Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Original Stories from Real Life

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 04:21, 5 May 2007.

[edit] Original Stories from Real Life

This is another in my little series of articles revolving around eighteenth-century British education. Original Stories from Real Life is Mary Wollstonecraft's only complete work of children's literature. There is not much scholarship on this text, so the page is by necessity short. Please see the extensive peer review this page underwent as well as the other helpful comments that aided me in my revision. Thanks. Awadewit 00:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

  • It needs a gallery of all the plates (and/or appropriate ones decorating the earlier parts of the text), and if possible, discussion of more than just the frontispiece. If there aren't any better sources (have you scan-able access to a copy with the original plates?) you can grab them from the Google Book.--ragesoss 00:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually, I think that a gallery of the plates would overwhelm the page. The page is supposed to be about Wollstonecraft's text, not Blake's illustrations (a gallery would be more appropriate to a Blake page, I think). One could argue that the page is about the book, but when you consider that the first edition of the text had no illustrations at all, I really do think that the focus should be on Wollstonecraft's text (by the way, there are some 200 pages of text and six prints in the 1791 edition). That is why the illustration section is last and receives the least emphasis. Also, I chose to focus on a single illustration as an example of different interpretations primarily because that is the only illustration that two opposing critics discuss. Let me know what you think. (I can get all of the images from Eighteenth Century Collections Online, if necessary) Is this your covert way of suggesting that the article is too author-centered and that I have not properly accepted the death of the author? :) Awadewit 00:59, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Your rationale for only discussing one plate is convincing, but readers will still inevitably want to see the rest of them. At the very least, add all the images to Commons and use {{Commons}}. However, I don't see why the first edition should have priority (except in a literal sense), nor why the article should be about the text rather than the book. I also feel let down by the lack of discussion of reception (prior to becoming a subject of professional literary analysis), but I suspect there is nothing you can do about that. Other details I would like if possible are the usual: what was the physical form of the book in its first and second editions, how many copies were printed, and how much did it cost? (I have very little experience with literary theory; the way I judge an article about a book is to compare it to the hypothetical featured article that could be written about Vestiges of Creation... unfair, I know.)--ragesoss 06:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I see you are a "history of the book" critic. Fair enough. Unfortunately, with Original Stories, we are missing a lot of information.
  • I'm not really sure what you mean by adding the images to "Commons." What do you think about having a separate "Plates" page? A lot of literary articles have separate pages for things like a "List of Charles Dickens' works." I could do a "Plates from Original Stories from Real Life" page.
  • Done and note added to article. Awadewit 18:44, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • In literary studies, first editions are usually given priority (unless there are good reasons to give other editions priority). There are some interesting textual changes between the first and second editions, by the way, but very little has been written about that as well. Perhaps one or two sentences. I'm not sure I could justify putting it in. Do two sentences in one article by one scholar justify a scholarly consensus? I myself have done an exhaustive comparison of the two texts, but that material is in my unpublished dissertation chapter. Too bad.
  • There is no real information available on reception (this came up in the peer review, too). I might be able to quote one contemporary review, but that might again be considered original research. What do you think? Certainly the scholarship doesn't talk about its reception.
  • I think a contemporary review is fair game, but if you think it's better left out, that's fine.--ragesoss 17:21, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • It might take me a few days. The only review I know of is in our rare book and manuscript library. I'll have to go over there and get it again. Awadewit 18:44, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I have added one reference from the 19c. I still have to get the contemporary review. Awadewit 21:54, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
  • The book would have been "published" in sets of pages and customers would have paid to bind their own copies. In the eighteenth century, very few books were bound by publishers. The aristocracy often had all of their books bound in identical bindings with their crests stamped on them. This idea was imitated later when mass-produced "sets" of books were published. (I am constantly removing "Hardback and paperback" from infoboxes on 18c book pages for just this reason - it had no meaning during that time.)
  • Are there any notable copies that could be mentioned (annotated by other authors or other historical figures, for example)?--ragesoss 17:21, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't know of any. Awadewit 18:44, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • We have no idea how many copies were printed. I can tell you how many copies of different types books were printed on average, but none of the scholarship on this book says anything about that, so I have a feeling that would be original research of the synthesis kind.
  • I'm afraid I don't know how much it cost. Neither of the title pages has the price (some title pages have that information), none of my sources do, and we don't have Joseph Johnson's (the publisher) records anymore (as far as I know). Awadewit 07:17, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I figured few of those questions would be answerable (at least, in a Wikipedia article).--ragesoss 17:21, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Yet even when this friend needs assistance, Charles cannot act quickly enough and his friend is imprisoned, his daughter is forced to marry a rake and, tragically, he dies. Whose daughter? Who dies? It does not become clear until the next sentence.
  • I tried to fix this. Unfortunately, Charles' friend does not have a name in the story, so it is a bit tricky to retell the story. Awadewit 04:30, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • ...rather than judging it according to twentieth-century tastes.' This is not going to age elegantly, since presumably newer historicist reassessments will not judge it by 21st century tastes either (and twentieth-century tastes is pretty broad, considering that the Summerfield source is only from the 1980s), although the easy alternative "modern tastes" has some unwanted connotations.
