Table Of ContentNineteenth-Century
Verse and Technology
Machines of Meter
Jason David Hall
Palgrave Studies in
Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture
General Editor: Joseph Bristow
Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century
Writing and Culture
Series editor
Joseph Bristow
Department of English
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA
USA
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Jason David Hall
Nineteenth-Century
Verse and Technology
Machines of Meter
Jason David Hall
Department of English
University of Exeter
Exeter, UK
Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture
ISBN 978-3-319-53501-2 ISBN 978-3-319-53502-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53502-9
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For
Jeremy Maarten Hall
who loves machines of all varieties and whose innate sense of rhythm
and rhyme already well surpasses his father’s.
“All children like verses, even when they do not comprehend them;
it is the rhythm and rhyme that pleases.”
Baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow, The Philosophy and Methods
of the Kindergarten (English translation of 1872)
A
cknowledgements
At the University of Exeter, where the book was conceived and written,
many supportive colleagues, across a number of disciplines, made direct
and indirect contributions to the project. Indefatigable in her encour-
agement from the very beginning was Regenia Gagnier. Without her
guidance, I might not have taken a leap of faith from Irish to Victorian
Studies in the first place; she is a generous evaluator of her colleagues’
work, and her comments on early drafts of this book helped to anchor
some of its more speculative assertions. Thanks also to Jane Spencer,
who, as erstwhile Head of English and my academic mentor at various
points, helped me to see where the project was going and how to make
sure it got there. Members of Exeter’s Centre for Victorian Studies—
namely Joe Kember, John Plunkett, Angelique Richardson, Paul Young,
and Patricia Zakreski—offered up their expertise in countless ways,
never turning me away when I drifted into their offices to pick their
brains, let off steam, or simply prattle. It was also a big help that the
CVS played host to so many conferences and visiting scholars, giving me
more opportunities than I deserved to press the project’s various parts
on new audiences. In particular, I am grateful to three visitors whose
arrival in the early and middle stages of the book’s research provided
timely prompting. First, the late Simon Dentith, who, after hearing me
present my first sketch of the Eureka machine, fixed me with an inscruta-
ble stare and gave me a great fillip when he exclaimed, “Jason, that’s just
weird!” Second, Dennis Denisoff, whose visit to Exeter opened up new
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
possibilities for research beyond the strictly literary. Third, Chip Tucker,
who shared his capacious knowledge of Victorian poetry with me, chat-
ting amiably about Tennysonian hoofbeats and Quakers.
Beyond Exeter’s English department and its community of
Victorianists, I am grateful to colleagues in the departments of
Computer Science, Drama, Engineering, History, Humanities, and
Modern Languages. In their respective capacities as Dean of the College
of Humanities and Associate Dean for Education, Andrew Thorpe and
Sarah Hamilton assisted in finding ways for my research to carry on
even while I took over as Head of Department. During that appoint-
ment and for years before, my colleagues in Cornwall (some long
gone, others still present) were excellent readers and interlocutors, as
well as collaborators. I am particularly grateful to Tim Cooper, Marion
Gibson, Nick Groom, Kate Hext, Adeline Johns-Putra, Jim Kelly, Alex
Murray, Richard Noakes, Chris Stokes, Bea Underwood, Nicola Whyte,
and Shelly Windsor. On Exeter’s Streatham Campus I owe so much
to Richard Everson and Alma Rahat, whose interest in the techniques
and technologies of meter and whose expertise on matters of mechani-
cal and computer systems have enhanced my understanding of verse
mechanics greatly. It was an absolute pleasure to work with them and
other extremely knowledgeable collaborators (in particular Neil Bollen
and Richard Jaeschke) on the “Poetry by Numbers” project, which was
supported by a Science in Culture Innovation Award from the Arts and
Humanities Research Council. That project—a direct offshoot of this
book—confirmed my hunch that meter is a truly interdisciplinary sub-
ject. Dialogue with interested persons outside of English departments
has been one of the most rewarding features of this endeavor.
