{"id":769,"date":"2015-09-11T18:33:53","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T17:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/?p=769"},"modified":"2015-09-11T18:33:53","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T17:33:53","slug":"research-rabbit-holes-or-hunting-for-bob-short-junior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/2015\/09\/11\/research-rabbit-holes-or-hunting-for-bob-short-junior\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Rabbit Holes; or, Hunting for Bob Short Junior"},"content":{"rendered":"

Countless are the times I have looked up from reading the Lady\u2019s Magazine <\/em>to moan in frustration: \u2018I can\u2019t stand this man!\u2019<\/p>\n

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LM VII (Mar 1776): 126. Image \u00a9 Adam Matthew Digital \/ British l Library. Not to be reproduced without permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m speaking of Bob Short, Junior, author of the magazine\u2019s serial \u2018The Female Reformer\u2019 which appeared periodically from March 1776 through the mid-1780s. From the outset, Bob Short declares he will\u00a0\u2018animadvert occasionally on the foibles of the female world, with a view to reform them\u2019 (LM <\/em>VII [March 1776]: 126).\u00a0\u00a0This first number sees him criticizing initially the \u2018preposterous and feathery head dress of the ladies\u2019 whilst noting that there are \u2018many other parts of the female dress [. . .] equally open to ridicule and censure\u2019 before moving onto the fan as the target of his \u2018reforming\u2019 remarks.<\/p>\n

Yes, you read that right: the fan. No, it didn\u2019t mean something else back then. Apparently Short\u2019s problem with ladies\u2019 fans was with the mounts \u2013 \u2018the loose, and I had almost said indecent, mounts ladies have to their fans in the present day\u2019 \u2013 mounts that make him believe \u2018a coarse, indelicate, and immodest picture is not so offensive to the view of the fair, as prudence, virtue, and chastity could wish\u2019. Indeed, these indelicate fan mounts appear even in places of worship where he saw a young woman who \u2018appeared suitably attentive and devout\u2019 until he saw \u2018naked cupids, and women almost so, represented as sleeping under trees, while dancing shepherds and piping fawns completed the shameful groupe.\u2019 Such pictures, Short declared, \u2018on being looked at, tend only to inflame the passions, and promote the loosest ideas\u2019 (LM <\/em>VII [March 1776]: 126).<\/p>\n

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Image \u00a9 Manchester Art Galleries. Not to be reproduced without permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

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LM VIII (August 1777): 422. Image \u00a9 Adam Matthew Digital \/ British l Library. Not to be reproduced without permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018The Female Reformer\u2019 column generally contained similar\u00a0opinions. For example, after spending several numbers criticizing female dress, he turns to female conversation. Obviously, this didn\u2019t fare much better, and is described as being described as \u2018trifling, unimportant, and insignificant!\u2019 (LM <\/em>VIII [August 1777]: 422). Occasionally he would reveal intimate details, such as in his December 1777 column, in which he described the recent loss of a child called Eliza, who had just begun to speak. And although my instincts told me that such remarks were fact rather than inventions for didactic purposes, they weren\u2019t particularly useful in terms of finding out more about the man behind the serial.<\/p>\n

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LM XVIII (December 1784): 651. Image \u00a9 Adam Matthew Digital \/ British l Library. Not to be reproduced without permission<\/p><\/div>\n

And so I carried on reading and occasionally rolling my eyes at Short\u2019s remarks without looking into it further until recently. An uncharacteristically personal column by Short was followed by a silence \u2013 no further contributions to the magazine appeared \u2013 and this perplexing silence piqued my curiosity. Short complains in December 1784 about an incident that occurred at a bookseller\u2019s shop in Paternoster-row (the location of the Robinson\u2019s business and, of course, many other printing and publishing firms in the eighteenth century). Short is clearly incensed by the incident in which a lady picks up a book he published some years ago and \u2018said to the master of the shop (not knowing who I was,) \u201cwhat a pity is it the author of this book, who is also the author of the Female Reformer, signed Bob Short, in the Lady\u2019s Magazine, does not live up to what he writes; don\u2019t you think so, Sir? Indeed, I often think of telling him so in the Magazine: I have read his works with pleasure in times past, but cannot now<\/em>, since I know his character, and live in his neighbourhood.\u201d Should the above mentioned lady read this, let her blush at having (as she apprehended) said that behind a person\u2019s back, which I am happy in having to say, she cannot prove before his face\u2019 (LM <\/em>XV [December 1784]: 651). After this, Short offers no further contributions.<\/p>\n

There is mention of him in February 1785 when the correspondent E\u2014L\u2014notes Bob Short\u2019s \u2018seeming pleasure [. . .] in exposing the failings of our sex<\/em>\u2019 and states that lately his comments \u2018have had more the appearance of ill-natured remarks, than admonitions to reformation\u2019 LM <\/em>XVI (Feb 1785): 94. E\u2014L\u2014, at least, appears to have had no sympathy for Short\u2019s complaints the previous December regarding the slanderous remarks he overheard at the booksellers. But although he doesn\u2019t publish in the magazine again, he seems to have contacted the editors, who in April 1785 claim that \u2018Our friend Bob Short does us honour to find that his anger is subsiding, and we should be glad for any jeu d\u2019esprit<\/em> from a person of so fertile an imagination, which would either contribute to entertain or ameliorate the Sex in general\u2019 (LM<\/em> XVI [April 1785]: 170). In spite of what we can only assume was a reconciliatory letter from Short to the editors, their hopes he would again contribute to the periodical were in vain.<\/p>\n

