Public Taste Research Articles

Why Do People Go to the Cinema?

THE QUEST FOR CULTURAL IDENTITY: WHY DO PEOPLE GO TO THE CINEMA? WE ARE currently witnessing an unprecedented wave of international symposia devoted to the attempt to save traditional cinema viewing systems from total industrialisation. In an epoch ever more characterised by a world economy based entirely on profit, and by what I would call a New Pragmatism deriving from the population explosion, it may in fact be understandable that artistic criteria suffer. Centralised, intensive industrial monopolies exist by virtue of a levelling of public taste on a lowest-common-denominator basis, and thus appear to be imposing it. Subsistence of the American movie machine depends on popularising the mediocre. The temptation therefore grows to forego quality simply to maintain the cinema as a form of popular culture. It is overlooked that "popular" and "culture" do not always coincide. Mass acceptance becomes the measure; all other criteria become luxuries....

Book Revew: The Dawning of American Drama: American Dramatic Criticism, 1746- 1915

Reviewed by: The Dawning of American Drama: American Dramatic Criticism, 1746–1915 John Russell Poole The Dawning of American Drama: American Dramatic Criticism, 1746–1915. Compiled and Edited by Jürgen C. Wolter. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993; pp. 319. $59.95 cloth. Until recently, serious exploration of American dramatic criticism prior to the twentieth century has eluded the attention of theatre scholars. The inferior quality of scripts and the absence of incisive contemporary criticism prior to the advent of the realist movement are among the reasons given by Jürgen Wolter, editor of this compendium of dramatic criticism and commentary, for such neglect. Wolter systematically has investigated American theatrical and literary popular journals to provide scholars and students a resource guide to “the most representative and illuminating texts from 170 years of dramatic criticism in America” (2). This includes almost 500 firsthand accounts and “heated debates” marking the direction of the American theatre; these are narrative artifacts that Wolter regards not only as a “treasure house of cultural memorabilia” but, more importantly, as a first step in the reclamation of early American dramatic criticism (2). Representative voices articulating the merits and defects of the early American stage are compiled into five sections. Chapters 4 and 5 document Wolter’s exhaustive search for commentary on the theatre arts recovered from a wide variety of American periodicals between 1746 and 1915. He also provides a meticulous, chronological list of dramatic criticism that will serve as an indispensable resource guide for the further study of nineteenth-century American theatre. The third chapter represents the bulk of the publication; it is here that Wolter offers representative “jeremiads and eulogies” of the dramatic arts in America spanning some six generations of theatre practice. Wolter subdivides this section of developing dramatic criticism prior to 1915 into three chronological categories: the nascent period of American theatre, 1746–1789; the utility of dramatic expression as a tool for defining American character and morality from 1790 to 1860; and, lastly, the advent of realism, 1860–1915. These “mirrors of public taste” (2) reflect the developing voices of early dramatic criticism, largely a chorus of lamentation either bemoaning the poor artistic state of the theatrical institution or its threat to religious and cultural morality in colonial America. The chronology of selected “dramatic criticism” reveals the formation of the emerging national character and the discourses of topical social issues—from women’s enfranchisement through economic empowerment, to the social plays of Ibsen. More importantly, the compilation in this section brings to light the then-ubiquitous concerns regarding the proper role of the theatre within the newly formed democratic nation, particularly as a tool for shaping a national identity and value system reflective of “American follies” and “American virtues” (11). On the whole, the collection becomes something more than a narrative of the shifting theatrical scene or of the economic dynamics of entertainment. Both critics and crusaders deal with significant issues—among them, the emergence of native playwrights from the shadow of European dramatists, the rise of melodrama, the decline of touring companies, the ascendance of the star system and its debilitating effect on the dramatic maturity of the writer’s craft, and the emergence and eventual domination of first “spectacle” and later realism. Often-lengthy passages become quite striking when intersected with the polemics of national ideology and contemporary social debate. Here, the theatre becomes a host for the immutable presence of both [End Page 252] the popular and the detested. When attacked, defenders of the theatrical institution aligned the issue of public performances to that of censorship and free assembly as a test of the underpinning principles of the fledgling democracy. If conservative moralists could indeed dictate “appropriate” forms of dramatic expression from above, as was their argument, what other forms of oppression might be impressed upon the people? When the role of theatre shifted away from one of social corruption to become an “instrument for the formation of national character” (13), it served to inculcate a strong sense of nationalism through its own peculiar representations of regional characteristics. American dramatists tapped into the young nation’s raw energy to create cultural icons of American folly as well as those...

