PUBLICATIONS
BOOK
Elinor Glyn in Hollywood: Novelist, Movie-Maker, Glamour Icon and Business Woman by Vincent L. Barnett and Alexis Weedon University of Illinois Press forthcoming. This book will present the first full-length study of the cross-media practices of Elinor Glyn as she worked in Hollywood to adapt her highly popular romantic novels into films. It will also show how she worked across Europe and America at expounding her ideas in articles, stories, plays, serializations, and through her own personal appearance on film, radio and in the lecture hall. Based on extensive new archive materials, the book will explore Glyn's experiences from a number of different but related perspectives - including the artistic, legal and financial aspects of the adaptation process - and it will document Glyn's personal and professional relationships with a number of famous individuals in the Hollywood studio environment, such as Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg. The book will ask what made Glyn's career as an author so successful and compare her scenario-writing experiences with that of other novelists in Hollywood, such as Edgar Wallace and Arnold Bennett. A multi-disciplinary methodology will be adopted, taking approaches from book history, film history, economic history and gender theory, in order to fully document and illuminate the multi-faceted nature of Glyn's working practices. Overall the book will make a substantial contribution to revising and augmenting existing knowledge about how the film, publishing and broadcasting industries related in the historical and institutional context of the inter-war period.
SPECIAL JOURNAL ISSUE
'Adaptations, Cross-Media Practices and Branded Entertainments' jointly edited by Weedon and Murray (PI on the Australian Research Council Project 'Books as Media: The Cultural Economy of Literary Adaptation') Convergence Vol 17 no 1.
ARTICLES
'A Creditable Performance? Sir Oswald Stoll as Business Strategist and Monetary Heretic.' Journal of the History of Economic Thought 31:3 by Vincent L. Barnett. This article examines the economic and financial ideas of the multi- media magnate Sir Oswald Stoll, and how they connected with his business experiences in the theatre and film industries. It suggests that Stoll Picture Production's cross-media strategy for employing the works of eminent British novelists in its film production programme from 1920 onwards was in part motivated by Stoll's negative experience of cooperation with the US Goldwyn company before this time. It was also linked to his support for the notion of credit nationalism more widely conceived.
'The Novelist as Hollywood Star: Author Royalties and Studio Income in the 1920s' Film History 20:3 (2008) by Vincent L. Barnett. This article examines the significant financial rewards obtained by Elinor Glyn as a result of adapting her stories into movie screenplays in Hollywood in the 1920s. It uses archive materials from Reading University to present detailed information on the level of studio income and author royalties in relation to a significant number of Glyn's film adaptations (such as Three Weeks and It), and discusses the narrative around these data in terms of the issue of contracts and the role of film companies such as MGM and Paramount. It also shows that conflict over royalties and accounting practices were significant elements of Glyn's experiences in Hollywood. Her status as a 'star' author is then compared with that of other well-known authors of the period, concluding that she was in some ways a unique phenomenon in terms of the level of her artistic and financial success.
Picturization Partners: Elinor Glyn and the Thalberg Contract Affair, Film History 19:3 by Vincent L. Barnett. This article focuses on the contractual negotiations that occurred between Elinor Glyn, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg over the movie rights for Glyn's stories around the time of the formation of MGM in 1924. It relates the narrative of how Glyn initially agreed to form a joint company with Thalberg to make adaptations of her stories, but then backtracked on this agreement in order to secure (from her perspective) a more advantageous deal with Mayer.
Popular Novelists and the British Film Industry, 1927-32 Journal of European Economic History 36:1 by Vincent L. Barnett. This article examines the potential prospects of the British film industry within an international context in the period following the 1927 Cinematograph Act. It does so by presenting business history case-studies of the attempts by two popular novelists (Elinor Glyn and Edgar Wallace) to re-invigorate film-making in the UK at the end of the 1920s, through the creation of production companies focused specifically on adapting their own stories to the screen. Various structural and contextual problems with these efforts are highlighted as partial explanations for the failure of European films to challenge Hollywood dominance after WW2.
'Elinor Glyn's System of Writing' Publishing History 60 by Alexis Weedon. By the time Glyn (1864-1943) wrote her four volume series The Elinor Glyn System of Writing she was a wealthy and successful author sharing her trade secrets with her readers in America and Britain. The System is a 'How to' book with some of the problematical characteristics of that genre - a gushing enthusiasm, over-simplification, hyperbole, hubris. It also shows, particularly in later volumes, a depth of understanding of the technical aspects of writing and the construction of stories both for print and film. This article examines at Glyn's early life as a professional author of novels and magazine articles and argues that she is worth revisiting for her role in pioneering cross-media authorship. The Elinor Glyn System of Writing is a distillation of her methods and the lessons she had learnt from watching and reading other writers. Combined with her autobiographical narrative of her life in A Romantic Adventure it reveals some of the qualities and practices which made Glyn's writing career so unique.
'The Economic Life of the Author', Journal of Victorian Culture 12:1 by Alexis Weedon. Invited contribution to series of short papers on the economic life of the author in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Reflecting on Catherine Gallagher's book The Body Economic (2006) the article argues that 'economic life' should include the author's understanding of economic exchange. This affects their attitude to plot and character within their fiction, to other forms of textual production, and more broadly their view of the use-value of authorship. 'Economic life' in this context means knowing the sources of an author's income, her contractual agreements, returns on different forms of publication, experimentation with different formats and preferences expressed to publishers and agents which is key to understanding the final form of the commodification of the text. The author's own continued existence as a published writer is dependent on her choices in the changing marketplace at the time: a marketplace subject to economic cycles, domestic and international competition, and interventions from tariff protectionism to foreign war.
