From the archives 3: Marina Warner’s previous visits to the SBL
Marina Warner visited Suffolk Book League on 18th November 2021; but how many people know that she has spoken to Suffolk Book League at least twice before? The first visit was Tuesday March 12th 1996, as recorded in our journal BookTalk. There does not seem to be a review of this talk, but the preamble creates some fascinating possibilities as to its content: the title being ‘Women’s Voices in Fairy Tales’. It is mentioned that her ‘latest book From the Beast to the Blonde traces the sources and history of fairy tales and their tellers’ and that ‘fairy tales were often used as ways of expressing dissatisfaction against the dominant culture’…‘Marina Warner looks particularly at the social background these tales reflected and the changes made to them’…‘as they were altered to reflect changes in society and its outlook’.
The author’s next presentation to Suffolk Book League took place on Wednesday 16th January 2008, speaking about her book Phantasmagoria. The review of this evening describes it as ‘one of the most intellectually stimulating talks we have had’. Apparently ‘one of the main points of her talk dealt with the rise of the prevalence of new kinds of ghosts and spirits since the Enlightenment when we should have allegedly become more rational’. ‘She explained this by the introduction of new technology’…’which depicted spirits’... ‘presented as an illusion but the paradox was that the audience believed what they saw while being told not to’.’ Marina also ‘talked about memory and its importance in constructing our identity’ and there is mention on page 5 of BookTalk of a project she was then involved in with the University of Essex and the Victoria and Albert Museum of creating online ‘memory maps’.
Marina had very generously donated an unpublished ghost story to BookTalk, printed as a supplement to the main magazine, but it is missing from the archives. Does anyone out there have a copy that they could pass on for our records?
Janet Bayliss
References
Editorial (1996) ‘The programme: Tuesday, March 12th, Marina Warner on “Women’s voices in fairy tales’, BookTalk 80, March/April, p. 1.
Editorial (2008) ‘For those who couldn’t make it….Marina Warner, talking about her book ‘Phantasmagoria’,’ BookTalk 130, March, pp. 4-5.
Warner, M. (2008) ‘What are memory maps?’ BookTalk, 130, March, pp. 5-6.