SITE DIARY

27th August 2011

Additions to the site:

I’ve re-organised the Poems From Other Sources section of the site, which features those poems (mainly from magazines) which were never reprinted in book form. Most of the new poems that I’ve found are from Buchanan’s early years in London, including a series of nine ‘London Poems’ published in Temple Bar between December 1860 and February 1862. Of course, early work which Buchanan decided not to include in his later collections, might indicate a lack of quality, but there are a few gems in there. My personal favourite is ‘Hugo the Bastard’ (which Buchanan didn’t rate at all) but makes a nice companion piece to ‘Fra Giacomo’.

I also came across an early essay of Buchanan’s from the August 1862 edition of Temple Bar which I’ve added to the site:

Society’s Looking-glass

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28th July 2011

Additions to the site:

The Ballad of Mary the Mother (1897)

Buchanan’s penultimate book of poetry. A conversation between Mary Magdalene and Mary, the Mother of Jesus. No virgin birth, no resurrection, and the followers of Christ are “wild-eyed men o’ the sea”.

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Searching the British Library’s EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service) I found the following PhD thesis by Christopher D. Murray:

“Robert Buchanan (1841-1901) : An assessment of his career.” Queen Mary, University of London, 1974.

(It is available from EthOS as a free download, but I thought I might as well add it to the site until someone objects.)

It’s 282 pages long and similar to John A. Cassidy’s 1973 Robert W. Buchanan in scope and intent. I wish I’d found it sooner (thanks, Geraldine!) since it does use different sources than Cassidy, including Buchanan’s letters to George Bernard Shaw and Andrew Chatto (which I haven’t got round to yet). I only downloaded it yesterday so I haven’t had time to study it closely, but one thing did jump out at me as I skimmed through it - this passage about Harriett Jay:

“... She died in 1932, leaving all her books and papers to her nephew, whose daughter, Elizabeth Jay, is now the sole survivor of the family. She knows little of Harriett or Buchanan, and nothing of the whereabouts of their library and papers (which, besides the autobiography, would have included, since Buchanan carefully kept such things, letters from such men as Browning, Tennyson, Whitman, Gladstone, Peacock, Dobell, Lewes, Reade, Shaw, Beerbohm Tree and many others). Elizabeth Jay steadfastly refuses to talk about her great-aunt or about Robert Buchanan.”

Ever since I started this site I had a (very faint) hope that one day I would be contacted by some long-lost relative of Harriett Jay who’d just come across an old trunk full of papers in the attic - it seems I can forget that now.

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17th July 2011

Short Stories

I’ve expanded the page dealing with Buchanan’s short stories, adding it to the Novels section of the site. This now contains the information about the two collections, Stormbeaten:  or Christmas Eve at the “Old Anchor” Inn (1862), which was a collaboration with Charles Gibbon, and Red and White Heather: North Country tales and ballads (1894), as well as several stories which I’ve come across in magazines and newspapers. A Roman Supper from The Argosy of April, 1866, has been on the site for a while but I’ve now added the following:

My Aunt’s Christmas
Illustrated Times (21 December, 1861)

A Heart Struggle. A Tale in Two Parts
Temple Bar (December, 1861, January, 1862).

Lady Letitia’s Lilliput Hand
Temple Bar (March, April, 1862).

The Heir
The Graphic (25 December, 1894).

Berinthia
The Manchester Weekly Times (22 June, 1900).

An Old Reckoning
The St. Paul Globe (4 August, 1901).

(Although it’s not a great story, My Aunt’s Christmas, has an additional interest for me since it’s set in the village of ‘Caverford’ - an obvious nod to Buchanan’s birthplace, and, since it mentions a train journey, there is a rather frail coincidental link to Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths.)

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Adam and Eve

This was the title of an unfinished light opera mentioned in one report of Buchanan’s bankruptcy. With no other information I’d assumed it was an alternate title for The Maiden Queen - not so. I came across a description of the plot and it’s a post-apocalyptic tale - Mad Max meets The Day the Earth Stood Still - sort of.

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Buchanan the Actor

In Chapter 8 of Harriett Jay’s biography there is an amusing story of Buchanan and Charles Gibbon performing in their play, The Rath Boys. Given the amount of salt one has to ingest when reading the biography, it was nice to come across confirmation of the story in this advert from The Evening Star - the performance took place on Wednesday 18th June 1862.

Buchanan the Reader

I also came across a review of the second poetry reading Buchanan gave at the Hanover Square Rooms in March 1869 which also seems to have been a success.

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Another Buchanan

Since there’s not much in the way of multimedia on this site, here’s Jack Buchanan singing ‘Let’s Put Some People To Work’ from the 1936 film of When Knights Were Bold.

