1967: Queenie Mrs Wilson's Diary

In the 1960s, transatlantic collaboration in the writing of British musicals was rare. Queenie (Comedy Theatre, 22 June 1967; 20) was rarer still, the only British musical written in rhyming verse by perhaps the unlikeliest of poets, Ted Willis, best known as the creator of the long-running TV series Dixon of Dock Green [‘Evenin’ all.’]. Purportedly inspired by Willis's 1948 play (and subsequent 1958 film) about a working-class family's struggle, No Trees in the Street, Queenie bore some resemblance to a TV series Willis had created in 1964, The Four Seasons of Rosie Carr, a sort of family saga with Rosie starting off as barmaid. By 1967, Rosie had become Queenie Swann (Vivienne Martin), London publican of ‘The Queen of Sheba’ and widow, courted by a little collection of suitors, from which she finally selects ex-sailor barman James (Kevin Colson) as mate. After scrapping his first draft, Willis was encouraged to continue by impresario Arthur Lewis. Lewis was probably responsible for linking Willis up with two American musicians. Dick Manning's credits included writing the Perry Como hit ‘Hot Diggity’ and in 1944 composing the first musical to be performed in full on American television, The Boys From Boise. Marvin Laird was already known as a Broadway arranger from 1965, and would go on to later success as a composer with the off-Broadway Ruthless! in 1992. Meanwhile, Manning and Laird worked at setting Willis's lyrics, sent on tape from his home in Chislehurst.

Directed by Lewis and designed by the prolific Hutchinson Scott, Willis's piece first played at Guildford as The Ballad of Queenie Swann, before being presented in London by Lewis and Bernard Delfont. It was strongly cast, with Queenie's lovers played by Colson, Bill Owen, Simon Oates and Paul Eddington, Eddington taking many of the reviews as a punctilious undertaker (Lady thought him ‘the most amusing thing in an unpretentious night’), with attractive juveniles Cheryl Kennedy and Neil Fitzwilliam. Almost incidentally, Queenie was yet another halfhearted attempt to establish Vivienne Martin as a British musical star.

IN A RECENT survey of verse translations of Beowulf I highlighted that by the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan, published in 1952, as one of the most significant of the very many produced since the initial recovery of the Old English poem in the nineteenth century. Morgan was the first translator who set out to render Beowulf in an authentically modern poetic idiom, in a version written specifically for readers of poetry. Previous verse translations, produced primarily for popular audiences or for students, had generally adopted some kind of archaising register and, with the exception of the startling attempt by William Morris, were the work of uninspired versifiers. By contrast, Morgan's translation used the medium of living poetry in a sophisticated way and in doing so succeeded in conveying, as never before, an enabling sense of the power and artistry of the original poem.

Morgan produced his Beowulf translation early in a career that would prove to be a long and highly distinguished one, to the extent that in 2004 he was honoured as the official national poet of Scotland, the ‘Scots Makar’. He died in 2010 at the age of ninety. Morgan's literary output is recognised as endlessly varied in form and content but also as highly crafted, a characteristic evident in his experimental as well as his more conventional work and apparent not least in his translations and appropriations, including his Beowulf.

By 1952, when he published his Beowulf, Morgan was a lecturer in English at the University of Glasgow, where he had also graduated in 1947, his studies having been interrupted by the Second World War. As an undergraduate he had developed an interest in Old English under the guidance of Ritchie Girvan. Morgan would spend his whole academic career in the department at Glasgow and he remained connected to it to the end of his life. Though he was far from parochial in taste and experience, Glasgow was very much Morgan's base, and Glasgow's literary scene provided the context in which he worked.

Beowulf was not the only Old English poem translated by Morgan, nor indeed was Morgan the only Scottish poet to engage with Old English poetry in that postwar period that saw the publication of his Beowulf.

1980: Barnardo Colette The Biograph Girl

Teeming with chirpy (but sometimes starving or dying) children, telling ‘A Legend Set to Music’, with its hero's name known to every charity-conscious theatregoer in the land, and with a percentage of each ticket sold going to Barnardo's Homes (it had worked for Peter Pan and Great Ormond Street Hospital), how could Barnardo (Royalty Theatre, 22 May 1980; 43) fail? The pre-performance ballyhoo promised a sentimental and plucky experience: ‘It will make you laugh, cry and will capture your imagination from the rise of the curtain to the end of the show. You'll love the children – Ginger, Monty Something-stein, Jim Jarvis, Tosh and many other cockney characters.’