Personal Effects, Public Effects, Special Effects: Institutionalizing American Poetry

Personal Effects, Public Effects, Special Effects: Institutionalizing American Poetry Joe Amato Jed Rasula. The American Poetry Wax Museum: Reality Effects, 1940–1990. National Council of Teachers of English. 639 pp. ISBN 0-8141-0137-2. Hardcover $42.95. Judging by its sheer heft, its blurbs, and its bulk of carefully-detailed appendices, one might expect that The American Poetry Wax Museum represents a major intervention in the ongoing struggles over American poetry. The second title in NCTE’s Refiguring English Studies series, it bills itself as an “innovative and irreverent” book that “oscillat[es] between documentary and polemic.” The inside book-jacket bio of Rasula details a curious trajectory, involving a Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz’s History of Consciousness program, a “stint as researcher for the ABC television series Ripley’s Believe It Or Not,” and a relocation to Ontario, Canada, where the now expatriate author teaches at Queen’s University. Front matter includes a brief mission statement of this NCTE series, which aims to provide “a forum for scholarship on English studies as a discipline, a profession, and a vocation.” The Series Editor, Stephen M. North, is himself author of The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field (Boynton, 1987), the first truly comprehensive attempt to survey the field of composition studies. North’s emphasis on and validation of “practitioner lore” launched a provocative challenge to then-prevailing notions of researcher expertise, and substantially bolstered the status both of composition studies and of its practitioners. Rasula’s book thus emerges from a curiously recombinant domain of publishing practices within the English industry, a domain whose academic lineage is marked by the rocky ascent to legitimacy of composition studies, and with it the corollary effect that writing practices as such, including poetry, are a suitable subject for institutional interrogation. Which legitimation has in turn been reinforced by the present popularity of cultural studies — specifically, critical reception theory, an enterprise focused on unveiling the various social and cultural apparatuses of textual consumption. With North as custodian, then, and under the imprimatur of NCTE, we might expect from this unconventionally situated author a renegade challenge to prevailing orthodoxies. And to a considerable extent, the book delivers on its promise. I’ll begin at the beginning, synchronizing my commentary with the text rather closely through Chapter Two to give some idea of its conceptual progression. A Polemical Preface” provides Rasula’s motivated macro view of what he is up to: his is “a study of the canonizing assumptions (and compulsions) that have fabricated an image of American poetry since World War II,” a “field of productive tensions . . . which are foreclosed prematurely by denials that they exist.” Concurring with Don Byrd’s appraisal that “’poetic’ self-expression” has proliferated to the point of being a “cradle to grave opportunit[y],” Rasula alleges that it has been “anthologists and commentators” who have legislated this state of denials, compiling and categorizing in the service of a graven-cum-waxen image, “the enshrinement of the self-expressive subject” (4). Chapter One: Though I found the opening salvo a bit mechanical and digressive in places, Rasula’s modus operandi is comprised of equal parts erudition and rhetorical aplomb, and a penchant for mordant observation: in accord with the NCTE series title, he refigures American poetry anthologies as museums of wax simulations whose “carceral” condition is such that each “talking head” is forced to “speak” courtesy of the wonders of voice-over technologies (yes, Baudrillard looms large in all of this, as do the lesser known Philip Fisher and Neil Harris). Poets along with their poetry are thus reduced to ventriloquial ploys employed by their curators both to pander to public taste and to promote various not-so-hidden, but often complex social-qua-literary agendas: My concern, in elaborating this thesis of a poetry wax museum, is to suggest that the seemingly autonomous “voices and visions” of poets themselves have been underwritten by custodial sponsors who have surreptitiously turned down the volume on certain voices, and simulated a voice-over for certain others. Nothing defines the situation more succinctly than the police phrase protective custody. (33) For Rasula, the...

