The Editor's Fence

THE EDITOR'S FENCE 1. ELT Seminan H. G. Wells (MLA, San Francisco. Dec 1975) A Report: The seminar met from 1:00-2:15 p. m. on Dec 27, with William Scheide (University of Texas at Austin) presiding. About twenty people attended the meeting to discuss Richard H. Costa's paper "Edwardian Intimations of the Shape of Fiction to Come: Mr. Britling/Job Huss as Wellsian Central Intelligences," and Scheick's paper "The Womb of Time: Spengler's Influence on Wells's Apropos of Dolores." Initially focusing on the future direction of Wells studies, the discussion emphasized the interest in the later Wells writings evident in the papers. Central to the comments was the recognition of a need for a critical vocabulary with which to speak of novels of ideas. David Hughes described his new book, co-edited with Robert Philmus, which indicates the need to consider further the early work of Wells ; and H. E. Gerber, who drew an analogy between the development of critical response to Dickens' work and recent critical interest in Wells, spoke of the value of an eclectic critical approach to Wells's work. The meeting adjourned on time, and there was some subsequent discussion among the panel members and the participants of the seminar. The papers have been printed in English Literature in Transition, XVIIIi 4 (1975)· 2. Annotated Secondary Bibliograplly Seminar: G. B. Shaw (MLk, San Francisco, Dec 1975): A Report: The third A. S. B. Seminar, with H. E. Gerber as Discussion Leader, met in the Hilton Hotel. Professors Elsie B. Adams (San Diego State College) and Donald C. Haberman (Arizona State University) reported on the Shavian volumes for which they are the compiler-editors. John Pfeiffer (Central Michigan University), prevented from coming by transportation problems, has reported on his progress since then. Some fifteen people attended. All three volume editors reported good progress on the task of compilings some abstracting has also been done. The major problem will probably be discovering many foreign language items because of the inadequacy or lack of guides, indexes, and other bibliographical tools; a second problem will be getting the assistance of abstracters who are competent in foreign languages other than German, French, Spanish, and Italian. Some participants in the seminar felt that the awesome bulk of writings on Shaw, especially if play productions are included, would be overwhelming. I indicated that the volume editors would have to be selective, that it would not be necessary to include all the reviews of all performances of a particular play in the same year. Were such completeness to be attempted, we could probably fill six volumes instead of three and we would probably need ten years to complete the project. We shall have to be content with representative entries for specific titles within each year and for the countries which produced a significant body of writings on Shaw. Definitiveness, we concede, is impossible) fairly dense representativeness we shall attempt. 3. ELT Seminar: The Novel andSociety (MLA. New York. Dec 1976): H. Ray Stevens will be Discussion Leader for the twentieth consecutive meeting of the ELT seminar. We are considering papers on such writers as Butler, Galsworthy, Gissing, Wells, and Bennett Discussions of individual novelists must be relevant to the main topics we shall also be pleased to consider general papers on the novel as mirror or criticism of society. All papers to be considered for discussion must first be sent to H. Ray Stevens, Department of English, Western Maryland College, Westminster, Md. All papers will be evaluated by two or three readers. Deadline for submission is July 1. Accepted papers will be published in ELT, XIX: 4 (1976), which will be mailed about mid-October. 4. Future Seminars (1977, 1978): The ELT Advisory and Program Committee met for several hours at the Hyatt Hotel, San Francisco, to review the status of the journal and to discuss topics for future seminar meetings. The Editor reported that, despite increased postage and cost of materials, ELT would maintain its current subscription rates at least through 1976. Our print run during the last five years has remained stable at about 950 copies per issue. Under the present economic conditions we continue...