Punters couldn't say they hadn't been warned. At the Royalty, safely away from the West End on Kingsway, the George Mitchell Singers, or a section of them temporarily relieved of their duties in The Black and White Minstrel Show, were ready with songs that had sentimental, plucky titles, ‘Snuggle Up’ and ‘Lovely ‘ot Pies’ (why never ‘Hot’ in such cases?). Book, music and lyrics were the work of its director Ernest Maxin, best known as a television producer of popular entertainment. On this evidence, his knowledge of modern musicals was negligible. As it happened, he could hardly have chosen a more serious subject, although it's likely that any attempt to dramatise it would have unleashed just as much cockney capering.

One of the great humanists of his age, Thomas Barnardo roamed the poverty-stricken hell-holes of Victorian London, rescuing boys who had fallen into starvation, destitution and were prey to all manner of abuse. From such beginnings grew the estimable organisation that would bear his name. Maxin's seemingly irreconcilable dilemma was how to paint the tragic picture, including the various personal tragedies that fall into any life, but keep audiences believing they'd come in out of the cold to see another Oliver! There was an attempt to present an authentic picture: Ivan Henry, who conceived the idea of musicalising the story and in 1972 persuaded Maxin to take it on, was credited in the programme with ‘Research’.

1960: The Lily White Boys The Dancing Heiress Follow That Girl Johnny the Priest The Golden Touch Call It Love? Innocent as Hell Joie de Vivre The Princess Mr Burke M.P. Hooray for Daisy!

In what by its very nature may be an increasingly dispiriting discussion of the fate of the British musical we can at least breathe a communal sigh of relief that it begins with one of the most unusual and inventive of its year, of its decade, of the last sixty years. This means that very few of the British public will ever have heard of The Lily White Boys (Royal Court Theatre, 27 January 1960; 45). Perhaps the Royal Court, so often labelled as the bastion of what might be called ‘New Wave’ drama, once wore a more jolly face. For a time, that now lost and largely forgotten art, intimate revue, rooted and thrived there. In 1955, the Royal Court even hazarded one of the most essentially British musicals of the period, concerning a music festival in a coastal town that could only have been meant as Aldeburgh, the spiritual home of Benjamin Britten. The Burning Boat made several stops along the road to perfection, although some of Geoffrey Wright's sinuous score deserves to be remembered; ‘Swimming Against the Tide’ and ‘A Quiet Part of the World’ have scarcely been bettered for songs of their type, but their type, lightweight British pastoral, has long been consigned to oblivion. There is certainly nothing ‘New Wave’ about The Burning Boat, where emotional reticence keeps its characters, music book and lyrics well short of the sort of explosive emotionalism that has all but engulfed the British musical. Five years later, The Lily White Boys pointed a way forward (yet another way forward) for a genre that generally attracted critical disregard and public apathy. Wasn't it time that the British musical grew up? Wasn't the fact that this new sort of musical had a distinguished director in Lindsay Anderson, and sets by a man fast becoming the titan of West End scenic design, Sean Kenny? Plus Albert Finney, on the verge of forever establishing his working-class credentials with the film of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in his only stage musical.

Richard Rawlinson was born in 1690, the third surviving son of a prosperous family of vintners. His father, who had been knighted by James II, was to become Lord Mayor of London in 1705–6. Richard, like his eldest brother, Thomas, was educated at St Paul's, Eton and St John's College, Oxford. The two brothers were similar in many ways. Both had Jacobite leanings, were Tory in their political affiliations and shared an interest in past history. Conscious of the widespread damage to ecclesiastical artefacts and historical records caused by the dissolution of the monasteries and by the Civil War, both were concerned to rescue and preserve as much as was possible for posterity. It thus followed that from an early age they became avid collectors of historical material both antiquarian and contemporary. However, in character the two appear to have been very different. Thomas was a hedonist and a lavish spender with little thought for the consequences. Richard was serious, careful, and from an early age showed a strong sense of responsibility.

