SITE DIARY

19th July 2010

Additions to the site:

Buchanan’s letters to the Brothers Dalziel

Four letters to the Brothers Dalziel, for whom Buchanan provided the poems for three illustrated books: Wayside Posies: Original Poems of the Country Life, Ballad Stories of the Affections: from the Scandinavian and North Coast, and Other Poems. Three of the letters were found in Edward Dalziel’s copy of North Coast, and I’m grateful to Alan Hewer for providing me with scans of the letters and allowing me to put the transcripts on the site. Alan also collects literature of the First World War and has a quite fascinating site at www.greatwardustjackets.co.uk
which is well worth a visit.

I should also like to thank Andrew Stauffer of the University of Virginia, who sent me a copy of his essay, ‘Another Cause for the “Fleshly School” Controversy: Buchanan Versus Ellis’ which was published in the Journal of Pre–Raphaelite Studies (Vol. 11 (2002): 63–67). Originally I thought this might shed some light on Buchanan’s financial difficulties relating to Tennyson’s loan of 1871, but it actually refers to an earlier debt from 1867. Four days after receiving the essay, Alan emailed to ask if I’d like to see the Dalziel letters, one of which refers directly to this debt. When coincidences occur I think they should be noted.

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24th June 2010

Additions to the site:

Buchanan’s letters to Tennyson.

Seven letters written by Buchanan to Tennyson have survived and are held at the Tennyson Research Centre in Lincoln. They include Buchanan’s request to Tennyson for a loan of £200, which he made in June 1871, when he was living in Oban. According to The National Archives’ currency converter, £200 in 1870 would be worth just over £9,000 today. There are also two letters which relate to the ‘Fleshly School’ scandal, in which Buchanan seems to lay the blame for his exposure as the writer of the original article at the door of James Knowles, Tennyson’s friend and the editor of the Contemporary Review.

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13th May 2010

News:

The 1936 film version of When Knights Were Bold, starring Jack Buchanan and Fay Wray, is now on DVD - although it does only seem to be available from the Turner Classic Movies site and is, consequently, a bit expensive. I also came across a poster for the Spanish version of the film on ebay.

2nd May 2010

Additions to the site:

I’ve added a few more reviews of Buchanan’s novels and essays and I also came across an article in a San Francisco newspaper from 1897 about the Maybrick Murder Case which contains two poems by Buchanan, one of which I’ve not found elsewhere, and the other a reworking of ‘The Jew Passes’.

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31st March 2010

Additions to the site:

Selections from Mary Buchanan’s album.

The photograph album given to Buchanan’s wife, Mary by Colonel Campbell while they were living in Ireland in 1876, is part of the collection of the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University, Waco, Texas. I’m very grateful to Rita S. Patteson, Director of the Armstrong Browning Library for allowing me to add a selection of these photographs to the site.

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I’m still working through newspaper clippings and have added several reviews to the Book Reviews-Poetry section.

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I haven’t checked the Internet Archive for a while so I thought I should list the following Buchanan titles which have now been added:

Poetry:
The Drama of Kings

Novels:

The Martyrdom of Madeline
Matt: A Story of a Caravan
That Winter Night: or, Love’s Victory
The Heir of Linne
Woman and the Man
Diana’s Hunting
A Marriage by Capture
Father Anthony

Short Stories:

Red and White Heather

Plays:

The Strange Adventures of Miss Brown

Miscellaneous:

Wayside Posies: original poems of the country life (edited by Buchanan).
The Life and Adventures of J. J. Audubon (the original version edited by Buchanan).

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24th February 2010

O.k. - very long time since the last update, mainly due to paying out the money and accessing the rest of the papers on the British Library site. A similar scheme in America courtesy of the Library of Congress is completely free, although, it must be said, not so easy to use. Anyway, due to the amount of new material, I ended up revamping the Plays section of the site, which took a while, and I’ve also added a Letters to the Press section. To tell the truth I’ve been adding things here and there over the last eight months that I’ve forgotten a lot of it, but among the ‘highlights’ are reviews of Buchanan’s first two books of poetry, reviews of his first Poetry Readings in Glasgow, an interview with Harriett Jay from the Omaha Daily Bee, the issue of Play Pictorial which featured When Knights Were Bold, and (my favourite) a death metal version of ‘The Ballad of Judas Iscariot’.

