Exhibition

I was excited to read in the newspaper yesterday of an upcoming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery entitled The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons. As you can probably guess, it's a display of portraits of actress from the late seventeenth through to the eighteenth century, and by all accounts it sounds as though there are going to be some good ones: as well as the two in the exhibition's title, this news article references Susannah Cibber, Mary Robinson, and (my personal favourite), Dora Jordan, some of the most famous eighteenth-century actresses (and in some cases, playwrights).


It does seem as though the exhibition's focus will be on beautiful young things which is rather a shame - grotesque women and women in drag have a place in eighteenth-century theatrical history, particularly in burlesques, and their portraits were certainly painted. Nevertheless, I'm greatly looking forward to it. October can't come quickly enough!

Cracked article

I just found this Cracked article on duelling. It's funny and mostly accurate!

Chronicle of Higher Education article

A rather confused article on the othering of violence; it's adapted from an upcoming book and I don't think that it really works in this condensed form. However, I'm looking forward to the book when it comes out: Bloodlust: On the Roots of Violence From Cain and Abel to the Present. I'm interested to see how he'll relate othering to the duel - assuming that the duel is covered, of course.

I have a review-in-process which should be up tomorrow evening, so stay tuned!