Beginning with the work of E. W. Pitcher, that prolific attributor of anonymous and pseudonymous contributors to eighteenth-century periodicals, I saw that he had identified Bob Short Junior as George Wright. This was based on Wright\u2019s authorship of The Rural Christian<\/em> and other texts that appeared under\u00a0both \u2018Bob Short\u2019 and \u2018George Wright\u2019.[1]<\/a> But beyond the date of his marriage, 3 November 1772, listed in the Town and Country Magazine<\/em> of that year and an obituary for his wife fourteen years later in the same publication, there were still more questions than answers. Given that the \u2018Bob Short\u2019 pseudonym had been in use for decades by various writers (such as Robert Withy, Robert Willey, Eliza Haywood) some of whom, like Willey, were friendly with the Robinson family (the magazine\u2019s publishers), it seemed worth corroborating Pitcher\u2019s claim and finding out more about this serial (and serially misogynistic) contributor.<\/p>\n

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The Country Squire. Image \u00a9 ECCO. Not to be reproduced without permission.<\/p><\/div>\n

Without belabouring the details, I concluded that Pitcher was correct in the identification of Short as Wright. In addition to the texts Pitcher identifies by Wright, I have identified a few more, such as The Country Squire<\/em> (1781) and several \u2018fugitive pieces\u2019 contributed to other magazines. Pitcher\u2019s suggestion that Wright used other pseudonyms is confirmed by the author himself in the opening pages of The Country Squire<\/em> wherein he states that he has appeared \u2018under various signatures, such as A Young Philanthropist<\/em>, Theron<\/em>, Jun. Florio<\/em>, &c.\u2019 (iii) \u2013 all of which are signatures that appear in the LM<\/em>.\u00a0I have also located his marriage certificate, which identifies \u2018Miss Wright of Hackney\u2019 (Town and Country\u00a0<\/em>IV: 216) \"george<\/a>more clearly as an Elizabeth Wright of the parish of Saint Andrew, Holborn.<\/p>\n

That George and Elizabeth shared a last name raises further questions (were they perhaps cousins, close or distant? Or was this mere coincidence?) that remain unanswered. Short himself notes their identical last names in a rather sweet poem of this that I located, appearing as a fugitive piece in the European Magazine and London Review <\/em>(II [1782]: 16) but that was likely printed previously elsewhere. In this short poem Wright encourages Miss Wright to \u2018change but your state <\/em>and continue your name<\/em>, Be not Wright only single<\/em>, but married<\/em>, the same\u2019 (European Magazine and London Review <\/em>II [1782]: 16).<\/p>\n

Wright\u2019s wife Elizabeth, as Pitcher notes, is listed in the deaths section of the Town and Country (<\/em>IX [March 1786]: 211). I have also found her death listed in the New London Magazine <\/em>(8: [1786]: 166), and much more interestingly, in the New Lady\u2019s Magazine <\/em>(I: [1786]: 112).<\/p>\n

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The New Lady\u2019s Magazine<\/em> (1786-1795) was a rival publication to the Lady’s Magazine\u00a0<\/em>that was edited by the Rev. Mr. Charles Stanhope. The New Lady\u2019s <\/em>looked almost identical to the Lady’s Magazine, <\/em>was published a few doors down from the Robinsons\u2019 magazine, and included a considerable volume\u00a0of material from the original periodical. The obituary that appears in this magazine provides much more information than was typical. It states: \u2018On Sunday, March 5, 1786, died at Peckham, upon a visit to her sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Wright, wife of G. Wright, Esq. of John Street, Tottenham-Court road, a sincere but retired Christian; a dutiful wife, a tender mother, and a real friend, particularly to the poor<\/em>; her exemplary life and conduct [. . .]\u2019 (I: 112). This, to me, indicates the possibility that George Wright was in some way acquainted with the editors of the new magazine, or had at least exchanged his loyalty from the Lady’s Magazine<\/em>\u00a0to its new rival.<\/p>\n

The names of Bob Short and George Wright appeared in other periodicals and magazines over the next few years and Wright continued to publish his own books and miscellanies. There is, indeed, much more work to be done in identifying all of his publications and his contributions not only to the Lady’s Magazine\u00a0<\/em>but to other periodicals as well. Ultimately I disagree with Pitcher, who believes Wright was, like many others, a \u2018semiprofessional compiler [. . .] George Wright belonged to this miscellany of hacks, opportunists, and amateurs, and probably fared as well as most in entertaining and instructing the contemporary reading public\u2019 (Pitcher: 383). His lengthy career and myriad publications require us to\u00a0consider him as more than a compiler, hack, amateur, or opportunist. In spite of finding nearly everything he wrote infuriating, it seems clear to me that Wright was an author, and that his literary career provoked his fellow periodical contributors into debates and dialogues that remain fascinating and provocative to this day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jenny DiPlacidi<\/p>\n

School of English<\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Kent<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Edward W. Pitcher, \u2018The Periodical and Miscellaneous Publications of George Wright (\u201cBob Short, Junior\u201d)\u2019, Bibliographical Notes<\/em> 74:4 (1980): 379-408.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Countless are the times I have looked up from reading the Lady\u2019s Magazine to moan in frustration: \u2018I can\u2019t stand this man!\u2019 I\u2019m speaking of Bob Short, Junior, author of the magazine\u2019s serial \u2018The Female Reformer\u2019 which appeared periodically from March 1776 through the mid-1780s. From the outset, Bob Short declares he will\u00a0\u2018animadvert occasionally on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39798,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39798"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":783,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions\/783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/ladys-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}