The Birth of Shakespeare's Birthplace

"There is, indeed, little doubt,” the formidable scholar James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps confidently explained to the Victorian readers of his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, “that the Birth-place did not become one of the incentives for pilgrimage until public attention had been specially directed to it at the time of the Jubilee.” That's broadly true. The earliest reference to the three-gabled, half-timbered house (two houses, originally) on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon as the birthplace of William Shakespeare dates only from the late 1750s, when it was so named in Samuel Winter's town map. During the Stratford Jubilee, which David Garrick organized in 1769, the “small old house,” as the actor's first biographer called it, was fully recognized and promoted as the place where Shakespeare was born. Even so, Halliwell-Phillipps's observation conceals more than it reveals, because there is also little doubt that the dwelling that tradition calls Shakespeare's birthplace did not suddenly acquire that status during the first week of September 1769. The process by which the unremarkable piece of real estate that John Shakespeare purchased sometime in the late sixteenth century was transformed into what Barbara Hodgdon has rightly called the “controlling ideological center” of Shakespeare biography was long, slow, and far from inevitable. That process is the subject of this essay.

Romanticism and Blackwood's Magazine:'An Unprecedented Phenomenon'

Romanticism and Blackwood's Magazine is inspired by the ongoing critical fascination with Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and the burgeoning recognition of its centrality to the Romantic age. Though the magazine itself was published continuously for well over a century and a half, this volume concentrates specifically on those years when William Blackwood was at the helm, beginning with his founding of the magazine in 1817 and closing with his death in 1834. These were the years when, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it in 1832, Blackwood's reigned as 'an unprecedented Phenomenon in the world of letters.' The magazine placed itself at the centre of the emerging mass media, commented decisively on all the major political and cultural issues that shaped the Romantic movement, and published some of the leading writers of the day, including Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, John Galt, Felicia Hemans, James Hogg, Walter Scott, and Mary Shelley.

'This much-needed volume reminds us not only why Blackwood's was the most influential periodical publication of the time, but also how its writers, writings, and critical agendas continue to shape so many of the scholarly concerns of Romantic studies in the twenty-first century.' - Charles Mahoney, Associate Professor, University of Connecticut, USA

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
'A character so various, and yet so indisputably its own': A Passage to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; R.Morrison & D.S.Roberts
PART I: BLACKWOOD'S AND THE PERIODICAL PRESS
Beginning Blackwood's: The Right Mix of Dulce and Ùtile; P.Flynn
John Gibson Lockhart and Blackwood's: Shaping the Romantic Periodical Press; T.Richardson
From Gluttony to Justified Sinning: Confessional Writing in Blackwood's and the London Magazine; D.Higgins
Camaraderie and Conflict: De Quincey and Wilson on Enemy Lines; R.Morrison
Selling Blackwood's Magazine, 1817-1834; D.Finkelstein
PART II: BLACKWOOD'S CULTURE AND CRITICISM
Blackwood's 'Personalities'; T.Mole
Communal Reception, Mary Shelley, and the 'Blackwood's School' of Criticism; N.Mason
Blackwoodian Allusion and the Culture of Miscellaneity; D.Stewart
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in the Scientific Culture of Early Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh; W.Christie
The Art and Science of Politics in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, c. 1817-1841; D.Kelly
Prosing Poetry: Blackwood's and Generic Transposition, 1820-1840; J.Camlot
PART III: BLACKWOOD'S FICTIONS
Blackwood's and the Boundaries of the Short Story; T.Killick
The Edinburgh of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and James Hogg's Fiction; G.Hughes
'The Taste for Violence in Blackwood's Magazine'; M.Schoenfield
PART IV: BLACKWOOD'S AT HOME
John Wilson and Regency Authorship; R.Cronin
John Wilson and Sport; J.Strachan
William Maginn and the Blackwood's 'Preface' of 1826; D.E.Latané, Jr.
All Work and All Play: Felicia Hemans's Edinburgh Noctes; N.Sweet
PART V: BLACKWOOD'S ABROAD
Imagining India in Early Blackwood's; D.S.Roberts
Tales of the Colonies: Blackwood's, Provincialism, and British Interests Abroad; A.Jarrells
Selected Bibliography
Index

ROBERT MORRISON is Queen's National Scholar at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His book, The English Opium-Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey was a finalist for the James Tait Black Prize. He has edited writings by Jane Austen, Leigh Hunt, Thomas De Quincey, and John Polidori.
DANIEL SANJIV ROBERTS is Reader in English at Queen's University Belfast, UK. His publications include a monograph, Revisionary Gleam: De Quincey, Coleridge, and the High Romantic Argument (2000), and major critical editions of Thomas De Quincey's Autobiographic Sketches and Robert Southey's The Curse of Kehama; the latter was cited as a Distinguished Scholarly Edition by the MLA. He is currently working on an edition of Charles Johnstone's novel The History of Arsaces, Prince of Betlis for the Early Irish Fiction series.

