Talk:Henry Carey (writer)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article has been improved by the Cleanup Taskforce to conform with a higher standard of quality. Please see its Cleanup Taskforce page for more details on this process, and possible ideas on how you can further improve this article!

Are you people imagining things? I really can't tell the basis of the clean up, and I'd be happy, as the primary author of the article, to clean it up myself, if I knew in some clear sense what it is that appears to be untidy about it. Apologies for biting when I should be thanking, but I really don't understand the critique -- which would be a good reason for me to step out of the way, if there had been an effort to address the problem on the talk page first. Geogre 14:08, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps - I'm guessing here - they want some sectioning? —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 17:53, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

That's fine, if that's what's desired. Anyone can section it. I suppose the headings would be "musical career and early politics," "theatrical career and political satire" and then the last paragraph in "literary significance" section. It wasn't sectioned already because no one facet of his career could be separated, by me anyway, from another. He was a working stiff who was always writing songs, always writing plays, always writing poems, always expressing his political views, and he didn't have a single success as much as a few years of successes, and I don't have enough information to go into depth with the Savile bastardry pro- and con-. Still, I'll section in a bit. Maybe that will do it. Geogre 20:54, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Henry Carey (writer) - Moved from cleanup taskforce page

The Henry Carey (writer) needs to be properly formatted. It looks to be properly referenced and I think the only thing wrong with it is that it looks like one big block of text. Rejnal 04:42, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Please define. It is at a very high academic level now, and that means paragraphs that are more than 2 sentences long. If your screen resolution is low, it may appear to be in a blob, but at high resolution it looks quite properly formatted to me. Further, I'm not at all sure that it is a "clean up taskforce" crisis, when what you're really looking for is a note dropped on the talk page of an active article being watched by its sole author. Geogre 14:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Added to User:Kcordina/Desk RJFJR 00:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, with the help of three other sets of eyes, I gather that the issue was that subsections were desired. Personally, I didn't think the article was long enough or the life clearcut enough for such a thing, but sections have now been made. Please communicate on the talk page. Otherwise, with no more input in another 24 hours, I will suppose the objections are satisfied. Very odd project proceedings, I must say. (Inactive pages being added to projects are great. Active pages, though, always have communication on the talk page without tags.) Geogre 03:27, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I've had a look through and started tweaking things. The introduction was, I felt, a little long, so I have moved some of the content to an 'early life' section. I think the early musical and literary work section needs changing around a bit to get it into chronological order - it's very hard to follow at the moment. It starts off with saying something about his later-life, then jumps back to 1710. Geogre can you try and re-order the section so its follow his life through more clearly? Kcordina 09:23, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the cleanup tags, moved the still valid comments to this page and pruned out-of-date discussion that is no longer needed. Geogre, I think the above question of mine still stands, I'll carry on proof reading the article to see if there are any more questions raised to the novice in the subject. Kcordina 09:38, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I've stetted the old comments. Deleting entries on talk pages is seldom a good idea. Archive them if you don't want them easliy visible here. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

To answer the question, the later life comment was in the context of the general misinformation available from 18th c. sources (the Gentleman's Mag. obit has been used as a basis by way too many people). I put that information there to establish that what we can know from the G. M. source is X (bastard son) but that we can't be sure because it also says Y (annuity). In particular, the GM liked to say that people got annuities when they didn't (see John Cleland). It was a popular thing at the end of the 18th c. to assume that everyone of worth from the mid-century got one. That said, the general point is valid. It is difficult to discuss him as a musician and then as a playwright and as a poet, as he was all three at the same time, but I don't feel that it's particularly anachronistic in its discussion. Instead, it is organized by milestone (getting a job; losing a job; Namby Pamby; first plays), with discussion that may telescope or recall at each point (Namby Pamby wakes up Pope to him, alerts Fielding to him, is in keeping with setting Psalm, explains that Pope satirized the productions without disliking the workers), but the keystones are each sequential. At least that was my plan in composition, and this subject is a very difficult one to even do that with satisfactorily. Geogre 16:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I should mention that I do have an objection to the resectioning. The reason that the initial paragraph was long was that I was trying to create a full lead for eventual FAC consideration, or for potential FAC consideration. Therefore, the lead was to be a contextual overview that would then lead into the analysis. However, I had birth and early years stuff to dispense with. Generally, that information should be there but isn't anything worthy of the body, so, admittedly inelegantly, it was in the lead to simply get it somewhere out of the way of his professional life. Geogre 16:12, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Righto, I see what you mean about the introduction. Perhaps if we work on the rest of the article, then revisit and expand the introduction from the information that sits in the fina version. I understand your comments about the difficulty of a chronological method, and revisiting I think you are right, it works better as is. I am struggling with the first part of the Early musical and literary work section. I think it needs more explanation around the 'therefore'. I don't quite understand why the statement in the first sentance leads to the statement in the second sentance. Kcordina 16:35, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

The "therefore" was perhaps misplaced (optional placement, really), but the sense is this:

"Laetitia Pilkington says that he was working for Worsdale. She says this in 34. In 34, Carey was having successes under his own name. So, if he was willing to sell his works to be published by someone else under his name in 34, when his name was worth something, it is logical that Carey had been a hack writer for a very long time. Thus, even though anonymous works are anonymous, so we can't prove it, logic suggests that, before we have anything "by" Henry Carey, there were works by Henry Carey in print."

Now, the reason that's important is that I was trying to answer the question of what he did before Namby Pamby. There are some things we know of (and those are mentioned next), but the first things we know of him, the very first things we know are as a musician. Was he a musician who later began to write? No, I say. He was probably a writer and musician all the time, but we can't be as sure as we'd like, so here's the evidence. Geogre 20:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleaning comments

I've been convinced by the quality of the edits from recent workers on the article that there are language knots I missed on my earlier drafts, so I'd like to stay out of the way while y'all work, but I will certainly answer questions about why things were the way they were, what we know, why it was structured in a certain way, etc. However, one of the cornerstones of writing is aesthetic distance. As I think Ezra Pound said, the poet does not know what he said. He only knows what he meant to say. Similarly, all writers know their own intent, but cannot always see their result, so, while the cleaning is underway, I'll help with comments, facts, explanations, and, if needed, further research (the Grove Encyclopedia, for example, will probably have an entry on him, and I'm planning to go look at it; I suspect its biography will repeat the same errors as the old DNB (the 1894 one), but it will have information on his musical career). Geogre 02:19, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I just found something truly exciting: Henry Carey's daughter, Anne, was the mother of "Edmund Carey, the remarkable theatrical child." Edmund was born out of wedlock. You know him better by his father's name, which he assumed professionally when older: Edmund Kean. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians had a great deal of cool information, but I'll wait for y'all to finish with the tinkering before I go adding in new blocks of text. Geogre 16:43, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Well as for me, I've done my tinkering for now. I'd say have at it. Paul August ☎ 20:17, 22 February 2006 (UTC)