The Cry of the Children (1912) from Ned Thanhouser on Vimeo.

Courtesy of Thanhouser Company Film Preservation, Inc.

Dr. Joshua King opens with a brief overview of the results of the COVE online annotations exercise followed by introductions by Sarah Tharp and Stewart Riley, graduate students in English, and presentations by

• Dr. Joshua King, ” ‘He is speechless as a stone’: Killing God and the Earth in ‘Cry of the Children’”
  Dr. Beverly Taylor, “Industrial Soundscape and ‘The Cry of the Children’”
  Dr. Linda Hughes, “Publishing with the Tories: EBB’s ‘Cry’ in Blackwood’s“

Introduction by Dr. Joshua King followed by papers from:

• Dr. Marjorie Stone, “Ebenezer Elliott’s Corn-Law Rhymes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘O pardon dear lady,’ and ‘The Cry of the Children’: From ‘agricultural-evil’ to ‘Factory-evil’”
• Dr. Florence Boos, “’The Cry of the Children’ and the Poetry of Victorian Working Women”

Dr. Helen Rogers from Liverpool John Moores University on the Archive of Working-Class Writing

Dr. Simon Rennie from the University of Exeter on the Poetry of the Cotton Famine project

Dr. Francesca Benatti from The Open University on the Reading Experience Database

The full version of this performance was streamed live on the day of the event. This 15-minute excerpt contains two highlights with a reading by Dr. Mike Sanders and a song by Jennifer Reid: The defense offered by the Chartist Richard Pilling when he was standing on trial in 1843, and a song based on the testimony of 17-year-old miner Patience Kershaw in 1842.

This welcome session opens the Rhyme and Reform symposium with greetings from

• Jennifer Borderud, Director of the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University
• Joshua King, Associate Professor and Margarett Root Brown Chair of Browning Victorian Studies at Baylor University
• Kirstie Blair, Chair of English at the University of Strathclyde
• Mike Sanders, Senior Lecturer in 19th Century Writing at the University of Manchester

Please Note: We experienced audio issues on the Armstrong Browning Library end of the symposium during the opening session.