Iris cysts in children:Classification, incidence, and management. The 1998 Torrence A Makley Jr Lecture

Background - Iris cysts in children are uncommon and there is relatively little information on their classification, incidence, and management. Methods - The records of all children under age 20 years who were diagnosed with iris cyst were reviewed and the types and incidence of iris cysts of childhood determined. Based on these observations recommendations were made regarding management of iris cysts in children. Results - Of 57 iris cysts in children, 53 were primary and four were secondary. There were 44 primary cysts of the iris pigment epithelium, 34 of which were of the peripheral or iridociliary type, accounting for 59% of all childhood iris cysts. It was most commonly diagnosed in the teenage years, more common in girls (68%), was not recognised in infancy, remained stationary or regressed, and required no treatment. The five mid-zonal pigment epithelial cysts were diagnosed at a mean age of 14 years, were more common in boys (83%), remained stationary, and required no treatment. The pupillary type of pigment epithelial cyst was generally recognised in infancy and, despite involvement of the pupillary aperture, also required no treatment. There were nine cases of primary iris stromal cysts, accounting for 16% of all childhood iris cysts. This cyst was usually diagnosed in infancy, was generally progressive, and required treatment in eight of the nine cases, usually by aspiration and cryotherapy or surgical resection. Among the secondary iris cysts, two were post-traumatic epithelial ingrowth cysts and two were tumour induced cysts, one arising from an intraocular lacrimal gland choristoma and one adjacent to a peripheral iris naevus. Conclusions - Most iris cysts of childhood are primary pigment epithelial cysts and require no treatment. However, the iris stromal cyst, usually recognised in infancy, is generally an aggressive lesion that requires treatment by aspiration or surgical excision.

Street Medicine – Assessment Work Strategies of Paramedics on the Front lines of Emergency Health Services

This article is based on an institutional ethnographic inquiry into the work of paramedics and the institutional setting that organizes and coordinates their work processes in a major City in Canada. Drawing on over 200 hours of observations and over 100 interviews with paramedics (average length of 18 minutes) and other emergency medical personnel, this article explores the standard and not so standard work of paramedics as they assess and care for their patients on the front lines of emergency health services. The multiplicity of interfacing social, demographic, locational, and situational factors that shape and organize the work of paramedics are analyzed. In doing so, this article provides insights into the complex work of an understudied yet ever-important profession in healthcare.

Street Space—North Street, Belfast

The Belfast city center is fractured, divided by motorways, parking lots, empty buildings, and big box stores. Its 19th-century heyday put it on the international map of textile production, which transformed and enriched its built structure. This tight architectural fabric was slowly destroyed in the 1940s by the Blitz, in the 1970s by road plans and “the troubles” and in the 1990s by large retail buildings. Few pedestrian streets traverse Belfast, and among them, most are recently-developed conduits for the passage of shoppers from one chain store to the next.Within this seemingly bleak urban landscape, there remain a few areas that offer a richer, more architecturally and socially diverse, more memory-laden conception of public space. Current redevelopment plans, however, threaten the mere existence of these few remaining historic streets in Belfast.This reality inspired the current project of one of the Masters in Architecture design units at Queen’s University Belfast. Our team (led by urban designer Michael Corr and myself) has been exploring North Street, one of the main arteries in Belfast City Center. Although North Street has a reputation for being run-down, derelict, and in need of redevelopment, it is one of the few intact 19th-century streets left in the area, and as such is worthy of study as an example of public space that is not strictly synonymous with commercial space.

Gaze behavior of the visually impaired during street crossing.

PURPOSE:

This study explored the gaze patterns of fully sighted and visually impaired subjects during the high-risk activity of crossing the street.

METHODS:

Gaze behavior of 12 fully sighted subjects, nine with visual impairment resulting from age-related macular degeneration and 12 with impairment resulting from glaucoma, was monitored using a portable eye tracker as they crossed at two unfamiliar intersections.

RESULTS:

All subject groups fixated primarily on vehicles and crossing elements but changed their fixation behavior as they moved from "walking to the curb" to "standing at the curb" and to "crossing the street." A comparison of where subjects fixated in the 4-second time period before crossing showed that the fully sighted who waited for the light to change fixated on the light, whereas the fully sighted who crossed early fixated primarily on vehicles. Visually impaired subjects crossing early or waiting for the light fixate primarily on vehicles.

CONCLUSIONS:

Vision status affects fixation allocation while performing the high-risk activity of street crossing. Crossing decision-making strategy corresponds to fixation behavior only for the fully sighted subjects.

Going solo: the social organisation of drug dealing within a London street gang

This paper presents a single case study of one street gang in one London borough. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 12 gang members, or former gang members, and seven practitioners. The practitioners and gang members / ex-gang members reported different perspectives on how the gang was structured and drug dealing was organised. The gang members / ex-gang members suggested that the gang is a loose social network with little recognisable formal organisation. Although individual gang members sell drugs, the gang should not be viewed as a drug dealing organisation. Rather it is a composition of individual drug dealers who cooperate out of mutual self-interest. Therefore, some gang members are best described as independent entrepreneurs while others are subcontractors looking to 'go solo'. The seven practitioners, however, tended to describe a more hierarchically structured gang, with formal recruitment processes. This divergence of perspective highlights an important consideration for policy and research.