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25th June 2009

Going through the back issues of The Graphic (available free, courtesy of the British Library) I came across a mention of Buchanan in relation to a play called Lottie. This turned out to be an adaptation of Harriett Jay’s novel, Through the Stage Door, and was produced at the Novelty Theatre in November 1884, when Buchanan and Jay were in America. The play went out with no author’s name attached but was subsequently attributed to Buchanan. I have listed it in the Buchanan bibliography and added two reviews in the Theatre Reviews section of the site. Since it was an adaptation of Harriett Jay’s novel I have also assumed that she contributed to the play and have therefore listed it in her bibliography as well.

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22nd June 2009

Additions to the site:

I’ve finally finished reorganising the Harriett Jay section of the site. This now includes a biography, bibliography, reviews of her novels and plays, two magazine contributions (one in her own hand, the other a short story called ‘My Luggage’) and some information on the first Literary Ladies’ Dinner of 1889.

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I’ve also acquired (from Rob Wilton’s site) a programme from Tulip Time, the 1930s musical which was based on The Strange Adventures of Miss Brown by Buchanan and Jay. Cigarettes by Abdulla.

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9th May 2009

News:

I’ve just come across another comic opera written by Robert Buchanan. This one is The Maiden Queen, written with Harriett Jay, with music by Florian Pascal. It was given a copyright performance at Ladbroke Hall, London on 6th April, 1905. The libretto was published (London: Joseph Williams, Ltd., 1908.) and extracts are included in Writers, readers, and reputations: literary life in Britain, 1870-1918 by Philip J. Waller (Oxford University Press, 2006). It was presumably written around the time of the novel, The Rev. Annabel Lee: a tale of to-morrow (1898), since it is also set in the future and the Rev. Annabel Lee makes an appearance. According to Philip J. Waller, it is set in the 1970s when women have taken over the running of the country (for those who need to be reminded, Mrs. Thatcher came to power in 1979). More details are in the Other Plays section and some information on the composer, Florian Pascal is on the Buchanan’s Music page.

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2nd May 2009

News:

Douglas DaSilva’s ‘Song of the Slain’, a setting of the Buchanan poem for soprano and piano, was performed at Jan Hus Church, 351 East 74th Street, New York on Sunday, April 26th 2009 by Angela Scherrar (soprano) and Alexandra Frederick (piano) as part of  the Vox Novus Composer’s Voice concert series. I’ve added the piece to the Buchanan’s Music page and more information about Douglas DaSilva, including samples of his other compositions, can be found on his Myspace page.

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25th March 2009

Additions to the site:

I’ve added the census returns for 1871 and 1881 to the Timeline and although I’ve been unable to find out where Robert Buchanan was in 1861, I’ve added the returns for his father and David Gray to prove he wasn’t with them.

I’ve also come across reviews of antipodean productions of Alone in London and When Knights Were Bold.

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15th March 2009

Additions to the site:

Programme for Bromley Challenor’s production of When Knights Were Bold at the New Scala Theatre, 22nd December 1926.

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Several items from the Brooklyn Eagle, including Buchanan’s obituary (combined with that of Sir Walter Besant) and reviews of:
Lady Clare, Constance, Alone in London, Fascination, Partners, “Roger la Honte”, Squire Kate and the novel, Father Anthony.

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18th February 2009

Additions to the site:

Balder the Beautiful: a song of divine death (London: William Mullan and Son, 1877)

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Several items from The Theatre.

Reviews of:
Storm-Beaten, Lady Clare, A Sailor and his Lass, Sophia, A Dark Night’s Bridal, The Blue Bells of Scotland, Fascination, Partners, Joseph’s Sweetheart, That Doctor Cupid, The Old Home, A Man’s Shadow, Theodora, Man and the Woman, Clarissa, Miss Tomboy, The Bride of Love, Sweet Nancy, The English Rose, The Struggle for Life, The Sixth Commandment, The Gifted Lady, The Trumpet Call, The White Rose, The Lights of Home, The Black Domino, The Piper of Hamelin, The Charlatan, Dick Sheridan, A Society Butterfly.

Two spoofs of Buchanan plays (still quite funny despite never having seen the originals):
Condensed Dramas:
The Black Domino, Dick Sheridan

And a portrait of Buchanan from December 1889.

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The Charlatan (Buchanan’s novelisation of his 1894 play, written in collaboration with Henry Murray) is now available on the Internet Archive:

The Charlatan (Volume 1, Volume 2)

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10th January 2009

I’ve added a Robert Buchanan timeline to the site in order to clear up some of the inconsistencies in Harriett Jay’s biography. The timeline includes links to copies of various documents including the birth certificates of both Robert Buchanan and Harriett Jay, and census returns for 1851, 1861 (the Jay household), 1891 and 1901.

