Events at The University of Manchester
  • University home
  • Events
  • Home
  • Exhibitions
  • Conferences
  • Lectures and seminars
  • Performances
  • Events for prospective students
  • Sustainability events
  • Family events
  • All Events

Lives of Letters Seminar Series. Pictures and Postcards: Images and Letters

Dates:8 November 2018
Times:17:00 - 18:30
What is it:Seminar
Organiser:John Rylands Research Institute
How much:FREE
Who is it for:University staff, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public
See travel and contact information
Add to your calendar

Other events

  • In category "Seminar"
  • In group "(ALC) History"
  • In group "(ALC) Art History and Visual Studies"
  • By John Rylands Research Institute

The Lives of Letters Network presents 'Pictures and Postcards: Images and Letters'.

Schedule:

Dr Luke Uglow (Art History, Manchester): 'Drawing Letters: Ruskin at the Rylands

Despite being a prolific letter writer, despite being a talented draughtsman, and despite the crucial role images played in his research and teaching, drawings are notable for their rarity in the epistolary archives of John Ruskin (1819-1900). Consequently, when some small but carefully worked sketches do interrupt the flow of hastily written text, they seem especially significant and somehow contain an excess of meaning. This cannot only be for the historian, but surely also for original recipient. Indeed, the examples of Ruskin’s visual letters we do find contained in The John Rylands Library are all addressed to people with whom the critic developed an extended and personal relationship. This paper will focus on just three: a drawing of an alpine peak in October 1845 sent to his friend and literary mentor William Henry Harrison (d. 1874); a sketch of telegraph wires obscuring a Welsh mountain range seen from the train, sent to his benefactor Fanny Talbot (1824-1917) in August 1876; and, an impressionistic vision of the sun above the Kent coast, sent to his god-daughter Constance Oldham in October 1887. Spanning his entire working life, these exceptional letters are rarely treated in scholarship, and yet document moments of pause in which Ruskin gave visual expression to his emotional and intellectual life.

Dr Julia Gillen (Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster): 'The “letter of the poor?” Investigating writing and images on the Edwardian postcard.'

Studies of letter writing have tended to focus on the practices of literary writers, or members of elite strata of society, although notable studies of vernacular writing are developing, e.g. Sokoll (2001). Edwardian postcard writing is a genre with a specific, distinct relation to letter writing, yet closely entwined with that practice.

Developed in Austria in 1869, the postcard was very quickly adopted across Europe. In cities there were several deliveries a day, so that cards could be experienced as virtually synchronous. In 1896 The Times declared, “Now the postcard is the letter of the poor,” as the possibilities of using images increased. Untrammelled by the etiquette and obligations of formal letter writing, people took to exchanging brief, rapid, multimodal messages with a verve not to be seen again until the digital revolution.

In this paper I explore postcard writing from a Literacy Studies perspective (Barton & Hall, 1999; Gillen, 2018). I combine textual and material analyses with an investigation of historical sources, including census records, to investigate how the postcard was used across social classes in Manchester in the Edwardian age.

The seminar will be followed by an informal dinner. If you would like to attend the dinner, please RSVP to Alice Marples (Alice.Marples@manchester.ac.uk).

Price: FREE

Travel and Contact Information

Find event

The Christie Room
John Rylands Research Institute and Library
150 Deansgate
Manchester
Gtr Manchester

Contact event

Alice Marples

alice.marples@manchester.ac.uk

Contact us

  • +44 (0) 161 306 6000

Find us

The University of Manchester
Oxford Rd
Manchester
M13 9PL
UK

Connect with the University

  • Facebook page for The University of Manchester
  • X (formerly Twitter) page for The University of Manchester
  • YouTube page for The University of Manchester
  • Instagram page for The University of Manchester
  • TikTok page for The University of Manchester
  • LinkedIn page for The University of Manchester

  • Privacy /
  • Copyright notice /
  • Accessibility /
  • Freedom of information /
  • Charitable status /
  • Royal Charter Number: RC000797
  • Close menu
  • Home
    • Featured events
    • Today's events
    • The Whitworth events
    • Manchester Museum events
    • Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre events
    • Martin Harris Centre events
    • The John Rylands Library events
    • Exhibitions
    • Conferences
    • Lectures and seminars
    • Performances
    • Events for prospective students
    • Sustainability events
    • Family events
    • All events