Saturday, July 16, 2011

Study Day: RICHARD JEFFERIES & SPORT

RICHARD JEFFERIES AND SPORT
SATURDAY 30 July 2011
RICHARD JEFFERIES’ MUSEUM, MARLBOROUGH ROAD, COATE, SN3 6AA
PROGRAMME
The day will seek to draw together some of Jefferies’ responses to sport and identify key common themes between them.
10.30 Doors open and refreshments.
11.00 Welcome and introductions by the Chairman of the Richard Jefferies Society.
11.15 Select a relevant piece of Jefferies’ writing or about Jefferies on the subject of sport to read to others. See notes*
1.00-2.30 Lunch break. Bring packed lunch or eat at the Sun Inn nextdoor. RJS publications and second-hand books on sale. Opportunity to look around the Museum.
2.30 Keynote Lecture by Rebecca Welshman: ‘ ‘Give me an iron mace that I may crush the savage beast and hammer him down’: the primitive and the ideal in Jefferies’ perception of Sport’
3.45 Refreshments.
4.15 Depart .
* Notes
Extracts should be no more than 5 minutes long. The choice of topic is optional, but sports to consider might include skating, shooting, fishing, hunting, swimming, rowing, and horse riding. The following texts might be helpful:
‘The Gamekeeper at Home’ (1878)
The Amateur Poacher (1879)
‘Shooting a Rabbit’ (Pall Mall Gazette, 1880. Collected in Chronicles of the Hedges)
Bevis (1882)
‘The Defence of Sport’ (National Review, 1883) (Collected in two parts: as ‘Sport and Science’ in Life of the Fields and ‘A Defence of Sport’ Chronicles of the Hedges)
The Story of My Heart (1883)
‘Skating’, in Hills and the Vale
Red Deer (1884)
‘The Bathing Season’ (1884) in The Open Air
The Dewy Morn (1884)
‘Field Sports in Art – the Mammoth Hunter’ (1885) in Field and Hedgerow
Brian Morris’ Richard Jefferies and the Ecological Vision