Helen A. Clarke and Charlotte Endymion Porter: Literary Criticism in Author Country a Century Ago

Abstract

Alison Booth enriches the volume’s exploration of literary geographies with an examination of ‘author country’ publications by Helen Archibald Clarke and the example of her partnership with Charlotte Endymion Porter as co-editors of the longstanding journal Poet-Lore. Booth’s essay demonstrates how turn-of-the-twentieth-century Anglophilia and biographical criticism, aided by literary tourism, were critical instruments in forming the canon of English literature on both sides of the Atlantic. Ultimately, this essay challenges latter-day academic disregard for forms of affective and material reader response, recalling an earlier moment when the ‘professional–amateur’ divide was far less stable. Along the way, it also injects important considerations of regional and domestic setting as well as gender into the story of transatlantic claims to literary authority and culture.

I would like to thank Paul Westover and Ann Rowland for substantial collaboration in shaping this chapter.