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"Lyons, Martyn"
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The Typewriter Century
As a vehicle for outstanding creativity, the typewriter has been
taken for granted and was, until now, a blind spot in the history
of writing practices.
eBook
Reading Culture & Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France
Between about 1830 and the outbreak of the First World War, print culture, reading, and writing transformed cultural life in Western Europe in many significant ways. Book production and consumption increased dramatically, and practices such as letter- and diary-writing were widespread. This study demonstrates the importance of the nineteenth century in French cultural change and illustrates the changing priorities and concerns ofl'histoire du livresince the 1970s.
From the 1830s on, book production experienced an industrial revolution which led to the emergence of a mass literary culture by the close of the century. At the same time, the western world acquired mass literacy. New categories of readers became part of the reading public while western society also learned to write.Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century Franceexamines how the concerns of historians have shifted from a search for statistical sources to more qualitative assessments of readers' responses. Martyn Lyons argues that autobiographical sources are vitally important to this investigation and he considers examples of the intimate and everyday writings of ordinary people.
Featuring original and intriguing insights as well as references to material hitherto inaccessible to English readers, this study presents a form of 'history from below' with emphasis on the individual reader and writer, and his or her experiences and perceptions.
eBook
The Pyrenees in the Modern Era
This original study examines different incarnations of the Pyrenees, beginning with the assumptions of 18th-century geologists, who treated the mountains like a laboratory, and romantic 19th-century tourists and habitués of the spa resorts, who went in search of the picturesque and the sublime. The book analyses the individual visions of the heroic Pyrenees which in turn fascinated 19th-century mountaineers and the racing cyclists of the early Tour de France. Martyn Lyons also investigates the role of the Pyrenees during the Second World War as an escape route from Nazi-occupied France, when for thousands of refugees these dangerous borderlands became ‘the mountains of liberty’, and considers the place of the Pyrenees in recent times right up to the present day. Drawing on travel writing, press reports and scientific texts in several languages, The Pyrenees in the Modern Era explores both the French and Spanish sides of the Pyrenees to provide a nuanced historical understanding of the cultural construction of one of Europe’s most prominent border regions. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Europe’s cultural history in a transnational context.
eBook
Writing Upwards: How the Weak Wrote to the Powerful
\"Writing Upwards\" describes a genre of letter-writing between two very unequal correspondents. Humble subjects wrote individually to monarchs and other rulers, workers wrote to factory bosses, impoverished refugees wrote to relief committees, parishioners wrote to their clergy and also to God. Often, but not always, they wrote in pursuit of some personal advantage. They trusted in the power of a personal approach to by-pass bureaucratic procedures which seemed insensitive and obstructive. In order to ingratiate themselves, they borrowed or at least crudely imitated the language of their superiors. My paper draws on published research from Italy and elsewhere to identify the principal modes of \"writing upwards,\" whether deferential, demanding or downrigjht abusive. In the case of the letters of Australian Aboriginal people to their administrators, new elements emerge: an appeal to shared Christian values, and the notion of a contractual obligation yet to be fulfilled.
Journal Article
The typewriter century : a cultural history of writing practices
This book captures the intensity of the relationship between writers and their typewriters from the 1880s, when the machine was first commercialized, to the 1980s, when word-processing superseded it. Drawing on examples from the United States, Britain, Europe, and Australia, The Typewriter Century focuses on celebrity writers, including Henry James, Jack Kerouac, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, and Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote prolifically and mechanically, developing routines in which typing, handwriting, and dictation were each allotted important functions.
The typewriter de-personalized the text; the office typewriter bureaucratized it. At the same time, some authors found a new and disturbing distance between themselves and their compositions while others believed the typewriter facilitated spontaneous and automatic typing. The Typewriter Century provides a cultural history of the typewriter, outlining the ways in which it can be considered an agent of change as well as demonstrating how it influenced all writers, canonical and otherwise.
eBook
The Pyrenees in the Modern Era
This original study examines different incarnations of the Pyrenees, beginning with the assumptions of 18th-century geologists, who treated the mountains like a laboratory, and romantic 19th-century tourists and habitués of the spa resorts, who went in search of the picturesque and the sublime. The book analyses the individual visions of the heroic Pyrenees which in turn fascinated 19th-century mountaineers and the racing cyclists of the early Tour de France. Martyn Lyons also investigates the role of the Pyrenees during the Second World War as an escape route from Nazi-occupied France, when for thousands of refugees these dangerous borderlands became ‘the mountains of liberty’, and considers the place of the Pyrenees in recent times right up to the present day. Drawing on travel writing, press reports and scientific texts in several languages, The Pyrenees in the Modern Era explores both the French and Spanish sides of the Pyrenees to provide a nuanced historical understanding of the cultural construction of one of Europe’s most prominent border regions. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Europe’s cultural history in a transnational context.
eBook
Vichy France and Everyday Life
This wide-ranging volume brings together a blend of experienced and emerging scholars to examine the texture of everyday life for different parts of the wartime French population. It explores systems of coping, means of helping one another, confrontations with people or events and the challenges posed to and by Vichy’s National Revolution during this difficult period in French and European history. The book focuses on human interactions at the micro level, highlighting lived experience within the complex social networks of this era, as French civilians negotiated the violence of war, the restrictions of Occupation, the shortages of daily necessities and the fear of persecution in their everyday lives. Using approaches drawn mostly from history, but also including oral history, film, gender studies and sociology, the text peers into the lives of ordinary men, women and children and opens new perspectives on questions of resistance, collaboration, war and memory; it tells some of the stories of the anonymous millions who suffered, coped, laughed, played and worked, either together at home or far apart in towns and villages across Occupied and Vichy France. Vichy France and Everyday Life is a crucial study for anyone interested in the social history of the Second World War or the history of France during the twentieth century.
eBook
The Romantic Typewriter
Australian novelist Nancy Cato (All the Rivers Run, 1958) enjoyed the fluency of typing. “When I get to the typewriter,” she said, “it just comes straight out through my fingers.”¹ Cato imagined a process in which words flowed naturally through her body into the machine, without any interruption from her own thoughts or any careful premeditation. In stark contrast to what some writers called “banging something out” on the typewriter, Cato envisaged typing as a smooth and seamless operation. She experienced a creative force, which in her imagination she did not entirely control. This sense that the act of writing
Book Chapter
Erle Stanley Gardner
Whenever an innovation in writing technology is introduced, the new technique always has its detractors as well as its partisans. In the field of art and literature, a few practitioners obstinately refuse to legitimize new methods. Mohandas Gandhi, for example, feared the typewriter would destroy the ancient art of calligraphy,¹ and English novelist Evelyn Waugh insisted on using a dip-pen and prided himself on being two hundred years behind the times.² Old and obsolete objects become fetishized, in spite of the practical advantages clearly offered by new technology in terms of speed and convenience.
When the genesis of the typewriter
Book Chapter