Adopt an Author

The 'Adopt an Author' Scheme was initiated in autumn 1997, as a pedagogic extension of the SHU Corvey Project on Women's Writing, and a means of involving undergraduate students actively in the research culture of the Sheffield Hallam English department. The philosophy and method of the scheme is described in the following extracts from an article recently written by Emma Clery, one of the research fellows, for a CCUE (Council for College & University English) News special issue on teaching and research (June 1998).

[W]ith the best revisionist will in the world, instructors are still faced with obstacles when they try to broaden the canonical horizon of their courses. The two most obvious problems remain: access to texts and the limits of course-time. Recent editions and anthologies have greatly extended the range of available texts, but...trying to construct a course à la carte can still prove an expensive business for the department (in terms of photo-copying) and/or students. And then there is the impossible finitude of any course, particularly acute in the case of the romantics: how to do justice to the 'Big Six' and the critical history which lies behind their canonization, while providing a more inclusive understanding of the literary period? 'What follows is an account of one strategy we have initiated at Sheffield Hallam University, to involve undergraduate students in the rewarding work of recovering forgotten texts of the Romantic era, while circumventing the problems just mentioned. Our aim has been to allow the students themselves to become frontline researchers, specialists in the career and writings of a single author, and then contribute their findings to a database available on the Internet. As in many departments elsewhere, final-year English majors undertake a course of independant study over two semesters, resulting in a dissertation on a subject of their choice. Most choose to look at works of twentieth-century literature, or take the option of creative writing (a strength of the department). At the end of the 1997 summer term, second-year students considering what to do for their Independent Study Unit were invited to participate in a scheme called 'Adopt an Author' in conjunction with the Corvey Project on Romantic-era women's writing. This involved selecting a little-known female author represented in the collection holdings, reading two or three of her works, writing a critical dissertation, a synopsis and a keyword analytical description of each work for use in the online database, an annotated bibliography of critical and reference works used, and, where information was available, a biographical sketch and an account of the critical reception of her work (using, for the most part, contemporary reviews). Although the course of study remains independent, they would receive more guidance at the outset than usual, some extra training in research skills, and the opportunity to consult the Corvey research fellows as they required... To our surprise and delight, sixteen undergraduates... chose to work with us in excavating the forgotten publications of almost unknown writers. We began by providing them with a list of 150 writers (about half the number of female authors found in the belles lettres tranche of the Edition Corvey). All of these were included in The Feminist Companion to Literature in English, edited by Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy (London: B.T. Batsford, 1990). Reading through the entries helped give students a sense of the extent and diversity of women's writing at the time, as well as providing some information on which to base their choice. Thirty of the authors were also represented in the Royal Literary Fund Archive, a marvellous resource which the SHU library bought on microfilm last year to support the Corvey Project. From 1792 when the RLF was founded, needy authors and their sponsors wrote detailed letters of application to the trustees of the Fund, including life-histories and lists of publications. Once students had made a short-list of writers, they could then browse through examples of their work in the Edition Corvey before making a final decision. In three group orientation sessions, the students learned about catalogues and other research resources available on the World Wide Web. They were given annotated reading lists, with information about standard biographical dictionaries and bibliographies, as well as works of criticism on literary production in the Romantic period, and on women's writing in particular. The students seemed to be variously equipped: only a few had used the Internet before, and not all had previously studied the Romantic period, but already their enthusiasm for the task was remarkable. It was clear that the opportunity of going where, in most cases, no critic had gone before, and making a genuine contribution to what was known about women's literary history was inspiring for them.