'"Behind the Screen" and "The Scoop"': a cross-media experiment in publishing and broadcasting crime fiction, Media History 31:1 by Alexis Weedon. This article examines the four-sided debate between authors, agents, the BBC and professional bodies on the issue of payments for author and compares these with the concerns of performers and record companies in the early 1930s. It looks in detail at the exchange between a number of British crime writers and the BBC over the production in 1930 of the radio serial 'Behind the Screen' and the subsequent serial 'The Scoop' and the tensions between the established working practices of print publication and the demands of broadcasting. The correspondence highlights issues of pay, ownership, collaborative writing, and author's differing attitudes to writing for the radio. Using statistics from their films and book sales a comparison is made between the time spent writing for the different media and long term returns (authors include Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Hugh Walpole, EC Bentley, Anthony Berkeley Cox, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, and Clemence Dane).
BOOK CHAPTERS
'The Numbers Game: Quantifying the Audience' in D. Cutchins, L. Raw and J. M. Welsh (eds) The Pedagogy of Adaptation Scarecrow Press 2010 ISBN 978-0810872967 by Alexis Weedon. The chapter integrates the research findings of the project with practical teaching in adaptations. It combines research in historical and contemporary publishing and readership.
'Textual production and dissemination in book history. A case study of cross-media production between the wars' in Marianne Thormåhlen ed. English Now: Selected Papers from the 20th Iaupe Conference: 112 (Lund Studies in English) ISBN 978-9197693509 by Alexis Weedon. The mapping of historical data has proven particularly insightful for our current project into cross-media influences and practices. The project uses quantitative and qualitative techniques commonly used in book history to investigate how ten British authors (only three are discussed here) worked with a new professional class in film, radio, the press and publishers to get their works to the public. It analyses the practices of adaptation for screen and radio which emerged at that time and authors' differing attitudes to them and what were the economic rewards for the authors, editors and other professionals. In addition it asks how the professionals - from literary agents to newspaper editors - saw the role of tie-in. Finally it investigates how the conceptualization of that new audience influenced the decisions of the professionals involved.
'In Real Life: the book cover in the internet book store' in Nickianne Moody and Nicole Matthews (eds) Judging a book by its cover: fans, publishers, designers and the marketing of books (Ashgate) by Alexis Weedon.
This chapter explores some theoretical insights into contemporary issues in cross-media marketing and film tie-ins for those teaching publishing studies or popular fiction. While it does not include historical data from the project, Weedon has explored contemporary cross-media practices in parallel with the historical project in a number of conference papers.
CONFERENCE
Cross-media co-operation between the theatrical, publishing and film industries: an interdisciplinary colloquium At Institute for English Studies, Senate House, London. 12 April 2008 This conference brought together the Australian Research Council Project (PI Simone Murray), the new journal in Adaptations (ed. Imelda Whelehan), the work at the British Film Institute into British authors early film series (Nathalie Morris et al) as well as other scholars and our own project team's research findings in a series of papers followed by plenary discussions about future plans for research co-operation. In the second half of the colloquium delegates discussed in a plenary the parallels between the historical research and contemporary issues. Papers included Juliet Gardiner's consultancy on the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement, and adaptations of Man-Booker prize winners.
EXHIBITION
Timeline: British authors and Hollywood between the warsVenue The Gallery Space, University of Bedfordshire.
An exhibition showing how British authors were involved in the film industry between the wars in USA and UK containing extracts from letters, film posters, book jackets, reproductions of archival sources, and summaries of research findings.
CONFERENCE PAPERS
• 'Elinor Glyn: Novelist and Photoplay Writer' invited paper given by Alexis Weedon at the National Film Theatre/British Film Institute on 7 November. This day conference was part of the 'Women and Silent Britain' season at the National Film Theatre, South Bank, London 8 October - 22 November 2009.
• 'Using the Reading Experience Database in cross-media research', invited paper given by Alexis Weedon at The Reading Experience Database: the present and the future conference, British Library Conference Centre, 29th September, 2009
• 'Creating audiences: Some examples of cross-media practices'paper given by Alexis Weedon to the Society for the History of Authorship Reading and Publishing, 25-28 July 2008.
• 'Elinor Glyn: Author on Page and Screen'paper given by Alexis Weedon at the Women in the Silent ScreenFilmHuset, Stockholm, 11-13 June 2008.
• 'What are Cross-media Practices: A Case study of authors from the 1920s and 1930s', paper by Alexis Weedon presented at University of Sunderland, 24th February 2008.
• 'Keeping in front of the public: Elinor Glyn and the adaptation of Three Weeks'paper by Alexis Weedon presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research conference Paris, 22-26 July 2007.
• 'The Uses of Quantification'by Alexis Weedon invited paper on a panel on bibliography presented at International Association of University Professors of English, University of Lund, 5-11 August 2007.
• 'Making "It" in Hollywood: Elinor Glyn as novelist, movie-maker, glamour icon and businesswoman'Conference paper by Vincent L. Barnett at the Society for the History of Authorship Reading and Publishing annual conference July 2006, National Library, The Hague, Netherlands.
• Panel on contemporary and historical convergence with Julia Knight, Jason Wilson and Alexis Weedon at Association of Internet Researchers Conference, Brisbane, Australia 26-30 September, 2006.
One researcher wrote up the cross-media research at the conference at
http://www.cross-mediaentertainment.com/2006/10/aoir-report/.
This panel looked at cross-media storytelling and adaptations across film, games and book industries. It was our first attempt at showing the relevance of the historical work to our understanding of contemporary media practices.