At university Richard's interest in antiquarian studies developed rapidly, influenced firstly by his admiration for Anthony Wood, a biography of whom he published while still an undergraduate, and secondly by his lasting friendship with Thomas Hearne, who at that time was Underkeeper at the Bodleian Library. Hearne records that Rawlinson's rooms at St John's resembled a veritable museum, containing among much else civil and ecclesiastical charters, a rare breviary on vellum, a manuscript account of the funeral of the Earl of Essex, a transcript of the deathbed prayers of James I, Saxon and Roman coins, and an inscribed stone from the convent of Godstow. The collecting of epitaphs from all over the country was a favourite occupation of both brothers.

However, this pleasant existence was soon to be threatened by family problems. Sir Thomas Rawlinson had died in 1708, the year of Richard's matriculation. His expenses were initially met by his mother as trustee, but when she remarried in 1711 he felt his financial situation sufficiently at risk to take legal action, although the outcome is unknown because his new stepfather died suddenly after only a year of marriage.

When I [Gina Canepa] began collecting materials to formulate my dissertation on Violeta Parra in 1983 at the Freie Universität Berlin in former West Berlin, I had difficulty persuading my professor to consent to this topic. At the time, Parra's work was not yet a scholarly subject. There had been some analysis of her music and poetry but her work was not truly valued. Indeed, there is still some way to go before Parra receives the recognition she deserves. However, in the last few decades Parra's oeuvre has been studied extensively; it has made its way on to university syllabuses and become part of the Latin American canon. Patricio Manns and Leónidas Morales, whose work is presented in the first two chapters of this book, were early pioneers in the field. Manns published his study of Parra's music Violeta Parra, la guitare indocile: anthologie des chansons de Violeta Parra in 1977; Marjorie Agosín published an article on Parra in 1982; Isabel Parra published El libro mayor de Violeta Parra in 1985; and in 1989 Morales published his study ‘Violeta Parra: la génesis de su arte’ (‘Violeta Parra: the Genesis of her Art’). Morales's text has been translated into English for Chapter 1 of this book. These works are still key reading for interested scholars. That Manns's work was first published in French is indicative of the fact that Parra received more recognition overseas than she received in Chile.

Progress in the field of Violeta Parra studies in recent decades has been possible thanks to the work of the Violeta Parra Foundation, led by Parra's descendants. The foundation has published material and photographs, which have allowed research into more aspects of Parra's creative and scholarly practice. Certainly, a detailed study of Parra's art was not possible in the early days; however, her art is now exhibited in the Violeta Parra museum and it is detailed in Violeta Parra: obra visual. This has facilitated the research into her art that informs Chapters 7 and 8 of this volume.

Violeta Parra continues to be a strong presence in the Latin American imaginary and beyond. From deep in Chile Violeta Parra brought an astonishing creativity to the world with her voice and her hands, making her one of the most inspiring figures of her country and indeed globally. One of her most famous songs, ‘Gracias a la vida’ (Thank you for life), is internationally renowned. After her death, studies continued to consider the essence of this marvellous artist who never failed to move us. This volume is a valuable contribution to the field and a tribute to Parra's continued prominence.

Parra was one of the most complex artists of the century. She was both loved and rejected. The popular media received her with great fervour and she was at the heart of the people's celebration of ‘the eighteenth’, Chilean Independence Day. Yet she was also spurned by upper-class circles. Some people viewed her with distrust and others repudiated her for her lack of etiquette, for her disdain for the bourgeoisie, for dressing like a campesina (peasant) and for being herself. Despite all this, it was the Chilean upper class, particularly the intellectuals of that class, who, in time, also began to understand Violeta Parra and praise her art.

Who was Violeta Parra? Today the presence of her artistic legacy is felt in multiple modes of expression from singing to pottery, from painting to her work as a collector of national culture and folklore. How can we describe the magnitude of her being, which was intimately joined to her soul? These questions are unearthed and explored in this collection edited by Lorna Dillon.

Few artists manage to intertwine their private life with their artistic life with as much authenticity as Violeta Parra. She was a kind of creative volcano and from this volcano she involved all those around her, particularly her brother Nicanor. Leónidas Morales has contributed an important interview to this volume in which he explores the close relationship between Violeta and her brother.