Teatros y Comedias en Madrid: 1719-1745: Estudio y Documentos (review)

REVIEWS Varey, J. E., N. D. Shergold, and Charles Davis. Teatros y Comedias en Madrid: 1719-1745: Estudio y Documentos. Madrid, London: Tamesis Books, 1994. (Serie C: Fuentes para la historia del teatro en Espa ña, xll.) Paper. 388 p. $51.00/£28.50. As the authors say in their preface: "Con este tomo completamos la publicaci ón de todos los documentos conservados en el Archivo de Secretaría del Archivo Municipal de Madrid relativos a los antiguos corrales de comedias madrileñas." The subset within the Fuentes series (volumes III-VI, XI, and this XII) presents the documentation and its synthesis/analysis for the period 1600-1745. Preceding the 234 documents identified or transcribed in the present volume is an introduction discussing seven topic areas (Administration , Accounting, the Ayuntamiento and the Hospitals, Prohibitions and Suspensions, the Buildings, the Repertory, and la Vida teatral) with a General Conclusion. At the end ofthe volume are a chronological list of Palace performances (one page: 4 works), an index of works performed or announced , and another ofproper names and places. This period, 1719-1745, is a crucial one for the two corrales (Cruz and Principe) in several respects. It marks the end of the leasing or franchising of the theatres to private individuals, and the subsequent expansion of the rôle played by municipal authority and its "Junta de corrales de comedias," as well as that ofthe royal Consejo de Castilla and its "Protector de los hospitales y de las comedias" in theatrical productions—rôles not always in mutual accord. Actors react to the new situation exhibiting more self-assertion , and seeking increased (self) benefit. Income from ticket sales descends as prices rise. The physical condition of both corrales deteriorates to the point where reconstruction (as coliseos) must take precedence over repair, if the increasing demand for more elaborate—and weighty—stage machinery is to be accommodated. Reconstruction is hampered, however, by legal problems concerning responsibilities and liabilities of owners of houses adjoining both corrales. Finally, there is the introduction (and royally-favored competition) ofItalian artists performing in the theatre ofthe Caños del Peral . Times are changing, as is also public taste. This is the fourth volume of the Fuentes series that I have reviewed, and I hope it will not be the last. The meticulous scholarship ofthe authors/editors and their perceptive commentary on and analysis of the documents presented result in extremely user-friendly, reliable works of exceptional value 63 64BCom, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Summer 1996) to those of us interested in the history of Spanish theatre. Every volume of the series has provided me with bits ofinformation immediately pertinent to my own research area. I am sure that many others have benefitted from material made accessible through this series. Nor should we overlook the "entertainment " value of these volumes in the glimpses they afford us of what went on behind the curtain. Actor complaints, some justified, some not; political rivalries; accountants seeking fiscal responsibility yet stonewalled at every turn; royal/official whims and vagaries: all reminding us that theatre then was as subject to outside factors as is theatre ofthe present. It is unfortunate that there is a tendency today to minimalize the value of archival research and the efforts of those who pursue it. Yet, where would we be, and what would we do without such research? The general title of the series to which this volume belongs is Fuentes para la historia del teatro en España. When the ultimate History of Spanish Theatre is written, it will have been made possible in large part by the patience, diligence and professionalism ofProfessors Varey, Shergold, and Davis. Karl C. Gregg University of Arizona Albrecht, Jane. Irony and Theatricality in Tirso de Molina. Ottawa Hispanic Series 16. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1994. Paper. 201 Pp. $14.00 In this study of the importance of Tirso's use of irony, Albrecht chooses ten plays for analysis, five comedies: El Aquiles, El vergonzoso en palacio, Don Gil de las calzas verdes, La celosa de sí misma, and Marta la Piadosa and five plays called ironic tragedies and tragicomedies: La venganza de Tamar, El burlador de Sevilla, El condenado por desconfiado...

