{"id":187,"date":"2016-05-31T12:06:18","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T18:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/?p=187"},"modified":"2016-06-02T11:07:46","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T17:07:46","slug":"woodward-presents-sarah-fielding-and-jane-collier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/blog\/2016\/05\/31\/woodward-presents-sarah-fielding-and-jane-collier\/","title":{"rendered":"Woodward presents Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Professor Carolyn Woodward presented “Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier: \u00a0Music Parties!” at the February 12 meeting of the Western Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (WSECS). She is\u00a0preparing a monograph \u201cJane Collier and Sarah Fielding: the London Years,\u201d which focuses on the few years in the middle of the eighteenth century Collier and Fielding\u00a0lived together in London. Her presentation at the WSECS meeting was Woodward’s\u00a0first venture toward a chapter on the importance of music to Collier and Fielding. Music appears often as a motif in Fielding and Collier\u2019s remarkable work of metafiction,\u00a0The Cry: A New Dramatic Fable<\/em>(1754).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the gist of Woodward’s conference paper in Woodward’s own words: Music was a particularly keen source of pleasure for Jane Collier and Sarah Fielding. Their good friend James Harris initiated and each year organized the Salisbury Musical Festivals. His younger brother Thomas, a close friend to Handel, was himself a fine cellist.\u00a0Fielding’s sister, Beatrice played the violin and harpsichord.\u00a0 A 1748 letter from Ursula Fielding says that \u201cBea\u201d is \u201cfiddling\u201d, and Hester Thrale remembered Arthur Collier\u2019s praise of Beatrice\u2019s \u201cexquisite hand upon the harpsichord.\u201d As a child, Sarah had studied dancing.\u00a0 In 1744, Jane Collier and Margaret Collier sent James Harris thanks for the gift of the songs of Handel\u2019s operaSemele<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cMany thanks are due to a gentleman of our acquaintance for the songs of Semele; if you guess to whompray deliver them, and let him know we are his most obliged and obedient humble servants.\u201d Indeed, Harris later reports having enjoyed listening to the two sisters singing duets from the opera. Fielding and Collier lived together for a few years in the early 1750s, with James Harris and his brother Thomas often living nearby; it is pleasant to imagine musical parties among these friends.<\/p>\n

\"woodward-carolyn\"

Carolyn Woodward, Associate Professor of British and Irish Literary Studies<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Professor Carolyn Woodward presented “Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier: \u00a0Music Parties!” at the February 12 meeting of the Western Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (WSECS). She is\u00a0preparing a monograph \u201cJane Collier and Sarah Fielding: the London Years,\u201d which focuses on the few years in the middle of the eighteenth century Collier and Fielding\u00a0lived together […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcements","category-presentations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}