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27th June 2011

I’ve found three more interviews with Buchanan, one from The Echo (17 March, 1896) about becoming his own publisher, and two from his time in America:

New York Daily Tribune (6 September, 1884)

The Buffalo Express (21 September, 1884)

Another article from The Echo (11 December, 1893) about Buchanan the Novelist is not very complimentary (understandably) but does temper the criticism with the following statement:

“It is not a pleasure to hunt for blemishes in the work of one who will be recognised hereafter as one of the chief figures in nineteenth century literature, but it has been necessary in order to account for the remarkable unevenness of Mr. Buchanan’s muse.”

And to confirm how wrong that statement was, I’ve added the brief section on Buchanan from John Hepburn Millar’s A Literary History of Scotland, published in 1903, just two years after Buchanan’s death, and very similar to Maurice Lindsay’s assessment in his History of Scottish Literature, published in 1977, indicating that Buchanan’s reputation did not diminish over the years but was pretty much non-existent to begin with.

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28th May 2011

Between 18th June and 30th July, 1891, Buchanan wrote a weekly column for The Echo under the title ‘Latter-Day Leaves’. The seven articles, with some additional material, have been added to the Buchanan and the Press section:

Latter-Day Leaves

I’ve also found another couple of interviews, one from the New York World from 1873, and another from The Echo of 11th June 1889.

And just to keep things in perspective, I've added Maurice Lindsay's assessment of Buchanan from his History of Scottish Literature to the Critical Writings section.

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17th April 2011

After the unveiling of the new bronze bust of Buchanan in St. John’s Churchyard, I thought I should take the opportunity to get Buchanan’s name mentioned in the papers since this seemed likely to be the only time that he could be linked to a news item. I submitted a piece to the ‘My Cultural Life’ section of The Observer, which they printed on April 3rd, and I also sent an article to the local paper here in Stoke, The Sentinel. Unfortunately The Sentinel insisted on doing an interview with me - ‘Local man makes website’ being deemed more interesting than ‘Forgotten local author honoured 110 years after his death’ - which appeared on April 9th. Both items are available on the Buchanan’s Grave page.

I’ve also been trawling newspaper archives again, and I came across an interview with Buchanan in an issue of Black and White from 27th January, 1894, which, considering my recent experience with The Sentinel, seemed a nice coincidence. Unsure where to place it, I started a new section in Miscellanea called Buchanan and the Press. At the moment, as well as a link to Buchanan’s letters to the newspapers, there is a page for interviews and one for articles about Buchanan. The former has the Black and White interview (which also contains a new photograph of Buchanan in more relaxed pose - unfortunately the quality is not too good) and the complete version of Buchanan’s interview with himself, quoted at length in the Jay biography. The latter has an article about Buchanan published in The Echo’s ‘Portrait Gallery’ on 20th October, 1890.

In June, 1891 Buchanan started writing a weekly column in The Echo under the title, ‘Latter-Day Leaves’. There were seven articles in all and I will be adding them to the Buchanan and the Press section shortly.

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26th March 2011

On Tuesday, 15th March, 2011, the new bronze bust of Robert Buchanan (by sculptor, Lisa Hawker) was unveiled in the churchyard of St. John the Baptist, Southend-on-Sea. I attended the ceremony, took some photographs, and have now finished updating the Buchanan gravesite page:

The Grave of Robert Buchanan

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9th March 2011

News:

It seems a bit late to say ‘Happy New Year’ but I’ve only just realised I haven’t updated the site since December. January was a very strange month, and February always flies by, so now it’s March, and, for perhaps the only conceivable time, there is some real news to report regarding Robert Buchanan.

Southend Council have renovated the churchyard of St. John the Baptist and at noon on Tuesday, 15th March, a new bust of Robert Buchanan will be placed on his grave. If you’ve read the page relating to the Buchanan gravesite then you’ll know that the original monument was surmounted by a bust of Buchanan, which at some time was lost. The new sculpture is by Lisa Hawker and I’m hoping to attend the unveiling and will then add some photos of the ‘new’ Buchanan to the site.

Additions to the site:

The trouble with leaving a long time between updates is that I forget what I’ve added to the site. I did try the Daily Express archive, which only runs from 1900, in case it shed some light on Harriett Jay’s career after the death of Buchanan. However, although there were several stories relating to When Knights Were Bold (including obituaries for James Welch and Bromley Challenor), there was not much else about Harriett Jay, apart from her own obituary. In fact, it was obituaries all round, since I also found Buchanan’s.

Talking of When Knights Were Bold, I came across another programme (for 99p) on ebay from the 1923 production at the Criterion Theatre, so I’ve added that to the site - interesting if you like old adverts.

I’ve added Buchanan’s reminiscence of W. E. Forster, Liberal politician and Secretary for Ireland, to the Essays section. It was published in The Pall Mall Gazette on 9th April, 1886, three days after Forster’s death. It’s not a particularly important piece, but I do like the opening paragraph - Buchanan in his Pooterish mode.

And, finally, the other day I came across John Coleman’s memoirs, Fifty Years of an Actor’s Life, which mentions his first meeting with Buchanan and Jay, and includes quite detailed descriptions of them both.