Pugin: a Gothic passion

By the early 19th century the Gothic Revival was well on the way to becoming the most important style in Britain and was influencing public taste all over the world. With its particular concerns for pattern, ornament, and anti-classical principles of design and structure, the style remained popular until the 1920s and continues to be well known today. Less familiar, however, is the man who invented the Gothic Revival, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the most influential designer in 19th-century Britain. This book is the first to offer a complete appraisal of Pugin's life and achievements. As a designer of cathedrals, parish churches, schools, colleges, and private homes, and in particular as one of the two designers of the new Palace of Westminster, Pugin launched Gothic as the State style in Britain and in many other parts of the world. Pugin was also an industrial designer, creating furniture, metalwork, silver and jewellery, textiles, wallpapers, and book design in an integrated and coordinated approach to design that revolutionized public taste. He also influenced opinion by writing books that ranged from design manuals to polemical arguments in defence of his principles. Passi

M. O. Hammond of Toronto

Abstract ‘Mr Hammond, you have a good way of sensing public taste’,1 remarked an official of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) in 1926, during a discussion with members of the Toronto Camera Club (TCC) about the annual International Salon of Photography. ‘Mr Hammond’ was the journalist and amateur photographer M. O. Hammond (1876-1934),2 a fixture in the Toronto culture scene since 1906 when he had become literary editor and a reviewer of art exhibitions for the newspaper The Globe. He was well known for his efforts to encourage and publish Canadian writers and artists. His three books3 and numerous newspaper and magazine articles popularized Canadian history, art, and literature, and were frequently illustrated by his own photographs.

'Conversations on the Arts': Writing a Space for the Female Viewer in the Repository of Arts 1809 15

But if art was 'accessible' to all, Hazlitt was equally insistent that only the 'few' could feel the power of art and respond with true understanding.3 Excluded from the few was the female sex, whose interest could at best be only personal and particular, or, as was more likely, restricted to the level of superficial and fashionable commodity consumption. I will return to Hazlitt at the end of my article but for the moment want to suggest that the cultural formation of 'Hazlitt' as a critic and writer on art (i.e. as a liberal male intellectual) can be partly understood in terms of oppositions and differences encompassing the economic, political and private spheres, and defined in terms of class and gender. I want to argue that Ackermann's Repository ofArts4 provides a useful means of exploring the other side of these differences the construction of the bourgeois female viewing 'subject' as a 'proper lady'5 in the context of a magazine which celebrated individual capitalist enterprise, commerce, manufacturing and fashion. It was also politically and ideologically conservative, being dedicated to promoting the benefits of the Prince Regent's rule. Unlike Hazlitt, Ackermann did believe that it was possible to improve public taste by the promotion of the arts in the spirit of trade, and he also regarded the 'fair sex' as his most important consumers. I want to ask what happened to the 'female' viewer when privatised values, a new emphasis upon the particular and concrete in nature, and the rise of 'domestic' genre painting might appear to have privileged the woman's viewpoint, or at least to have offered the potential for so doing. If, as argued by John Barrell, women had been excluded from eighteenthcentury formulations of the 'republic of taste' on the grounds that they lacked any public or political voice or space, and because they were held to be intellectually incapable of generalising or abstracting from the particular;6 and if they were being increasingly excluded from institutional and professional artistic structures and practices as producers of art,7 they were nonetheless very much an important part of the expanding 'public' for art in the early nineteenth century where the public is understood in terms of an aggregate of private individuals as spectators, viewers, patrons, potential patrons, amateurs, readers and consumers. Moreover, it was a fragmented 'public' which was being defined, framed and controlled in terms of identity and difference according to class fraction, politics, gender and interest, in the many newspapers and periodicals of the day.8 This shift towards privatised values and viewpoints required the rewriting and/or reproduction of earlier formulations of gender difference in order to reinstate the dominance of the male viewpoint and to assert the authenticity of individual male experiences of art. At the same time, women, designated as the principal readers or consumers of fashionable novels and periodicals like Ackermann's Repository of Arts, were increasingly being defined as trivialising and superficial consumers of fashionable 'art commodities'. I want to offer an analysis of two 'representations' of the female viewer in the early nineteenth century to exemplify the way in which the periodical press functioned to construct or interpellate the reader as a 'viewing subject' in terms of class and gender. In doing so, I do not want to suggest that my examples exhaust the range of subject positions available to women at the time. I also recognise the danger of slipping from ideological formations and constructions within the text to making assumptions about the way real women looked at, responded to, and understood art. No art form was so widely regarded as being

