Introduction

 

The Research Project’s aims

In the light of the growing community between Britain and mainland Europe, the need to recognize and analyse the intellectual history of Britain as part of the wider European cultural heritage is becoming increasingly urgent. The Research Project, European Critical Traditions: The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe, has taken an important step towards this aim by establishing links with numerous European Universities, Research Institutes and colleagues, thus allowing for the development of a common research programme.

The Project examines the ways in which selected British authors have been translated, published, distributed, read, reviewed and discussed on the continent of Europe over the last few hundred years. By ‘authors’ we intend writers in any humanistic discipline whose works have been recognized as making a contribution to intellectual and cultural history. In doing so, it throws light not only on specific strands of intellectual history but also on many of the processes involved in the dissemination of ideas and of texts. The Project brings the Reader Response and Reception studies that have been at the centre of literary theory for the past quarter of a century together with the material History of the Book that has begun to explore the production, publication and distribution of manuscripts and books.

The Project is being published by Continuum in an open-ended, multi-volumed series, The Athlone Critical Traditions: The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe. The book publication will provide an overview of European reception, covering publication and dissemination; translations; critical reviews; essays and books; biographical materials, correspondence and personal contacts, where relevant, together with annotated selections from relevant documents, extensive bibliography and index. The initial group of three consists of Francis Bacon, Lord Byron, and Virginia Woolf, to show the range and diversity of the problems involved. Several further groups of authors are concentrated in particular subject areas or periods. A list of all the volumes published and in preparation can be found at Complete Series.

The Project’s archives will be made available electronically. The Project’s extensive Database contains all the bibliographies of the volumes published so far in the Series and can be accessed via a simple registration process.

 

The Research Project’s History

The Project was a response to the British Academy’s 1996 invitation to its own Fellows to propose new research projects, and was formulated in accordance with guidelines calling for 'typically long-term enterprises whose chief concern is to produce fundamental works of scholarship that will be of general use to the scholarly community and on which subsequent research can be based'.

The Project was initiated through a Symposium on Reception Theory at the British Academy in April 1998, where both Prof. Bernhard Fabian and Prof. Wolfgang Iser spoke, major figures in the History of the Book and in Reception Theory respectively, and through Colloquia held at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and at other British and European venues.

Colloquia, which serve to initiate the individual volumes, have been held on the European Reception of Virginia Woolf (October 1998) and Byron (March 1999), which launched the Project’s Romanticism series. Full details of all events can be found here.

A fin-de-siècle series was launched with the Colloquium ‘The Anglo-French fin de siècle’ at the Academy (January 2000), which was followed by a Colloquium on ‘Anglo-Irish fin de siècle in Europe: Wilde and Yeats’ at the Institute of English Studies (SAS), 19-20 October 2000. The International Pater Conference met at Christ Church Oxford in July 2000, where the Project presented a final session on Pater’s European Reception. In 2002 the collaborators on the Henry James volume met at a special session on European reception at the International James Conference in Paris, and again at the International Henry James Conference in Aix-en-Provence in 2005.

The first Colloquium in the Project’s series on historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a two-day conference at Senate House, University of London, on the reception of Edmund Burke in 2004. The biennial conference, sponsored by the British Academy, of Bacon researchers and scholars preparing the Oxford Bacon and the European Intellectual Lexicon took place at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, in September 2001, entitled Francis Bacon on History and Francis Bacon in History.

A series of presentations of the work of the Project have been held in several countries and at Conferences on relevant authors. If any institution, department, or association is interested in arranging such a presentation, please contact the Project Director.

The Project was awarded a British Academy Network Grant for a 5-year Network on Reception Studies, which met biannually from 2004 to 2009 in London (2004 & 2005), Cambridge (2005), Aix-en-Provence (2006), Prague (2006), Paris (2007 & 2009), Brussels (2007), León, Spain (2008) and Bologna (2008). Full details of these meetings, the topics discussed and the Network Lecturers can be found under Past Events. The deliberations of the Network will be drawn together in a British Academy-sponsored Conference on Cultural Institutions and Literary Reception in Europe, to be held 14-15 June 2010 at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London.

 

The Research Project Administrative Base and Staff

The Project was based at the School of Advanced Study (SAS) from 1997 to 2003. The School is a federation of ten Research Institutes in the Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of London. The Project’s Director and Series Editor is Dr Elinor Shaffer FBA, Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies in SAS, who is supported by the Advisory Board and Editorial Boards of the Project.

The Project has now established a new Project Office near the University of London Senate House, at 12B Ridgmount Gardens, WC1E 7AR. The core Project staff includes the Project Officer, Dr Lachlan Moyle, and a Research Associate, Dr Alessandra Tosi.

A second Project office was opened at Clare Hall, Cambridge, in January 2004, where the Project’s Reading & Reception Studies Seminar meets every term.

The Technical Collaborator is Dr John Bovey of the University of Kent’s Computing Laboratory at Canterbury.

 

Funding

The Project’s main funding bodies have included the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB), the Leverhulme Trust, and the ESF (European Science Foundation), whilst the Project’s research posts have been supported by the MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) and the U.S.-based Association for the Advancement of Intercultural Understanding.