

Later Life and Death

•  In July 1837 Clare admitted himself to Dr. Matthew Allen’s private asylum High Beach
•  During his first few years Clare re-wrote famous poems and sonnets by Lord Byron. He also took credit for Shakespeare’s plays. He told a newspaper editor “I’m John Clare now. I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly.” 
•  Released in 1841 but sometime between Christmas and New Year was committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum (now St. Andrew’s Hospital)
•  On the intake paperwork when asked “Was the insanity preceded by any severe or long-continued mental emotion or exertion? The doctor entered: “After years of poetical prosing.”
•  He died on May 20, 1864 at the age of 70

Clare and Captain Jean Luc!

Poetry

•   After purchasing a copy of Thomson’s Seasons Clare began to write sonnets which he offered for sale to a local bookseller named Edward Drury
•  Drury sent this to his cousin, John Taylor of the publishing firm Taylor & Hessey
•  First book of poetry Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery in 1820
•  This book was highly praised and Village Minstrel and other Poems was published the next year.
• Clare was known as “the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet”
•  Many poems use local dialect ex. ‘pooty’ (snail), ‘ladycow’ (ladybug), ‘crizzle’ (to crisp), and ‘throstle’ (song thrush)
•  Early work deals mostly with nature and the cycle of the year.
•  He often used sonnets and rhyming couplets
•  “His knowledge of the natural world went far beyond that of the major Romantic poets. [Some of his] poems… show a metaphysical depth on a par with his contemporary poets.”

The Rural Muse (1835)

• Clare’s last work
•  While noticed favorably by Christopher North and other reviewer it was still not enough to support his wife and seven children

Context

•  The early 19th Century was a period of rough economic times for publishers and authors alike because of “the great panic of 1825.”
• The cost of books rose to the highest it had ever been.
•  Competition in the market forced many authors to provide their own funding for their works or to publish on commission.
•   The publication of poetry dwindled after the turn of the century due to the increasing popularity of novels.
•  The market for “new verse” was virtually nonexistent Few poets published second editions during this time.

Publication and Reception

•   Published in 1835 by Whittaker and Company (London)
•  Published with punctuation despite Clare's wishes.
• The Rural Muse sold poorly like much of Clare's other work. 
•  “The season has been a very bad one for new books, and I am afraid the time has passed away in which poetry will answer...”

The largest collection of original manuscripts are located at the Peterborough Museum

Websites used for information
 http://johnclaresociety.blogspot.com/
 http://www.poemhunter.com/john-clare/