Duke University Press Log

A Visit to the Home of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle

Jocelyn Dawson, the assistant manager of our Journals Marketing department, recently visited the home of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle in London and shares an account of her trip below. The Press has published over 10,000 of the Carlyles’ letters and maintains a Carlyle Twitter feed.

During a recent visit to London, I visited the home of Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle and his wife, Jane Welsh Carlyle.  Now maintained by the National Trust, from 1834 to 1881 the Chelsea row home housed two nineteenth-century literary luminaries who still loom large in our world here at Duke University Press, where we continue to publish the Carlyles' letters.  

My interest in seeing the home stemmed not from intellectual interest in nineteenth century literary history nor the work of the man who wrote Frederick the Great. Rather, I wanted to see the house because of how charmed I’ve become by the turns of phrase in letters that I’ve read in my time at the Press: Thomas’s curmudgeonly complaints about “indifferent tea” and “transient biliary businesses,” his habit of denouncing people (including Voltaire) as “blackguards,” and Jane’s emphatic descriptions of favorite writers and of everyday Victorian life (“The evening I spent as I spend too many, at an odious tea party”).  The Carlyles revealed by the letters are a far cry from the somber monument to Thomas etched in stone at the front of their home on Cheyne Row.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The exterior of the Carlyle home in Chelsea on a gray London day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The home that the Carlyles moved into in 1834 was number 5 Cheyne Row, but was later changed to number 24. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carlyle called the home “on the whole a most massive, roomy, sufficient old house with places, for example, to hang, say, three dozen hats or cloaks.” Today a visitor will find it a fitting place to remember the lives of two people who influenced the greatest artists and thinkers of their day--work we hope lives on through the publication of their letters.

 

Is Travel from the US to Cuba About to Get Easier?

The New York Times reports today that the Obama administration plans to lift some restrictions on Americans' ability to travel to Cuba. Academic, religious, and cultural groups may soon be able to travel directly to Cuba to facilitate "people-to-people" cultural exchange. If you plan to take advantage of the loosened restrictions, you'll want to read The Cuba Reader before you go. It's the perfect guide to the history, culture, and politics of the island. A reviewer in the Miami Herald said, "What The Cuba Reader does extraordinarily well is to reveal the nuances and complexity of the Cuban experience. All shades of politics are here, and they infuse Cuban dance, music, film and religion." The book is edited by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff. And look for The Havana Reader sometime in the next couple of years!

Books on Traffic

In honor of the year's busiest travel week, NPR is doing a series on traffic safety, which inspired us to think about several recent Duke Press books nominally about the subject. Enda Duffy's The Speed Handbook: Velocity, Pleasure, Modernism returns to the early days of the automobile to examine how the experience of speed has always been political and how it has affected nearly all aspects of modern culture. Speed became the quintessential way for individuals to experience modernity, to feel modernity in their bones, particularly when that speed resulted in actual broken bones! Jeremy Packer looks at automobile safety in American culture in his book Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship.  Packer analyzes how driving has been understood by experts, imagined by citizens, regulated by traffic laws, governed through education and propaganda, and represented in films, television, magazines, and newspapers. Packer, a motorcyclist himself, has an especially interesting chapter on how the motorcycle went from being seen as a cheap, easy mode of transport to a risky machine driven by outlaws. And finally, we have a new book out about the development of the anti-lock braking system (ABS). Ann Johnson's Hitting the Brakes: Engineering Design and the Production of Knowledge uses the development of ABS as a case study for examining the process of engineering design in which knowledge communities come together to produce new products and knowledge. Think about the rather tortured path from design to implementation as you stomp your own anti-lock brakes in traffic this week.

Charters on WPR's "Here on Earth"

Samuel Charters was interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio's "Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders" program on May 28, 2009. Listen to the interview here. Samuel Charters, one of the very first musicologists to study Afro-American music, has summed up his life's work in A Language of Song, which details his journey to Africa and to find Africa-influenced music in the United States, Brazil, and the Carribean.

Indonesia Reader Reviewed in Library Journal

The Indonesia Reader, edited by Tineke Hellwig and Eric Tagliacozzo, is reviewed in this month's Library Journal. The reviewer writes: "Reading [this] book is like exploring an eclectic, brightly colored museum-and leaving with a multifaceted understanding of one nation's history and cultures. . . .  The primary sources included here are the book's gems; they range from fifth-century stone pillars and writings by travelers throughout many centuries to fiction, newspaper articles, manifestos, and more in the 20th and 21st centuries." The Indonesia Reader is the first in our new series The World Readers. Look for The Native Alaska Reader later this year and The Russia Reader in 2010.

Don't Forget your Reader on Your Trip to Costa Rica

Planning a trip to Costa Rica after perusing today's New York Times Travel section? Don't forget to pack a copy of The Costa Rica Reader. Edited by Steven Palmer and Iván Molina, The Costa Rica Reader is the essential introduction to the history, culture, and politics of the popular Latin American tourist destination. The Tico Times called it "a poignant resource for anyone with an eye on the country, whether traveler, grizzled Costa Rica oldtimer, flash-in-the-pan tourist, historian, or Costa Rican national."

Glamorous Life of a Flight Attendant?

A couple of recent pieces in the New York Times bring to mind our popular 2007 book Femininity in Flight by Kathleen Barry. Today writer Ann Hood has an op-ed recalling how different flying was in the 1960s and 1970s when she was a flight attendant for TWA. As travelers sit stranded in airports or struggle with overstuffed carry-ons trying to beat the new bag charges, they may not remember that flight attendants used to offer a choice of three meals, with a smile. Another article, from Sunday's Times, describes how becoming a flight attendant is still a glamorous career for women in the Middle East. Etihad Airlines of Abu Dhabi recruits women from Egypt and other Arab nations to serve on their planes. The women live in monitored dormitories, but still experience much more freedom than they  might at home. Their experience recalls the earliest American flight attendants described by Kathleen Barry who saw the job as one of the only opportunities to pursue a career outside the home. So enjoy safe travels over the holidays, and if you're flying, smile at your flight attendants and think of how much their jobs have changed over the years.

Jeremy Packer on Road Rage

Heading off in your car for your summer vacation, or just heading to work, do you need to be worried about road rage? Jeremy Packer, author of Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship, says it's complicated. Check him out in our first Duke Press produced video.

Bulgarian Tourism

Today's New York Times features an article about Bulgaria's ski resorts. Reporter Matt Gross is not very complimentary of the services offered: the food is bad, the lines more like mobs and the trails overgroomed. Anthropologist Kristen Ghodsee examined the Bulgarian tourist industry in her book The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism, and Postsocialism on the Black Sea. Although service might not be up to Western European standards, Ghodsee finds that the industry has offered tremendous economic and social opportunities to women.

Chinese Flight Attendants Face Sexist Hiring Practices

The Los Angeles Times features an article today on the screening process for Chinese flight attendants. Applicants must be younger than 24, be between 5' 3" and 5' 6" tall and be very pretty. There is even a swimsuit competition. Sounds outrageous, but Americans have been there before. In her book Femininity in Flight, Kathleen Barry details the sexism that early "air hostesses" and "stewardesses" faced before finally unionizing in the 1970s.