As has dialogue with the many scholars of prosody, science and tech-
nology, and nineteenth-century studies—at home and abroad. The “his-
torical poetics” folks in particular have given me an imagined community
that has been equally sustaining and challenging. I’m so glad to have
discussed this book and its mechanics with Kirstie Blair, Max Cavitch,
Meredith Martin, Yopie Prins, and Jason Rudy, as well as many others at
conferences and symposia in the USA and UK. Also extremely encourag-
ing, in person and in print, have been Isobel Armstrong, Derek Attridge,
Charlotte Berry, Jim Buzard, Richard Clark, Bland Crowder, Dino
Felluga, Nick Freeman, Andy Hamilton, Linda Hughes, Alice Jenkins,
Ewan Jones, Catherine Maxwell, David Nowell-Smith, Max Paddison,
Ana Parejo-Vadillo, Stephen Regan, Catherine Robson, Lacy Rumsey,
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
Chris Stray, Ryan Sweet, Keir Waddington, Natalie Watson, Jason
Whittaker, Adam Watt, Martin Willis, and Susan Wolfson.
Support to undertake research trips, visit archives, and carve out time
to write has been enabled by various institutions. Much of the early
research for the book was facilitated by the British Academy, whose gen-
erous research and travel grants got the project up and running. Later a
Research Fellowship funded by the Leverhulme Trust released me from
teaching and administrating responsibilities for 12 months, allowing me
to make crucial headway with the drafting of the book. While on study
leave and, in some cases, during term, I had the good fortune to work
in a number of world-class research libraries and archives—the research
conducted there helped to lay bare not only the vastness of the prosody
corpus but also the memorable curiosities contained therein. The project
benefited immensely from working at the Alfred Gillett Trust Heritage
Collections, Street; the British Library, St. Pancras; the Charterhouse
School Archive, Godalming; the Harry Ransom Center, University of
Texas at Austin; the Library of the Society of Friends, London; and the
Lit. & Phil., Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Going places, finding (or not) what
one hopes to find, and taking advice from friendly and knowledgeable
library staff are, for me, among the greatest joys of being a historical
researcher.
A book this long in the making is bound to have leaked out in a few
places before its parts are gathered and bound together. Parts of Chapter
“Automaton Versifiers” originally appeared as “Popular Prosody: Spectacle
and the Politics of Victorian Versification,” in the journal Nineteenth-
Century Literature 62.2 (2007), pp. 222–249, and I would like to thank the
University of California Press for granting permission to reproduce extracts
of that work, in revised form, here. Sections from Chapter “Instrumental
Prosody” originally appeared in two journal articles: West Virginia
University Press kindly allowed me to reproduce material from my article
“Materializing Meter: Physiology, Psychology, Prosody,” from Victorian
Poetry 49.2 (2001), pp. 179–197; and the Johns Hopkins University Press
granted permission to reproduce material from my article “Mechanized
Metrics: From Verse Science to Laboratory Prosody, 1880–1918,” from
Configurations 17.3 (2009), pp. 285–308.
For taking a chance on this strange beast, I am extremely grateful to
Joseph Bristow, who has watched the project evolve from a speculative
article into an expansive monograph. As editor of the Palgrave Studies in
Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture series he made many detailed
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
and helpful comments that have improved the manuscript that I first
submitted to the press. I’m also very much indebted to Ben Doyle, Milly
Davies, and the rest of the Palgrave Macmillan editorial team for guiding
the book toward publication. It’s a pleasure to be working, yet again,
with you guys.
Finally, a word of thanks to those at home. I can’t even begin to
imagine what it’s like to live with a man who comes home to talk about
(or brood silently upon) this book’s subject matter. I’m not sure I’d
choose to live with a prosodist, but I’m so glad that two longsuffering
souls—Vike Martina Plock and Jeremy Maarten Hall—do so choose.
From reading and commenting on the work-in-progress to teaching me
about rhythmical possibilities I would never have considered on my own,
they have given so much of their time—often without even knowing it.
It’s not a lie when I say that there is probably no aspect of this book
they haven’t improved in some way or another. Jeremy, I’ll do my best to
make sure the next book includes pirates and astronauts.