Robert Buchanan Timeline

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23rd November 2008

The Internet Archive has added a number of new titles relating to Robert Buchanan. The majority of these seem to have their origin at Google Books so they don’t have the usual .pdf format to download, but they appear as uncorrected text versions and in the streaming ‘Flip Book’ format. I have heard that although most of Buchanan’s works are listed on Google Books, they are only accessible from America, because of copyright problems. The new titles are as follows:

Poetry:
Balder the Beautiful
Ballads of Life, Love, and Humour
The Earthquake

Novels:

The Shadow of the Sword
God and the Man
A Child of Nature: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3
Annan Water: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3
Come Live with Me and Be My Love
Lady Kilpatrick
Effie Hetherington

Essays:

The Fleshly School of Poetry and Other Phenomena of the Day
The Hebrid Isles: wanderings in the Land of Lorne and the Outer Hebrides (a revised edition of The Land of Lorne.)
On Descending into Hell: a letter addressed to the Right Hon. Henry Matthews, Q.C., Home Secretary, concerning the proposed suppression of literature

Play:

Corinne

The Internet Archive also has Poems of the Hon. Roden Noel. A selection, for which Robert Buchanan provided the introduction, and the score of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s 1902 work, Meg Blane, a rhapsody of the sea.

Several of Harriett Jay’s novels have also appeared on the site:
The Dark Colleen
Madge Dunraven: Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3
The Priest's Blessing, or Poor Patrick’s Progress from this World to a Better
Two Men and a Maid: Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3
My Connaught Cousins: Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3
Through the Stage Door: Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3

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15th October 2008

Additions to the site:

William Michael Rossetti’s account of the Fleshly School Controversy and its effect on his brother (from Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family-Letters) and his reaction to Harriett Jay’s account in her biography (from Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti) have been added to The Fleshly School Controversy section.

Three more poems from journals (which, as far as I know, were never printed in book form):

Hermioné and The Bachelor Dreams from The Argosy and The Skein from the Broadway Magazine.

A short story, A Roman Supper, from The Argosy.

And an encounter with Buchanan (and family) from the autobiography of Isabella Fyvie Mayo.

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28th September 2008

Additions to the site:

Three poems published in Once A Week in 1862:
Sir Tristem, Wife And I and Maid Avoraine.

Photos from The Theatre of the first American production of When Knights Were Bold.

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13th September 2008

Just thought I’d mention this item which turned up on a random search. It’s a letter from an 18 year old Buchanan to William Makepeace Thackeray, sent from Scotland in February 1860. It’s being offered for sale at the moment by Ximenes Rare Books Inc. (for the princely sum of £900) so I’ve added their description, which seems to include a full transcript, to the Random Letters page.

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21st August 2008

And it’s “all change” yet again. Since this site went online I’ve been using some free webspace from an old dial-up account I first had with Freeserve. Then Freeserve were taken over by Wanadoo, then Wanadoo were taken over by Orange, and a couple of weeks ago Orange decided to take down all their sites and replace them with groovy colour-co-ordinated, user-friendly sites. I know when I’m not wanted, so I packed my bags and left for pastures new. So now there’s a new address and lots of space and even more shaking of heads and pitying glances from friends and family as I’m now having to pay money for my Buchanan obsession.

One of the oddities of the Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange site was the fact that you could have up to five sites of 30 megabytes each, so as the site grew I had to split it up between different addresses. I’d done this once with the poetry section and was in the process of doing it again with the theatre section. So, when I left Orange I had to tie everything back together - so I apologise if I’ve missed a few links here and there.

The reason for splitting off the theatre section was due to the archives of The Stage going online. This provided a lot of new reviews of Buchanan’s plays and one rather exciting (to me at least) article which revealed that what I had always believed to be Harriett Jay’s only solo effort as a playwright, When Knights Were Bold, was actually based on an 1896 collaboration with Buchanan called In Days of Old. So, although I won’t attempt to list all the new reviews from The Stage, I have extended the When Knights Were Bold section of the site.

And since I was throwing money around with gay abandon, I also threw some in the direction of one of the genealogy sites and came up with another revelation, that Harriett Jay lied about her age. At the moment I’m working on a more extensive biography of Miss Jay which should be finished in the next week or two.

Finally, since the site has moved house, I’ve archived the old diary entries on another page. So, if you want to know where it all came from click the link for the Diary Archives.