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\"By 1850, Alfred Tennyson was not merely the Poet Laureate, a commercially successful and critically acclaimed author, he was one of Britain's leading celebrities. Offering new analysis of the workings of Victorian celebrity, this volume explores the ever-expanding compass of Tennyson's fame and the efforts of the poet and others to control this phenomenon. It shows that Tennyson's retreat from mainland publicity to the secluded Isle of Wight and his limiting of his social circle to that of family and like-minded guests, only increased the demand of fans and tourists for access to the poet. Through an analysis of poetry, paintings, photography, illustrations, memoirs, reminiscences, diaries, letters, and newspaper and periodical articles, this book shows that Tennyson's fashioning of his reluctant celebrity affected not only his own life and works, but also had an effect on his celebrity and non-celebrity friends, and on the (self-)construction of his fans. \"-- Provided by publisher.

Critics regularly observe that lavish dinner parties constitute one of the formulaic features of silver-fork fiction, but tend to overlook the subtle ideological labour undertaken by such representations. Drawing on sociological theories of taste and distinction, this essay argues that, in the novels of Catherine Gore, items of food and spaces of consumption operate as codified information systems which, by classifying diners, help to police the fragile boundary between exclusive and non-exclusive society. Yet, while ridiculing vulgar social climbers who lack the cultural capital to perform discerningly, Gore also critiques the idea of ‘natural’ aristocratic distinction by satirizing the arbitrary codes of etiquette and gendered behaviours that signify ‘good taste’ at table. This demystification of the conventions of fashionable society is accompanied by a tacit endorsement of middle-class domestic values. The ideology of taste that emerges in Gore's fiction is therefore complex and contradictory, working both to reinforce and subvert the cultural authority of the ruling elite.

A series of poems published in Punch in 1842, carrying titles such as \"Pauper's Corner,\" \"The Prayer of the People,\" and \"Lays of the Lean,\" participated in this trend, utilising first-person voices or deliberately emotive language to engage readers' sympathies and highlight the problem of working-class hunger. 9 Of variable quality, these poetic contributions tended to be ephemeral, but when Thomas Hood's \"The Song of the Shirt\" was published anonymously in Punch's 1843 Christmas number (bordered, somewhat incongruously, by a procession of comical grotesques), it enjoyed huge popular success: the poem was eagerly reprinted by newspapers from across the political spectrum, used for propaganda purposes by textile industry reformers, and even set to music and performed on stage. 10 Inspired by reports of the wretched existence of England's seamstresses, \"The Song of the Shirt\" contrasts the steadily growing material output of an unnamed woman's sweated labour (\"Stitch! [...]these images were far from spontaneous in conception; accompanying captions reveal that the scenes and subjects depicted by the Pictorial Times' artist were not arbitrarily chosen but pre-determined, selected to fit with specific quotations extracted from existing accounts of Irish poverty (particularly those produced in 1845 by Times reporters Thomas Campbell Foster and William Howard Russell). Here, Punch's organisation of material suggests its commitment to social reform: the proximity of the two mutually-interested features encourages readers to make connections across pages, identifying in the pauper's wasted state the labourer's future fate and in Peel's reluctance to introduce measures that would antagonise his party the political forces underpinning social problems such as pauperisation. 17 Elsewhere, the physical layout of the printed page could work to moderate the traumatising effects associated with distressing textual or visual portrayals of hunger. The co-ordination of images in this case can be seen to influence the range of meanings produced; significantly, the disquieting image of an Irish beggar-woman and her starving children on the bottom right-hand corner of the page is counterbalanced by a representation of two hearty-looking Irish peasant girls on the left. 18 Dissonances can emerge, then, from the semantic gaps between illustrations and by examining the structural relations between sets of images we can identify the ambivalent attitudes toward hunger, and the Irish Famine in particular, in circulation in Victorian Britain.

Given this cultural context, it is perhaps unsurprising to find that several of the female figures in Idylls display abstemious eating behaviors for, as Ingrid Ranum notes, Tennyson approached his poem \"with concern for its relevance to modern society,\" reflecting within it many of the values and anxieties of his age.3 Yet, while the body and its appetites are undoubtedly leitmotifs in Idylls, surprisingly little critical attention has been paid, to date, to the literal acts of consumption and abstention repre- sented in the poem, with scholarly focus instead tending to concentrate on the metaphorical themes of sexual hunger and fulfilment. Hearty eating helps to fuel masculine action in a literal sense but also, importantly, sustains Arthur's men in less tangible ways: initially, it is the fraternal spirit inspired by communal dining that urges the knighthood on to greater and greater deeds.39 Conversely, when the values of the dining-hall are corrupted or ignored, the Round Table's male community (along with the wider social structure it upholds) swiftly frag- ments.

