“WRIT FROM THE HEART?” CONFERENCE
The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester
Saturday 29 January 2011
Programme
09.30 – 10.00
Coffee and Registration
10.00 – 11.25
Session 1 (Plenary)
10.00 – 10.05
Welcome
10.05 – 10.50
Keynote: Claire Harman
‘My immense Mass of Manuscripts’: Fanny Burney as archivist, biographer and
autobiographer.
10.50 – 11.00
Questions
11.00 – 11.25
Lisa Crawley
A life recovered: Mary Hamilton; 1756-1816.
Followed by questions.
11.25 – 11.45
Morning Break
11.45 – 12.55
Session 2
Panel A
Women’s Life-Writing: Forms and Methodologies
(3 x 20 minute speakers plus 10 minutes for questions)

Victoria Joule (University of Plymouth) –
‘She did but take up old stories’: Generic Fluidity and Women’s Life-Writing.

Jeremy Parrett (Special Collections, Manchester Metropolitan University) –
‘…an infinite deal of nothing’: Women’s lives recorded, reflected and shared through the
nascent genre of album-making at the beginning of the 19th century (The Sir Harry Page
Collection of albums and common-place books at MMU Special Collections).

Jane Maxwell (Manuscripts & Archives Research Library, Trinity College, Dublin) –
Manuscript sources in Trinity College Library Dublin for the study of 18th-century
women’s history.
Panel B
Journals and Correspondences as Life-Writings
(3 x 20 minute speakers plus 10 minutes for questions)

Sam George (University of Hertfordshire) –
The Familiar Letter and Natural History Writing for Girls in the Long Eighteenth Century.

Rosemary Raughter (Independent historian) –
‘My dear busy friend’: the correspondence of Lady Arbella Denny and Lady Caldwell,
1754-1777 (Bagshawe Muniments, John Rylands University Library, Manchester).

Gillian Skinner (University of Durham) –
‘So young a Woman, Gifted with such enchanting talents’: creative women’s lives in
Burney’s Early Journals and Letters.
12.55 – 13.50
Lunch and an opportunity to view material from the archives
13.50 – 15.00
Session 3
Panel C
‘Aberrant’ Women
(3 x 20 minute speakers plus 10 minutes for questions)

Daniel Cook (University of Bristol) –
‘Lying is an Occupation’: Laetitia Pilkington’s Memoirs revisited.

Jacqui Grainger (Chawton House Library) –
‘Tales from the Green Room’: aberrant women and their dangerous behaviour in the
collection at Chawton House Library.

Caroline Rozell (Christ Church College, Oxford) –
The Almost-True Story of Jane Barker/Galesia: Autobiography, Narrative, and the
Fictionalized Life.
Panel D
Disease, Disability and Embodiment
(2 x 20 minute speakers plus 10 minutes for questions)

Sonja Boon (Memorial University of Newfoundland) –
Gender, Epistolarity and the Suffering Body: Narrating the Bodily Self in Women’s
Medical Consultation Letters to Samuel-Auguste Tissot.

Ashley Cross (Manhattan College) –
Perdita and the Swan: Disability and Style in the Life Writing of Mary Robinson and Anna
Seward.
15.00 – 15.20
Afternoon Break
15.20 – 16.30
Session 4
Panel E
Women and Spirituality
(3 x 20 minute speakers plus 10 minutes for questions)

Laura Davies (University of Cambridge) –
‘But O Lord my time my life my all is in thy hand’: the experience and representation of
time in the spiritual lives of early Methodist women.

Marcella Hermesdorf (Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois) –
The Religious ‘Selves’ of Hannah More.

E. Wyn James (University of Cardiff) –
Cushions, Copy-books and Computers: Media in the Transmission of the Hymns and
Letters of Ann Griffiths (1776–1805).
Panel F
Writing on the Margins
(3 x 20 minute speakers plus 10 minutes for questions)

Susan Nash (Capital University, Ohio) –
Signature Stories: Helen Timberlake’s Petition to George III.

Sarah Prescott (University of Aberystwyth) –
Leaving and Returning: Place as Life History in Hester Thrale Piozzi’s Tour in North
Wales (1774).

Richard Wragg (National Maritime Museum) –
A Naval Wife: The Letters of Susannah Middleton.
16.30 – 17.00
Wrap up