H04071 GERBER-DAVIS BIBLIOGRAPHY ON-LINE - 11/28/04 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES
From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: RE: The Gerber-Davis Bibliography
Date: November 28, 2004 5:29:04 PM PST
Greetings All -
I am delighted to be able to tell you that after weeks, months, years even, of trying to find ways of getting the Gerber-Davis Annotated (Hardy) Bibliography online, we have finally made a great start.
This is a huge project -- nigh on a century of annotated bibliographical entries amounting to well over a thousand entries and annotations - and all, eventually to be accessible on TTHA's Members Page -- what a feat!
Well, if it were not for Gene Davis' extraordinary effort this might never have been.
But here we are! For this past week Gene and I have been working non-stop to implement the inauguration of this project and I'm now proud to announce its Grand Opening,
For Non members: you can gain a glimpse of what is involved if you go to :
http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/Welcome/informationpageGene'sBibli.htm
For the rest of you ? Simply log on to the Member's page and have a feast! The Years, Ah, the Years O!
(they will be completed very soon).
With every good wish,
Rosemarie Morgan
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From: schweikr@localnet.com
Subject: RE: The Gerber-Davis Bibliography
Date: November 29, 2004 8:30:57 AM PST
Congratulations to Gene and Rosemarie! What a
splendid achievement! Something that only a couple
of years ago still seemed an unlikely dream. What a
marvellous addition to TTHA's Members' Research
Resources pages!
I'd like to take this opportunity to make two further
comments.
First, anyone using the Gerber-Davis bibliography ought
to read Gene Davis' new introduction. As Gene points out
there, although the electronic version provides all the superb
traditional indexes of the original, its great advantage is that
it allows for electronic keyword or phrase searches. It tried
that and found it worked without any hitch. What an advantage!
What Gene didn't mention is the additional benefit of being easily
able to highlight and copy entries. Altogether a truly magnificent
achievement for which Gene and Rosemarie should have a
thunderous round of applause!
Second, I want to add to Gene's warm tribute to Hal Gerber just
a brief word of my own on a man who was a treasured friend and
dear colleague. I can only echo Gene's words which, I think,
capture the quality of the man. That he in effect created the
concept of a "transitional period" at the intersection of the 19th
and 20th centuries; that he created a journal for that period which
has set a very high standard by the scholarship it publishes; that
he worked tirelessly himself to further that scholarship; and that
he had the gift of attracting other scholars to work in collaboration
on so many major projects---all those achievements remain a
testimony to him. But none, I think, captures the personal qualities--
his direct honesty, his generosity to other scholars, his unassuming
modesty--that made him truly a loveable person. He is, by the many
of us who had the privilege of personally knowing him and working with
him, warmly remembered and sadly missed.
Bob Schweik
Robert Schweik
University Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus
Department of English
State University of New York
Fredonia, NY 14063
USA
schweik@fredonia.edu
schweikr@localnet.com
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: RE: The Gerber-Davis Bibliography
Date: November 29, 2004 9:18:03 AM PST
Thank you for the good words, Bob.
This is just to say that the remaining data (including the original index) should be edited and uploaded by the end of the month. With more than 3000 annotated entries this is a bit of a challenge but after several teething problems I think we have now got it under our belts (Gene and I) and should soon be able to announce access to both Gerber-Davis Volumes - - and all the years from 1870 to 1970.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Michael Appleby at Yale University for helping me through some tough moments in the final stages of the uploading process.
With every good wish,
Rosemarie
With every good wish,
Rosemarie Morgan
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From: schweikr@localnet.com
Subject: One Additional Note
Date: November 29, 2004 10:55:38 AM PST
Dear Forum Members,
After posting my celebratory comments on TTHA's new
electronic publication of the magisterial Gerber-Davis
annotated bibliographies of writings about Thomas Hardy,
I thought I might add just the results of one scholar's
experience. I recently published a study of the curiously
conflicting (often diametrically opposed) judgments
critics have made about the art of Pierston in Hardy's novel
*The Well-Beloved*. As a complement to that study, I more
recently looked into the claims of two Hardy scholars about
the relationship of Hardy's representation of Pierston's art
to the contemporary art scene. One aspect of that, of course,
was my inquiry as to how contemporary reviewers regarded
the novel. There is, of course, a well-known book that provides
the texts of early reviews of Hardy's novels. For *The Well-
Beloved* it provides just one review. So, I went to the Gerber-
Davis bibliography and found citations to 15 reviews. As it
turned out, not one of them made even the slightest comment
on the relationship of the novel to the contemporary art scene.
There was, I learned, not one bit of evidence that Hardy's novel
was perceived as an attack on either the Pre-Raphaelites or
the Aesthetes. That was, certainly, just one small part of my inquiry
into a larger puzzle whose solution will subsequently appear in a
forthcoming edition of TTHA's *Review*. But it is one kind of evidence
of just how valuable the Gerber-Davis bibliography can be for
researchers. Unfortunately, at that time I had to work through the
text indexes in the Gerber-Davis volumes on my desk. From now on, l'll
never again use those! In the future, I'll just resort to TTHA's electronic
searching capabilities. A better and faster way to go!
Bob Schweik
Robert Schweik
University Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus
Department of English
State University of New York
Fredonia, NY 14063
USA
schweik@fredonia.edu
schweikr@localnet.com
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Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 11:51:17 -0800
To: HARDY-L <HARDY-L@csusm.edu>
From: Betty Cortus <hardycor@owl.csusm.edu>
Subject: Gerber-Davis Bibliography
A heartfelt thank you to Rosemarie and Gene for making this wonderful
resource available to members. In volume form I found it absolutely
essential when working on my dissertation in the eighties. Very early in
my research I went through both volumes for reassurance that some other
scholar hadn't beaten me to the punch with what I believed to be an
original thesis. No other single source could have given me such
instananeous gratification.
Researchers are indeed fortunate to have this work available now in such a
readily searchable form.
Kudos to you both!
Betty
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