Nineteenth-Century Verse and Technology Machines of Meter Jason David Hall Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture General Editor: Joseph Bristow Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture Series editor Joseph Bristow Department of English University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA USA Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture is a new monograph series that aims to represent the most innovative research on literary works that were produced in the English-speaking world from the time of the Napoleonic Wars to the fin de siécle. Attentive to the historical continuities between ‘Romantic’ and ‘Victorian’, the series will feature studies that help scholarship to reassess the meaning of these terms during a century marked by diverse cultural, literary, and political movements. The main aim of the series is to look at the increasing influ- ence of types of historicism on our understanding of literary forms and genres. It reflects the shift from critical theory to cultural history that has affected not only the period 1800–1900 but also every field within the discipline of English literature. All titles in the series seek to offer fresh critical perspectives and challenging readings of both canonical and non- canonical writings of this era. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14607 Jason David Hall Nineteenth-Century Verse and Technology Machines of Meter Jason David Hall Department of English University of Exeter Exeter, UK Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture ISBN 978-3-319-53501-2 ISBN 978-3-319-53502-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53502-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940348 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. 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Rosario/Getty Images Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Jeremy Maarten Hall who loves machines of all varieties and whose innate sense of rhythm and rhyme already well surpasses his father’s. “All children like verses, even when they do not comprehend them; it is the rhythm and rhyme that pleases.” Baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow, The Philosophy and Methods of the Kindergarten (English translation of 1872) A cknowledgements At the University of Exeter, where the book was conceived and written, many supportive colleagues, across a number of disciplines, made direct and indirect contributions to the project. Indefatigable in her encour- agement from the very beginning was Regenia Gagnier. Without her guidance, I might not have taken a leap of faith from Irish to Victorian Studies in the first place; she is a generous evaluator of her colleagues’ work, and her comments on early drafts of this book helped to anchor some of its more speculative assertions. Thanks also to Jane Spencer, who, as erstwhile Head of English and my academic mentor at various points, helped me to see where the project was going and how to make sure it got there. Members of Exeter’s Centre for Victorian Studies— namely Joe Kember, John Plunkett, Angelique Richardson, Paul Young, and Patricia Zakreski—offered up their expertise in countless ways, never turning me away when I drifted into their offices to pick their brains, let off steam, or simply prattle. It was also a big help that the CVS played host to so many conferences and visiting scholars, giving me more opportunities than I deserved to press the project’s various parts on new audiences. In particular, I am grateful to three visitors whose arrival in the early and middle stages of the book’s research provided timely prompting. First, the late Simon Dentith, who, after hearing me present my first sketch of the Eureka machine, fixed me with an inscruta- ble stare and gave me a great fillip when he exclaimed, “Jason, that’s just weird!” Second, Dennis Denisoff, whose visit to Exeter opened up new vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS possibilities for research beyond the strictly literary. Third, Chip Tucker, who shared his capacious knowledge of Victorian poetry with me, chat- ting amiably about Tennysonian hoofbeats and Quakers. Beyond Exeter’s English department and its community of Victorianists, I am grateful to colleagues in the departments of Computer Science, Drama, Engineering, History, Humanities, and Modern Languages. In their respective capacities as Dean of the College of Humanities and Associate Dean for Education, Andrew Thorpe and Sarah Hamilton assisted in finding ways for my research to carry on even while I took over as Head of Department. During that appoint- ment and for years before, my colleagues in Cornwall (some long gone, others still present) were excellent readers and interlocutors, as well as collaborators. I am particularly grateful to Tim Cooper, Marion Gibson, Nick Groom, Kate Hext, Adeline Johns-Putra, Jim Kelly, Alex Murray, Richard Noakes, Chris Stokes, Bea Underwood, Nicola Whyte, and Shelly Windsor. On Exeter’s Streatham Campus I owe so much to Richard Everson and Alma Rahat, whose interest in the techniques and technologies of meter and whose expertise on matters of mechani- cal and computer systems have enhanced my understanding