An Old Editor Remembers: VPN/VPR at Toronto, 1973–85

Abstract

In the summer of 1962, I moved from the Durham Colleges in the University of Durham (as they were then called), where I had been working on an MA. dissertation on the poetry of Coleridge, to University College, London, in order to start on my doctorate. I only had the vaguest idea about what I wanted to do but I was interested in exploring Victorian criticism of contemporary poetry: John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, that kind of thing. I was given Isobel Armstrong, the youngest faculty member in the Department, as my supervisor and I could not have been more fortunate. In the early 1960s Isobel was at the beginning of a very distinguished career: she had already written an attractive little book on the poetry of Arthur Hugh Clough (1962), and she would later publish The Major Victorian Poets: Reconsiderations in 1969 and an anthology of Victorian criticism of poetry, Victorian Scrutinies, in 1972. At some point, Isobel directed my attention to Victorian periodicals as a largely unexplored resource and she suggested that I write to Professor Walter E. Houghton of Weilesley College for information about authorship of anonymous articles. Walter was initially rather suspicious and was worried that I wanted to appropriate his research, but things were smoothed over and Walter not only gave me what I wanted but asked me to do the section on the British and Foreign Review for the second volume of the Weilesley Index and made me into an assistant editor. I have very fond memories of staying with Walter and Esther in their home in Weilesley and of sipping parfaits on a long summer evening on the terrace of the Weilesley Faculty Club. The Weilesley Index must have been one of the last scholarly projects of its kind put together without the help of a computer. Walter was no Luddite, but he had taken advice that he would be much better off doing things the old-fashioned way, with hand-written slips.