Drawing upon the poststructuralist theories of Barthes, Derrida, Foucault and Lacan, this thesis analyses the multiple significations attached to food in nineteenth-century culture, and the art and literature of the Victorian bourgeoisie in particular. Chapter one utilises Lacanian theories of vision and desire in order to suggest that nineteenth-century representations of food are frequently caught up in a politics of display, constituting a feast for the eyes as well as the palate. It goes on to argue that the preoccupation with display in the middle-class dining room reveals something of the nature of bourgeois desire, as well as the fundamental instability of subjectivity. Chapter two examines the class-specific locations in which food was consumed, focusing on the special status accorded to the dining room in bourgeois culture. It also suggests that the picnic - a phenomenon which transported the middle classes outside of the security of the domestic realm - holds a disruptive, disorderly potential in representation, which ultimately undoes the inside/outside binary used to order Victorian eating spaces. Chapter three considers the relationship between food and nation in nineteenth-century art and literature, arguing that racial and cultural others are often portrayed in terms of food, functioning simultaneously as objects of desire - appetising dishes to enhance the white, British palate - and sources of anxiety, having a destabilising effect upon the hegemonic cultural identity when 'consumed'. Considered collectively, these chapters demonstrate that the act of eating is by no means an innocent one. Freighted with cultural significations both manifest and covert, caught up in complex networks of meaning relating to hierarchies of gender, race and class, food and its associated practices work to construct, as well as to nourish, the consuming subject.

Both means and year-to-year variances of climate variables such as temperature and precipitation are predicted to change. However, the potential impact of changing climatic variability on the fate of populations has been largely unexamined. We analyzed multiyear demographic data for 36 plant and animal species with a broad range of life histories and types of environment to ask how sensitive their long-term stochastic population growth rates are likely to be to changes in the means and standard deviations of vital rates (survival, reproduction, growth) in response to changing climate. We quantified responsiveness using elasticities of the long-term population growth rate predicted by stochastic projection matrix models. Short-lived species (insects and annual plants and algae) are predicted to be more strongly (and negatively) affected by increasing vital rate variability relative to longer-lived species (perennial plants, birds, ungulates). Taxonomic affiliation has little power to explain sensitivity to increasing variability once longevity has been taken into account. Our results highlight the potential vulnerability of short-lived species to an increasingly variable climate, but also suggest that problems associated with short-lived undesirable species (agricultural pests, disease vectors, invasive weedy plants) may be exacerbated in regions where climate variability decreases.

IntroductionIn the UK over 12,400 yearly cases of head and neck cancers are reported (2021). Pharyngolaryngeal biopsies (OLB) may improve the speed of diagnosis and treatment of head and neck cancers under local anesthetic. The Scottish Health Technologies Group (SHTG) published advice on this technology in 2018. Since this, additional evidence has been published to warrant a health technology assessment (HTA) for Wales. The aim of this review was to provide update on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of OLB when compared to undergoing biopsy in an operating theatre (OTB) under general anesthetic to inform decision making in Wales.MethodsA rapid review was undertaken of relevant databases since 2018 of the clinical evidence, health economics and patient perspectives relevant to Wales. Health Technology Wales (HTW) developed a de-novo cost-utility analysis comparing OLB to OTB over a lifetime horizon. Inputs were sourced from the SHTG budget impact analysis, updated with values more relevant to a Welsh setting.ResultsFrom consultation to biopsy procedure, the mean number of days was 1.3 for OLB compared to 17.4 days under OTB (p < 0.05). The mean time from consultation to start of treatment was 27 days for OLB compared to 41.5 days for OTB (p < 0.05). The economic analysis found a resulting ICER of GBP21,011 (EUR23,824.23) in a population with 2,183 at risk patients. As OLB was associated with lower costs (GBP816 per person) (EUR925.26) and fewer quality adjusted life years than OTB (-0.04), this ICER corresponds to OLB being considered a cost-effective diagnostic strategy.ConclusionsHTW guidance was able to recommend use of OLB within the diagnostic pathway for head and neck cancers within Wales. For people with a positive test, OLB is sufficient to confirm a diagnosis but should not be used to rule out a diagnosis due to the potential in reducing the time to diagnosis and treatment in a cost-saving way.