Landscape, Letters and Female Landowners in the North: The Writings of Beatrix Heelis and Anne Lister

这个项目将调查文学、安妮·李斯特和比阿特丽克斯·希利斯（nevel Potter）笔下的风景如画的农业景观之间的关系。我将通过她们从19世纪到20世纪初的日记和信件来研究女性对农村和农业空间的概念（以及这些术语的含义）。我将探讨土地是如何被重视和体验的，以文学批评为重点，质疑他们作品中对代理、权威和管理的态度。从表面上看，这两位作家似乎截然不同：李斯特（1791-1840）是约克郡一个拥有土地的家庭的一个小成员（但在社会上雄心勃勃）；希利斯（1866-1943）来自伦敦的一个中上层家庭。然而，两人都对英格兰北部的风景有着强烈的依恋，都是一丝不苟的细节记录者；从他们的工作生活和经济利益，到他们对自然世界的观察。将景观及其相关艺术视为一种观看方式，我将问我们可以从Heelis和Lister对风景如画的看法中学到什么，以及研究他们对私人土地和公共道路权的管理。这些对女性管理的调查最终提出了许多问题，因为它们可能会回答。例如，谁被允许观看这些风景如画的景色，以及这种观看制度依赖于什么样的所有权和剥削历史？这个项目为19世纪生态批评学术研究提供了一个新的方向：通过两位杰出女性的档案，挖掘我们过去的细枝末节，为我们未来的阅读提供信息。安妮·李斯特的日记对19世纪的土地管理提供了丰富的评论，并构成了一个引人注目的例子，很少有人研究这些问题。目前，评论界和大众对李斯特的性取向兴趣激增，但还没有学者探讨她与土地的复杂关系：从挖煤坑和管理佃农，到她对景观园艺的兴趣。这篇论文将为李斯特的作品提供一种新的阅读方式，作为地点和空间的叙述，描绘出在李斯特和一个世纪后Heelis的作品到来之间的连续几年里发生的显著程度的环境和工业变化。很少有关于比阿特丽克斯·希利斯的批判性学术关注她对土地的管理和管理。这提供了一个及时的机会，可以进一步深入探索大量未发表的档案材料，这些材料构成了我关于Heelis保护主义的硕士论文的基础。从文学批评的角度研究这两位女性作品的文本和地形二分法，有助于进行有价值的比较论述，更广泛地阐明了19世纪和20世纪土地管理中日记写作、强迫性新闻细节和以信件为基础的交流的价值。在这个作品的基础上，我打算展示这两个女人如何能够，也应该成为一个不断发展的拼贴画的基础人物，这些拼贴画是由令人信服的矛盾和毫无疑问的引人注目的女性土地所有者组成的。

This project will investigate the relationships between literature, the picturesque and agricultural landscapes depicted in the writings of Anne Lister and Beatrix Heelis (neé Potter). I will look at both women's conception of rural and agricultural spaces (and what those terms might mean) through their journals, diaries and letters from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century. I will explore how land is valued and experienced, with a literary-critical focus, interrogating the attitudes towards agency, authority and stewardship found in their works. On the face of it these two writers seem poles apart: Lister (1791-1840) was a minor (but socially ambitious) member of a Yorkshire landowning family; Heelis (1866-1943) was from an upper-middle-class London-based family. Yet both had a strong attachment to the landscape of Northern England and were fastidious recorders of detail; of everything from their working lives and financial interests, to their observations on the natural world.Looking at landscape and its associated art as a mode of viewing, I will be asking what we might be able to learn from Heelis and Lister's ideas of the picturesque, as well as studying their management of private land with public rights of way. These investigations of female stewardship ultimately pose as many questions as they might answer. For example, who is allowed to view these picturesque scenes and landscapes, and what histories of ownership and exploitation does this system of viewing rely upon? This project offers a new direction in nineteenth-century ecocritical scholarship: unearthing the minutiae of our past through the archives of two remarkable women, to inform our readings for the future. The diaries of Anne Lister offer a rich commentary on nineteenth-century land management and constitute a striking example of lesser-studied literature engaging with these issues. Lister is currently experiencing a surge in critical and popular interest in her sexuality, but no scholarship has yet explored her complex relationship to land: from sinking coal pits and managing tenant farmers, to her interest in landscape gardening. This thesis will provide a new reading of Lister's writings as narratives of place and space, mapping the remarkable degree of environmental and industrial change which occurred in the successive years between Lister, and the arrival of Heelis' writings a century later. There is little critical scholarship on Beatrix Heelis which focuses closely on her stewardship and management of land. This offers a timely opportunity to explore in further depth the extensive unpublished archival material which formed the basis of my masters dissertation on Heelis' conservationism. Studying the textual and topographical dichotomy of the two women's writing with a literary-critical focus facilitates a valuable comparative discourse, illuminating the value of diary-writing, obsessive journalistic detail and letter-based communication in nineteenth and twentieth-century land management more widely. Building on this work, I intend to show how both women can, and should be, foundational figures in an ever-evolving collage of compellingly paradoxical and unquestionably striking female landowners.