Cultural excursions: marketing appetites and cultural tastes in modern America

Neil Harris's scholarship of the past twenty-five years has helped to open up the study of American cultural history. This long-awaited collection gathers some of his rich and varied writings. Harris takes us from John Philip Sousa to Superman, with stops along the way to explore art museums and world fairs, shopping malls and hotel lobbies, urban design and utopian novels, among other artifacts of American cultures. The essays fall into three general sections: the first treats the history of cultural institutions, highlighting the role of museums; the second section focuses on some literary, artistic, and entrepreneurial responses to the new mass culture; and the final group of essays explores the social history of art and architecture. Throughout Harris's diverse writings certain themes recur-the redefining of boundaries between high art and popular culture, the relationship between public taste and technological change, and the very notion of what constitutes a shared social experience. Harris's pioneering work has broadened the field of cultural history and encouraged whole new areas of inquiry. Cultural Excursions will be useful for those in American and culture studies, as well as for the general reader trying to make sense of the culture in which we live.

Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics.

Just a few years in the mid-1950s separated the golden age of television's live anthology drama from Newton Minow's famous vast wasteland pronouncement. Fifties Television shows how the significant programming changes of the period cannot be attributed simply to shifting public tastes or the exhaustion of particular program genres, but underscore fundamental changes in the way prime-time entertainment programs were produced, sponsored, and scheduled. These changes helped shape television as we know it today. William Boddy provides a wide-ranging and rigorous analysis of the fledgling American television industry during the period of its greatest economic growth, programming changes, and critical controversy. He carefully traces the development of the medium from the experimental era of the 1920s and 1930s through the regulatory battles of the 1940s and the network programming wars of the 1950s.

Suffering and Sensation in The Ruined Cottage

Recently, Jerome McGann has criticized The Ruined Cottage's fostering of “the grand illusion” of Romanticism, “the idea that poetry, or even consciousness, can set one free of the ruins of history and culture.” But to characterize Wordsworth's poem in this way is to overlook its direct engagement with one social field, the literary marketplace; as an experiment with genre the poem sharply confronts a public taste for sensational literature. This confrontation is also a form of collusion, for the technical innovations that distinguish Wordsworth's poetry of suffering from popular sensational literature deploy the tactics and create the effects of that literature. The Ruined Cottage at once entices and reproves the public taste. Intended to appeal to a public of feminized readers, it also creates the readers-to-be of high Romantic poetry—an audience whose pleasure it is to distance itself from the captivated feminine heart.

Controverses sur l’aménagement d’un musée des Arts décoratifs à Paris au XIXe siècle

Controversy around the organization of a museum of decorative arts in Paris during the nineteenth century. The idea of a museum of decorative arts is closely linked to the new awareness of the radical changes witnessed during the nineteenth century in industrial production and in the relations between industrial and artistic production. The earliest projects for the museum insisted on the pedagogical aspects of the presentation, designed to educate public taste and that of artists and workers in particular. The author of this article studies the different projects which followed one another during the nineteenth century, beginning with that of Amédée Couder and Jean Feuchère towards the end of the 1840s. Via the museum — comprising a school, a library, a collection of plaster casts, etc. — , this project aimed to train the artists of the new industrial era. In 1852 the sculptor Jules Klagmann presented a report on the art industries in France, but this report had no results. In 1873 the architect and engineer J . Gabriel Davioud suggested that a collection should be integrated into a new school of applied arts. The « Union centrale des Beaux-Arts appliqués à l’Industrie » (central union for fine arts applied to industry) already had the beginnings of such a collection and in 1877 the « Société du Musée des Arts décoratifs » was founded to install this collection in the Palais de l’Industrie at Paris. Henceforth the discussion was essentially concerned with how the collection should be classified and how the pieces should be presented. The article examines the projects put forward by Louvrier de Lajolais and Georges Lafenestre in 1877 and by Georges Berger in 1878, this last aiming at a « professional museum ». In 1886, finally, Germain Bapst suggested a classification by ensembles and the organization of the subject matter into sections, taking into account the tastes of a public which was no longer limited to one of artisans and workers. When the museum finally opened in 1905, its presentation was consequently closer to that of traditional fine art museums and the different projects with exagerated technological implications had been forgotten.

