Catch-up on WWW news
For anyone who has missed seeing this in the Lives & Letters issue recently circulated, there are a number of new editions to the WWW website including to Traces and Curiosities that will be an interest to some, and also a couple of Blogs that raise some interesting points about letters and their relationship to ‘other’ things.
1. New Trace! ‘Afford my Country an infinite Advantage’ 9 June 1795
Discussion concerns a letter by Robert Brooke, governor of St Helena (one of the most remote places in the world). This is addressed to Lord (George) Macartney, a career diplomat in process of being appointed to a governor role in the Cape. Drawing on contextual details and also specifics from the letter itself, this trace investigates the letter’s significance in terms of events transpiring in the Cape at that time. A photograph of the letter’s first page along with a complete transcript of the letter are also included. To read more, please visit the trace: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/traces/afford-my-country-an-infinite-advantage/
2. New Trace! ‘Get the boys for me’, 14 February 1898
This trace discusses a letter to David Forbes junior from Dundas Simpson, who was associated with a Johannesburg mine, with part of his role being to ensure a regular supply of labour. A transcript and photograph of the original letter are included, along with details concerning the context of its writing. Discussion explores interesting questions about race and ‘boys’. To read more, please visit the trace: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/traces/get-the-boys-for-me/
3. New Curiosity! Where there’s a Will, there’s a way?
Wills raise interesting questions relevant to WWW research concerning lineage, connection and property within the white communities of South Africa. Drawing on the Wills of Dods Pringle and Elizabeth Hockly, this curiosity considers the question of whether a Will can be seen as a kind of letter, or as stretching the boundaries of what a letter is, or as opening up some border crossings occurring between letters and Wills. To read more, please visit the curiosity: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/curiosities/where-theres-a-will/
4. From the Blog: Concerning a letter, to three wives
This blog concerns temporality concerning a film called ‘A Letter to Three Wives’, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz and distributed in 1949. It is a comedy in which three wives, when together, receive a joint letter saying that one of their husbands has run off with the letter-writer and they will find out which husband this is by the end of the day. Could such a film be made now, and could such letters be written now? To read more, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/concerning-a-letter-to-three-wives/
5. From the Blog: The Balfour Declaration
Written on the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, the blog considers the appearance of the Declaration within the frame of a letter, some specifics of its writing and also contextual details. To read more, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/a-deed-done/
Last updated: 23 November 2017