  • I used "modern"; "personal tastes" sounded even worse. It really is something more like "post-Alice in Wonderland," but that would require a lot of explanation. Awadewit 04:30, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Overall, there are too many quotes for my taste. The only thing that I think it a real problem is when one quote stretches across several lines (her peevish temper...; to convey her message...; guile is a natural talent...; embodies an investment...); either use block quotes, or (preferably) quote less.
  • Me too; if you go way back in the history, you will see a dramatic decrease in the number of quotes. During the peer review, I was encouraged to add more from the text to illustrate the style of the text and to be fairer to Rousseau. Trying to achieve consensus. I have blocked the largest quotes; I think people can follow for a line and a half or so. Awadewit 04:30, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Overall, this article is well-written and appears complete. Support.--ragesoss 04:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Support Well written and exhaustively researched. While I'd like to see one more image from the book on the page, I can accept Awadewit's reasoning above for not doing that. The only thing I'd add would be more of the historical significance of the book (perhaps merging it into the historical context section). Best, --Alabamaboy 02:02, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Do you mean rearranging something in the article or adding more material? Frankly, there isn't any more material to add. If I knew of any scholarship that said anything about the relationship of her book to nineteenth-century children's literature, I would have put it in. It's just that so little has been written; what has been written did not focus on that or the book was not significant in the way you are thinking (started a war and all). Just thousands of people read it and it helped formed their reading tastes and their identities. No biggie. :) Awadewit 02:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
I meant adding more info. If there's no scholarship on the subject, then don't worry about it. Best, --Alabamaboy 00:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Support A well-written and well-cited article. MLilburne 09:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. I don't find myself qualified to oppose or support an article on this level, but it looks very good to me, and it also makes me glad for once to see a plot summary section without that hideous and unencyclopedic spoiler-tag. But allow me to make a few comments, feel free to ignore:
You seem to be very conservative in your wiki-linking. I'm in general fine with that, most articles have way too many repetitive or trivial links that just distracts the reader and devalue the real important and informative ones. But in this article I miss some links, and especially some that would have been red links. Red links look ugly, and many of them will even make a FAC fail, which is meant to suggest that to gain FA-status, also subjects close to the topic at hand should have articles, or at least stubs. In this article I see many of those. Being a novice on the subject, I may overestimate the importance of many of them, but by just reading the article, and emphasising that it's just my uneducated opinion: Mitzi Myers, who you cite several places and who wrote a "series of seminal articles", should have an article (and therefore be linked to so people are more encouraged to write at least a stub). The same with Joseph Johnson who published this book (and all of Wollstonecraft's work). C. M. Hewins, and maybe even her book History of Children's Books, looks to my uneducated eyes to be of importance and therefore improve this article if it had at least a stub readers could turn to for context. Just the very basics in a stub on three or four lines is sometimes enough to give the context that you can't put in this article without bloating it. Adèle et Théodore and Tales of the Castle also seem to me to be important and relevant to this one, as they are the novels Original Stories were modeled on. Overall you do a good job in explaining, in a few words, who the people you cite are (i.e. why we should care what they think). But you miss out on the first time you mention Gary Kelly. "According to Gary Kelly, the last edition of Original Stories...". Who the hell is Gary Kelly, I thought. And, again, an article on him would probably make this one better. But you still have to qualify his opinions in this one, of course.
  • You are right that I am a conservative linker - I am for precisely the reasons that you list. I have fixed the Kelly reference - thank you for noticing that.
  • According to WP:BIO, the primary criteria for inclusion is being "the subject of secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." Mitzi Myers and and Gary Kelly are scholars and therefore no one has written anything about them; furthermore, they are not theorists like Michel Foucault who has made a lasting impact on the entire discipline. They are important to eighteenth-century studies and Myers is to children's literature, but I am not sure that that merits them a page. They are brilliant scholars, but do all brilliant scholars get a page? I didn't think so.
  • C. M. Hewins appears to have been a librarian for the Hartford Library Association (I have added this nugget of information into the article, but I really do feel that I am tipping over into original research here - I was afraid of this); she also seems to have published a few edited works for children herself (see a google search). But, as far as I know, she is not an important figure in children's literature history. A google scholar search, for example, turns up no references to her in any academic works. Hewins simply published an article in the The Atlantic Monthly on the history of children's literature. I included this because other reviewers here at FAC wanted information on how Original Stories was received during the nineteenth century and this is what I could find.
  • I'm not sure that there is enough scholarship on either Adèle et Théodore or Tales of the Castle to write entire pages on them; that is why I linked to Madame de Genlis, who is the author of these texts. I would argue that these texts should be discussed on her page. I might be convinced otherwise, if I knew for sure that there were more than a handful of articles on these texts (perhaps there is more in French). Eighteenth-century children's literature is an up and coming field and there is very little scholarship at the moment. It's like dark matter. Either way, I have red-linked them just in case.
  • I have created a stub for Joseph Johnson who was a significant figure and has a biography. Awadewit 04:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Again, I don't know anything about this topic, I just read the article. And maybe having every expert and notable person on the topic explained to me would be aiming too low with your audience. We have narrow topics on Wikipedia with articles far less accessible than this. Many of the physics articles, for instance, I understand very little of. And I'm a physicist. Regarding red links, opinions may vary. It's probably you who would have to write the articles, anyway. But nothing is more inviting than a red link, a link to an article not yet written. There might be Wollstonecraft scholars out there who would be tempted to join the project and write those articles if they saw the "please write me" flag that red links signal.
I only wish the Wollstonecraft scholars would write for wikipedia. Awadewit 04:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for all your excellent work! Shanes 01:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.