Gale Ambassadors, Author at The Gale Review

The Only Way is Wessex: Thomas Hardy’s Cultural Impressions

October 4, 2023May 17, 2018 by Gale Ambassadors

By Daniel Mercieca, Gale Ambassador at Durham University

“She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought.” [i]

The well-trodden Dorsetshire heathlands, bustling rustic communities and evanescent ghosts from Thomas Hardy’s folkloric world, Wessex, continue to impress memories of English rural heritage. Hardy’s sensitive capturing of ‘mere impressions of the moment’ in prose and poetry; the cascade of raindrops on a gate, hazy warmth of a barn dance or ghostly silhouette of a horse rider in sea mist, reinvigorates our appreciation of ordinary experience [ii]. This year marks the 90th anniversary of Hardy’s final collection of verse, Winter Words in Various Moods and Meters (1928), whose sombre cadences echo amongst later generations of modern poets and can be found in The Times Historical Archive. The continual resurgence of Hardy’s works in dramatic and televisual adaptations, modern poetry and National Trust Heritage fosters a Wessex mythology which remains vibrant today.

Rebeldes, pícaros, místicos y rústicos: los irlandeses en las reseñas literarias británicas

October 4, 2023May 10, 2018 by Gale Ambassadors

Por Paula Maher Martin, Gale Ambassador en la Universidad NUI Galway

Lee este blog en inglés aquí

‘Un cuadro plasmado a partir de la vida de un pueblo cuyos días transcurren bajo el cielo en campo abierto’: los contornos lingüísticos de lo que Edith Somerville, al examinar la obra de PW Joyce Inglés como lo hablamos en Irlanda (1909), denomina el dialecto anglo-irlandés, acomodan un microcosmos de Irlanda. Paisaje exuberante y un pueblo embriagado de naturaleza, sentimientos, magia y alcohol.

Rebels, rogues, mystics and rustics: the Irish in British literary reviews

October 4, 2023May 9, 2018 by Gale Ambassadors

By Paula Maher Martin, Gale Ambassador at NUI Galway

Read this blog in Spanish here

‘A picture drawn from the life of a people whose days are spent under the sky in the open country’. These are the linguistic contours with which Edith Somerville, in examining P.W. Joyce’s 1909 work English as We Speak it in Ireland, denominates the Anglo-Irish dialect, and accommodates a microcosm of Ireland – an exuberant landscape and a people intoxicated with nature, feeling, magic and alcohol.

How can human trafficking be tackled in Britain?

October 4, 2023April 30, 2018 by Gale Ambassadors

By Tiria Barnes, Gale Student Ambassador at the University of Liverpool

Despite slavery being outlawed in the nineteenth century, human trafficking – defined by the Tearfund as ‘the transporting or abduction of people for the purposes of exploitation, using coercion, fraud or deception’[1] – is still a prevalent problem in our world today. In 2015, it was estimated that the trafficking industry was worth 32 billion US dollars a year, which is equivalent to the GDP of Tanzania[2]. As the fastest growing business in the world, it has been suggested that every 30 seconds a child is trafficked[3]. I decided that it would be interesting to investigate human trafficking on a more local scale, and see how newspapers reported on Britain’s response to the problem. Using Gale Primary Sources, I was able to make some thought-provoking discoveries.

‘The Very Latest Craze’ Slumming Parties in the Late-Nineteenth Century

October 4, 2023April 25, 2018 by Gale Ambassadors

By Megan Murphy, Gale Ambassador at the University of Liverpool

During the mid-nineteenth century, slums in the world’s largest metropolises (namely London and New York) became a site of continuous fascination. From Henry Mayhew’s famous ‘Labour and the Poor’ series in The Morning Chronicle, to Jacob Riis’ book length study ‘How the Other Half Live’, social commentators in both Britain and the US were captivating the minds of middle class society with their investigations into the living conditions of the urban poor. Yet what is perhaps most interesting about this fascination is the social phenomenon of ‘slumming parties’ which resulted. This phenomenon was readily reported on within the pages of both the British and US press, which I have been able to investigate through the British Library Newspapers and Nineteenth Century US Newspapers archives inside of Gale Primary Sources.

Alemania Nazi, Antigua Roma: la apropiación de la cultura clásica para la formulación de la identidad nacional

October 4, 2023April 13, 2018 by Gale Ambassadors

Por Paula Maher Martin, Gale Ambassador en la Universidad NUI Galway

Para leer esta publicación de blog en inglés, haga clic aquí.

Germania, una descripción aparentemente inofensiva de los territorios, costumbres y tribus de los germanos por el historiador romano del siglo I Cornelio Tácito, fue ensalzada por los alemanes nazis como un estandarte: un retrato del ario primitivo; virtuoso, intrépido y fuertemente militarizado, cualidades que habían reverberado a lo largo de los siglos y que sustentaban la identidad racial del alemán moderno.

Nazi Germany, Ancient Rome: The appropriation of classical culture for the formulation of national identity

October 4, 2023April 12, 2018 by Gale Ambassadors

By Paula Maher Martín, Gale Ambassador at NUI Galway

To read this blog in Spanish, click here.

The Germania, an apparently harmless description of the territories, customs and tribes of the Germani by 1st century Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus, was acclaimed by Nazi Germans as a banner: a portrait of the primitive Aryan; ‘virtuous, fearless and heavily militarized’, qualities the Nazis felt had reverberated through the centuries and supported the racial identity of the modern German.

On Her Majesty’s’ Secret Service – Elizabeth I in the age of spies

October 4, 2023April 9, 2018 by Gale Ambassadors

By Rory Herbert, Gale Ambassador at the University of Portsmouth

While I’m sure we’re all familiar with the daring tales of English privateers and explorers during the Elizabethan age, there remains a forgotten and crucial element that helped Elizabeth maintain power. Under her reign, and with the significant help of her counsel, Elizabeth helped to cultivate and manage an extensive network of intelligencers, spies and informants that spanned the length and breadth of the continent. And what better way to view these official government communiques than in Gale’s State Papers Online.

Horror and Censorship Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Art of the Cinema’

October 4, 2023April 5, 2018 by Gale Ambassadors

By Daniel Mercieca, Gale Ambassador at Durham University

Since the March 2018 Facebook and Cambridge Analytica controversies, censorship and data protection have come under an intense spotlight in today’s digitised society. While we become increasingly sceptical of surveillance, and cautious of what we post online, it is important to appreciate those who have struggled to be fully seen and heard. The efforts of writers and filmmakers to overcome issues of (in)visibility have consistently featured in my study of literature at university; Elizabeth Gaskell’s serialisation in Charles Dickens’ Household Words magazine, 1850-51 (she was restricted from publishing independently because of her gender), the Brontë sisters’ use of male pseudonyms, and the 1918 posthumous publication of Gerard Manly Hopkins’s poetry due to his Jesuitical vow of obedience, are all examples of nineteenth-century censorship.

‘Sporadic riots’ and ‘false reports’ – British Reporting of the 1929 Igbo Women’s War

October 4, 2023March 12, 2018 by Gale Ambassadors

By Tom Henderson, Gale Ambassador at Durham University

In December 1929, British newspapers reported on ‘sporadic riots’ taking place in the British colony of Nigeria, targeting Warrant Chiefs and Native Courts across several districts. This was the Ogu Umunwaanyi or ‘Women’s War’: a coordinated insurrection of Igbo women against British colonial rule, ignited by a fear of taxation.