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22nd December 2010

Additions to the site:

Coming to the end of another year, I thought I should mention a few odd things that I’ve added to the site. I’ve been working on the ‘Fleshly School’ section and have started a page of Press reaction to Buchanan’s essay, which includes an early review in The Examiner of 7th October, 1871, which, perhaps coincidentally, links Buchanan’s name to that of Thomas Maitland. I’ve also extended the section on the 1876 ‘Jonas Fisher’ libel case, which now includes the original review of ‘Jonas Fisher’ from The Examiner and Swinburne’s ‘Devil’s Due’ letter. I also came across a variation in the essay, ‘Criticism as One of the Fine Arts’, originally published under the pseudonym, Walter Hutcheson, in The Saint Pauls Magazine of April 1872, then reprinted in Buchanan’s Master-Spirits in 1873, with a paragraph referring to Swinburne removed, so I’ve added the original version to the site.

I’ve also added a page to the Essays section called ‘Robert Buchanan and the Magazines’ which has some reviews of Buchanan’s contributions to the literary magazines of the day, plus some adverts for his own short-lived journal, Light.

And I came across an interesting review of the Complete Poetical Works in the January, 1902 edition of The Humane Review by the Rev. A. L. Lilley, which begins:

“After nearly forty years of ceaseless literary toil, Robert Buchanan has passed away, leaving the world in a mood of pathetic perplexity as to what it ought to have made of him or even what it is to make of him now. It could not even in its dullest moods fail to realise the tempestuous and overwhelming force of the man. But it continued hesitant whether that force represented a permanent and vital power or the self-consuming throes of a fever-fit.”

Since it is more of a general assessment of Buchanan’s life than a mere book review I have added it to the Critical Writings about Buchanan section as well.

There are various other additions here and there, nothing major, but I should mention that I have added three more letters to the site. These were originally listed on the Random Letters page as being for sale on the David J. Holmes Autographs site and all I had were brief descriptions. However, this month they appeared on ebay, with photographs, so I’ve now added those to the page (I’m sure this isn’t how proper people do it). One of the letters was to the Dalziel Brothers, concerning Wayside Posies which reveals that Buchanan was paid £150 for that job.

Right, that’s it, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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3rd November 2010

Additions to the site:

Letters from America

I’ve added three letters from the Houghton Library at Harvard University and thirteen letters from the Folger Shakespeare Library of Washington to the site. The most interesting letter in the Harvard group is one to Nicholas Trübner, dated 27th February, 1880, concerning The City of Dream, a poem which was not published until eight years later. The Folger Library collection includes eight letters to the American theatre manager, Augustin Daly, and a letter to Alexander Strahan from February 1873, which confirms Buchanan’s continued use of pseudonyms, despite all the criticism of ‘Thomas Maitland’.

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El Dorado

One alter ego that Buchanan used to fool the critics for a few years was the anonymous author of poems on American subjects. I came across one of these poems, ‘By the author of “St. Abe”’, running over three issues of The Saint Paul’s Magazine: July, September and Ocober 1872. Since it was not published in the collected editions of Buchanan’s poetry, I’ve added it to the Poems from other Sources section of the site:

John Mardon, Mariner: his Strange Adventures in El Dorado

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Buchanan’s Funeral

I must thank Lisa Hawker for sending me two cuttings from the local Southend papers concerning Buchanan’s death and funeral. There is an obituary from the Southend Standard and Essex Weekly Advertiser which is a little odd, containing several mistakes and a long extract from Buchanan’s novel, Andromeda, but also providing some fascinating information about the original grave of Buchanan’s wife, Mary. And there is a very detailed account of Robert Buchanan’s funeral from the Southend Telegraph.

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19th August 2010

Additions to the site:

Having acquired Buchanan’s letters from the National Library of Scotland, I’ve started a new section on the site:

Letters from Collections

Eventually I hope to collect all of Buchanan’s letters together and present them in chronological order, but until then I will add things here as I acquire them. There are several interesting items in the N.L.S. collection. Two early letters shedding a little more light on Buchanan’s activities prior to his move to London. Then his letter asking Hepworth Dixon for work at the Athenæum, several letters to Professor Blackie and Dr. Stodart Walker, and yet another begging letter - this one to the Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, following Buchanan’s bankruptcy in 1894. However the highlight of the collection is undoubtedly the letter to the father of David Gray, responding to the news that his son has died.

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14th August 2010

Additions to the site:

The Devil’s Case (London: Robert Buchanan, 1896.)

To some extent a companion piece to The Wandering Jew (1893), The Devil’s Case was published (by Buchanan himself) in February 1896, although, according to a letter to Dr. Stodart Walker quoted in the Jay biography, he had completed it a year earlier, shortly after the death of his mother, to whom it is dedicated.

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I’ve also added G. H. Lewes’ review of Idyls and Legends of Inverburn to the site. This 16 page review, in which Lewes declares (with reservations) that Robert Buchanan is a genius, appeared in The Fortnightly Review on 30th June, 1865.

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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.