Video Policy in Guyana

Guyana, until recently one of the few countries with no official television service, has initiated limited television to support nation building and economic development. This English-speaking nation—independent since 1966—has found it has to contend with strong marketplace forces. The study speculates that public tastes may already be too shaped by the market for the government to influence them.

Broadcast Condom Advertising: A Case Study

This study reveals the decision-making that went into the first television condom advertising on San Francisco's KRON-TV in January 1987, regarded as one of the first stations to take this step. The study is based upon in-depth interviews with key station managers immediately after the decision. Station leaders debated questions of public interest and public tastes in a city hard hit by AIDS. Linking up with a public interest group, the station devised careful guidelines and began broadcasting on a trial basis. Nearly all public and media reaction — and there was plenty — was favorable.

The Journals of Alfred Kazin

material below has been excerpted from Alfred Kazin's journals now held in Berg Collection of New York Public Library. Kazin, who has always regarded his journal writing as indispensable to his work as writer and critic, has described his journal variously as: lie-detector, of ascertaining authenticity (26 Sept. 1966), where one can turn an idea over its own sake alone-where one can talk to oneself in perfect privacy of heart (23 Jan. 1950), place to discover the inner voice [. . .] soundness of private personality as against innumerable temptations to facility, convention and untruth (16 Sept. 1956), a new way of seeing (25 May 1976). In 1963 interview Kazin cited his journal as his great resource as writer, a travel report into my thought and experience, necessary exercise for getting at my thought anything and (103). More recently he has credited his journal writing his success in moving beyond literary criticism to personal history, an autobiographical form of my own, whose passion and beat come from my life in history recorded since I was boy ... in voluminous daily journal or sketchbook into which went everything that I felt like describing and thinking about (Contemporaries 412; The Past 4). Yet, Kazin insists, greatest value of his journal has always been sheer private pleasure of adding to it. What I liked most this intimate record was writing in it, first thing in morning, in complete spontaneity and naturalness, lifelike and at quick, as French say. It represented some effort to think my life out. It also got me away from editors and their subjective dogmas of public taste and capacity; this, at least, was all myself' (The Past 4).

Plaster Casts after Antique Sculpture: Their Role in the Elevation of Public Taste and in American Art Instruction

Plaster Casts after Antique Sculpture: Their Role in the Elevation of Public Taste and in American Art Instruction

The quality of cereal foods

Cereal foods have a very important place in the nation's diet. Over 8 million tonnes/year of cereals are consumed by the food and drinks industries. Bread is the main form of cereals consumption, but 70% of people in a recent survey regularly eat breakfast cereals. Cereals provide 30% of energy uptake, 25% of dietary protein, over 40% of dietary fibre, and also provide essential minerals and vitamin B. By contrast, they contribute little fat. Bread is the freshest of manufactured food products on the market, and the quality of its contribution to the diet is very evident. Successive Government committees have pointed to the nutritional benefits of cereal food consumption. The public is absorbing that advice and the industry is responding to changes in the public taste. Demand for brown and wholemeal bread has risen from 3% to 30% of bread consumption in 35 years as technology has advanced and the industry has provided more satisfying products, such as the soft textured expanded wholemeal loaf. Wholemeal pasta products have shown a three-fold increase in consumption since 1982. It is expected that these trends will develop further as a more discerning public continues to look for improvements in the quality of its diet.

The Nutritional Status of Female Ballet Dancers 15-18 Years of Age

The demand for ultra-leanness imposed on today's ballerina has evolved over primarily the last thirty years, and did not characterize the traditional classical ballet that dominated the field during its preceding four hundred years. Evolving public taste has tended to prefer increasingly slender figures, and the more Olympian levels of performance dancers must now exhibit further reinforce the demand for extreme leanness.The author's forty years of dance education experience and performance of classical ballet have made her aware that excellent training has become ever more widely available to the younger members of our society. Their rigorous training— continued well into the high school years—supports the achievement of a high level of technical and aesthetic perfection. Today's elite classical dancers are trained to make ever more revolutions in ever more complex and faster paced turns, and to do quicker and more intricate allegro work. They are trained to execute more complex jumps with greater elevation, and to sustain their balances with less preparation time. Furthermore, as the quality and quantity of professionally-oriented ballet schools have increased dramatically, today's dancer is facing an exponentially increased level of competition.Increasingly demanding techniques and more intense levels of competition require today's dancers to meet what are, in the author's view, extreme standards of leanness. Each year among the hundreds of beautifully trained dancers who audition for the few vacancies available in professional ballet companies, many are rejected on sight because they do not project the proper, or ideal, body image: long legs, long arms, long neck, oval shaped head; a body of excellent proportions; and, perhaps of greatest importance, a “bone-thin” frame. Ballet masters recognize that extreme leanness enables the dancer to become more energy-efficient, physically articulate, and agile; it facilitates partnering and pointe dancing; and projects an aesthetically pleasing athletic, or sylph-like, image to the public that subsidizes the art.