The tone of the composer is inviting, but it also betrays a deep fatigue, not only due to the enormous effort spent on her research ‘travelling in the countryside’, but also from a sense of frustration, a feeling that her research has not had the necessary impact on the Chilean public. The tone is an appeal, asking us to draw ‘some conclusion’ from her work, but we sense an anticipation of failure in her request.

In 1953, four years before she began her creative work, Violeta Parra proposed to form and reconstruct a cultural and acoustic map, bringing together all that we are and have been as a nation, including the diverse poetic-musical records that make up Chile: from north to south, from the sea to the mountains, including Rapa Nui. In this sense she was interested in those versions that predated the nineteenth century, rooted in the popular world and not just in the folk performances of the nation. She would use this map to carry out a larger project: to revitalise Chilean popular traditional folk culture, successively denied by official versions of Chilean identity. She would achieve this through the collection and dissemination of folklore in atypical formats and also through her own creation. Her work took place in an era in which other institutions, researchers and artists were undertaking similar collection projects,3 but Violeta Parra did it very differently. The scope of dissemination would be more significant at a Latin American and world level compared to other artists or researchers and would impact directly on her creative work.

ONE OF THE EARLIEST REFERENCES to montage as a literary device can be found in E. Kurt Fischer's 1929 review of Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz:

Although recourse to “photomontage” also appears in contemporary reviews of Berlin Alexanderplatz, “montage” was the dominant term used to describe the stylistic peculiarities of the novel during this period and continues to be so. The concept of “literary montage,” in other words, arose through contemporary critics’ grappling with the novel long before the appearance of Theodor Adorno's and Peter Bürger's theories. In his 1930 review Walter Benjamin (1972b), for instance, offered a detailed articulation of the concept in terms of perceptual disruption and readymade material. Many other critics, including E. Kurt Fischer cited above, implied the same view in their own reviews. By at least 1935 and the publication of Ernst Bloch's The Heritage of Our Times, however, the narrow definition of montage as a formal technique common to theater, film, visual arts, and literature was replaced by a broad understanding of montage as a model for construing developments in the late capitalist society at large, including those in the sphere of entertainment, philosophy, and art. It is no wonder, therefore, that scholarship on Berlin Alexanderplatz, starting with Fritz Martini's (1954) postwar revival of interest in the novel, followed the same route.

The primary aim of this book is to clarify the impact of cameralism in early modern Europe, and to make a tighter connection between cameralist teaching on the one hand, and administrative and economic practices on the other. It was the latter that came first: officials working in the seventeenth-century Kammer of the German territorial states were known as Kameralisten. ‘Cameralism’ later became the name by which both teaching and practice were known, although more closely associated with the teaching than the practice. Cameralist teaching was directed to the state's interest in its resources, in better administration and in the common good, the purpose being in order to increase the prince's incomes, establish a sustainable development of economy, and create a well-ordered state.

The essays collected here explore the practices and spheres in which cameralist teaching left its mark in early modern Europe. It is exactly this linking of cameralist ideas to contemporary politics and practice which offers an important historical dimension for understanding cameralist literature. For too long the approach to cameralism has treated it as a body of thought, analysing one or another cameralist author's standpoints and works. Another approach has been to study cameralist literature through the prism of a certain issue (e.g. cameralist perceptions of the role of the court, of the functioning of the grain trade, of population policy, the role of guilds, the importance of mining, policy doctrines and the state, the centrality of happiness, of work, or of gender). The focus has been directed not so much to the application of cameralist ideas, but rather to the alleged ‘theoretical foundations’ of cameralism.

Of course, the question of whether economic ideas were reflected in any real practice is not new, and is a widely discussed topic. Research on cameralist teaching has in fact for some time taken an interest in the actual practice of cameralist principles in the early modern state. The subtitle of Andre Wakefield's book of 2009 is ‘German Cameralism as Science and Practice’. He suggests that cameralism, qua Kameralwissenschaft, was a kind of fantasy fiction and utopian theory, rather than any plan that could be put to use in administrative practice. He argues that ‘Cameralists liked to publish “practical” treatises about how to brew beer or raise cattle, for example, and they often made it sound easy.