of verse mechanics greatly. It was an absolute pleasure to work with them and other extremely knowledgeable collaborators (in particular Neil Bollen and Richard Jaeschke) on the “Poetry by Numbers” project, which was supported by a Science in Culture Innovation Award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. That project—a direct offshoot of this book—confirmed my hunch that meter is a truly interdisciplinary sub- ject. Dialogue with interested persons outside of English departments has been one of the most rewarding features of this endeavor. As has dialogue with the many scholars of prosody, science and tech- nology, and nineteenth-century studies—at home and abroad. The “his- torical poetics” folks in particular have given me an imagined community that has been equally sustaining and challenging. I’m so glad to have discussed this book and its mechanics with Kirstie Blair, Max Cavitch, Meredith Martin, Yopie Prins, and Jason Rudy, as well as many others at conferences and symposia in the USA and UK. Also extremely encourag- ing, in person and in print, have been Isobel Armstrong, Derek Attridge, Charlotte Berry, Jim Buzard, Richard Clark, Bland Crowder, Dino Felluga, Nick Freeman, Andy Hamilton, Linda Hughes, Alice Jenkins, Ewan Jones, Catherine Maxwell, David Nowell-Smith, Max Paddison, Ana Parejo-Vadillo, Stephen Regan, Catherine Robson, Lacy Rumsey, ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix Chris Stray, Ryan Sweet, Keir Waddington, Natalie Watson, Jason Whittaker, Adam Watt, Martin Willis, and Susan Wolfson. Support to undertake research trips, visit archives, and carve out time to write has been enabled by various institutions. Much of the early research for the book was facilitated by the British Academy, whose gen- erous research and travel grants got the project up and running. Later a Research Fellowship funded by the Leverhulme Trust released me from teaching and administrating responsibilities for 12 months, allowing me to make crucial headway with the drafting of the book. While on study leave and, in some cases, during term, I had the good fortune to work in a number of world-class research libraries and archives—the research conducted there helped to lay bare not only the vastness of the prosody corpus but also the memorable curiosities contained therein. The project benefited immensely from working at the Alfred Gillett Trust Heritage Collections, Street; the British Library, St. Pancras; the Charterhouse School Archive, Godalming; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; the Library of the Society of Friends, London; and the Lit. & Phil., Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Going places, finding (or not) what one hopes to find, and taking advice from friendly and knowledgeable library staff are, for me, among the greatest joys of being a historical researcher. A book this long in the making is bound to have leaked out in a few places before its parts are gathered and bound together. Parts of Chapter “Automaton Versifiers” originally appeared as “Popular Prosody: Spectacle and the Politics of Victorian Versification,” in the journal Nineteenth- Century Literature 62.2 (2007), pp. 222–249, and I would like to thank the University of California Press for granting permission to reproduce extracts of that work, in revised form, here. Sections from Chapter “Instrumental Prosody” originally appeared in two journal articles: West Virginia University Press kindly allowed me to reproduce material from my article “Materializing Meter: Physiology, Psychology, Prosody,” from Victorian Poetry 49.2 (2001), pp. 179–197; and the Johns Hopkins University Press granted permission to reproduce material from my article “Mechanized Metrics: From Verse Science to Laboratory Prosody, 1880–1918,” from Configurations 17.3 (2009), pp. 285–308. For taking a chance on this strange beast, I am extremely grateful to Joseph Bristow, who has watched the project evolve from a speculative article into an expansive monograph. As editor of the Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture series he made many detailed x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS and helpful comments that have improved the manuscript that I first submitted to the press. I’m also very much indebted to Ben Doyle, Milly Davies, and the rest of the Palgrave Macmillan editorial team for guiding the book toward publication. It’s a pleasure to be working, yet again, with you guys. Finally, a word of thanks to those at home. I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to live with a man who comes home to talk about (or brood silently upon) this book’s subject matter. I’m not sure I’d choose to live with a prosodist, but I’m so glad that two longsuffering souls—Vike Martina Plock and Jeremy Maarten Hall—do so choose. From reading and commenting on the work-in-progress to teaching me about rhythmical possibilities I would never have considered on my own, they have given so much of their time—often without even knowing it. It’s not a lie when I say that there is probably no aspect of this book they haven’t improved in some way or another. Jeremy, I’ll do my best to make sure the next book includes pirates and astronauts.