Dodsley's "Oeconomy of Human Life," 1750-1751

Perhaps no book published eighteenth century was issued more separate printings than Robert Dodsley's Oeconomy of Human Life. Although it was not published until 1750, by end of century about two hundred editions had appeared, including forty-eight American editions as well as translations into Latin, Hebrew, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Danish. In addition there were a host of imitations and parodies, separately printed and newspapers and magazines. By contrast, works such as Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and Gray's Elegy seem like publishing failures. This article will examine separately printed editions (and imitations) of Oeconomy during its first year of publication-actually, thirteen and a half months. It will establish identity of first edition, a matter of much confusion. It will serve as an introduction to a bibliography of Dodsley's most popular work (eventually leading to a bibliography of all of Dodsley's writings). Finally, it will provide some specific evidence for discussions of eighteenth-century popular taste. general reader London mid-eighteenth century displayed a strong preference for works of didactic morality, and Robert Dodsley, both as publisher and as author, successfully catered to this taste. In 1748 Dodsley edited and compiled Preceptor, which James Boswell describes as of most valuable books for improvement of young minds that has appeared any language. To this collection Samuel Johnson contributed a preface and his famous moral allegory, The Vision of Theodore, which later years Johnson described as the best thing he ever wrote. In 1749 Dodsley published Johnson's finest and most famous poem, Vanity of Human Wishes. With its strongly didactic conclusion, it is, says Boswell, in opinion of best judges, as high an effort of ethick poetry as any language can shew. In March 1750, Johnson began his notable series of periodical essays, Rambler. It was this publication-so Boswell tells us-that Johnson came forth character for which he was eminently qualified, a majestick teacher of moral and religious wisdom.' Later same decade, Robert Dodsley was one of publishers of Johnson's apologue, Rasselas. But Dr. Johnson was far from being alone his efforts to supply moral literature to an enthusiastic reading public; fact, as one reads London newspapers, magazines, and book-reviewing periodicals of 1750s he is impressed by large number of works-whether poetry, prose, or drama-which reflect even their titles their explicit moral messages. As an eminently successful publisher, Robert Dodsley understood better than most taste of times; his Collection of Poems by Several Hands, for example, was most popular poetical anthology of mid-century and went through numerous editions between 1748 and 1782. By 1750 Dodsley was a mature man, an experienced writer, a successful editor and publisher, and a shrewd judge of public taste; it is not surprising,

From Pinafore to Porter: United States-United Kingdom Interactions in Musical Theater, 1879-1929

the grip of Pinafore mania. In London the success of the latest Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera led not only to a dispute over the legal rights to the work and to two simultaneous rival productions but also to a third production put on by children. In the United States productions sprang up in Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere, so that at one time there were reputedly more than forty companies presenting the work.' Such was the American public taste for the brand of musical theater represented by H.M.S. Pinafore, and such the lack of protection provided by United States copyright law, that Richard D'Oyly Carte not only brought over his company's definitive production of that work but also mounted its Gilbert and Sullivan successorThe Pirates of Penzance-in New York some three months before London saw it.

"The General Motherhood of the Commonwealth": Dance Hall Reform in the Progressive Era

These people work to exist and they must play if they are to live. And they must play in the only way they know how to play, and that is by means of the commercialized amusements that we offer them. But we must protect them at every possible point, . . . [teaching] them what things are good and what things are bad ....There is no regulation that can be applied ... like the formation of standards of public taste, public opinion, the great social chaperonage that every man owes to his brother and every woman to her sister. -Belle Israels, The Dance Problem, National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 14 June 1912.