Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-sd5qd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-11T05:01:36.827Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Writing Novels, Simulating Voices: Euphonia, Trilby, and the Technological Sounding of Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2021

Riley McGuire Open the ORCID record for Riley McGuire [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article troubles a tendency in literary criticism to equate novelistic speech with sound recording. It recovers the history of Joseph Faber's Euphonia (a speech simulator exhibited from the 1840s to the 1880s) in order to articulate an alternative vocal ontology of the novel—one of simulation rather than recording. The Euphonia has striking parallels to the eponymous heroine of George Du Maurier's Trilby (1894): their comparably mechanized utterances flatten hierarchies of difference, instead of phonographically using the voice to archive particularity. In dialogue, the Euphonia and Trilby elucidate the relationship between page and voice as always collaborative, though contoured by power.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , Summer 2021 , pp. 325 - 360
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

Abbate, Carolyn. “Outside Ravel's Tomb.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 52, no. 3 (1999): 465–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abercrombie, David. “Conversation and Spoken Prose.” In Studies in Phonetics and Linguistics, 1–9. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Altick, Richard D. The Shows of London. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1978.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Nina. Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Barnum, P. T. Selected Letters of P. T. Barnum. Edited by Saxon, A. H.. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Barnum, P. T.. Struggles and Triumph; or, Forty Years’ Recollections. Hartford: J. B. Burr, 1869.Google Scholar
Brontë, Charlotte. Villette. 1853. London: Penguin Books, 2004.Google Scholar
Coll, Fiona. “‘Just a singing-machine’: The Making of an Automaton in George Du Maurier's Trilby.” University of Toronto Quarterly 79, no. 2 (2010): 742–63.Google Scholar
“The Current of Chicago.” Morning News, 19 August 1886.Google Scholar
Du Maurier, George. “Punch's Letters.” Punch, 9 October 1869, 144.Google Scholar
Du Maurier, George. Trilby. 1894. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Maurier, George. The Young George Du Maurier: A Selection of His Letters, 1860–67. Edited by Maurier, Daphne Du. New York: Doubleday, 1952.Google Scholar
Edison, Thomas. “The Perfected Phonograph.” North American Review 146, no. 379 (1888): 641–50.Google Scholar
“Egyptian Hall.” Morning Post, 30 July 1846, 5.Google Scholar
Eliot, George. “Letter to Madame Bodichon.” In George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals, edited by Cross, W. III, 234. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1885.Google Scholar
“Euphonia; or, The Speaking Automaton.” English Gentleman, 25 July 1846: 4.Google Scholar
Freedman, Jonathan. The Temple of Culture: Assimilation and Anti-Semitism in Literary Anglo-America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Galvan, Jill Nicole. The Sympathetic Medium: Feminine Channeling, the Occult, and Communication Technologies, 1859–1919. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Gilder, Joseph Benson. Trilbyana: The Rise and Progress of a Popular Novel. New York: Critic Company, 1895.Google Scholar
Gitelman, Lisa. Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Gracombe, Sarah. “Converting Trilby: Du Maurier on Englishness, Jewishness, and Culture.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 58, no. 1 (2003): 75–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossman, Jonathan. “The Mythic Svengali: Anti-Aestheticism in Trilby.” Studies in the Novel 28, no. 4 (1996): 525–42.Google Scholar
Hankins, Thomas L., and Silverman, Robert J.. “Vox Mechanica: The History of Speaking Machines.” In Instruments and the Imagination, 178–220. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Harrison, Frederic. Studies in Early Victorian Literature. London: E. Arnold, 1895.Google Scholar
Henderson, Isham. “Du Maurier and Thackeray.” Yale Literary Magazine 555 (1897): 453–58.Google Scholar
Henry, Joseph. “To Henry M. Alexander.” In The Papers of Joseph Henry: The Princeton Years, edited by Reingold, Nathan, 6:359–63. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Hibbert, Christopher. Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.Google Scholar
Hollingshead, John. My Lifetime. 2 vols London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1895.Google Scholar
Houdini, Harry. The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin. New York: Publishers Printing, 1908.Google Scholar
Hunt, James. A Manual of the Philosophy of Voice and Speech. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859.Google Scholar
James, Henry. “George Du Maurier.” Harper's New Monthly Magazine 95 (1897): 594–609.Google Scholar
James, Henry. Letters. 4, 1895–1916. Edited by Edel, Leon. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Kittler, Friedrich A. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Translated by Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey and Wutz, Michael. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Koestenbaum, Wayne. The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire. New York: Poseidon Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Kreilkamp, Ivan. Voice and the Victorian Storyteller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lastra, James. Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“The Latest Invention.” London Journal, 1 November 1870.Google Scholar
Lerner, Jillian. The Peerless Prodigies of P. T. Barnum: A Stupendous Graphic Novel. Vancouver: Sensorium Editions, 2012.Google Scholar
Lindsay, David. “Talking Head.” Invention and Technology 13, no. 1 (1997): 57–63.Google Scholar
“A Machine That Can Talk, Laugh, and Sing.” New York Times, 6 October 1871.Google Scholar
“Machines vs. Men.” Daily National Intelligencer, 17 January 1844.Google Scholar
“The Major.” “Economical Love.” Melbourne Punch, 8 August 1878, 52.Google Scholar
Marcus, Steven. “Language into Structure: Pickwick Revisited.” Daedalus 101, no. 1 (1972): 183–202.Google Scholar
“Marie Faber Gets a Divorce.” New York Times, 11 December 1885.Google Scholar
“The Marvelous Talking-Machine.” In Illustrated History of Wild Animals and Other Curiosities Contained in P. T. Barnum's Great Traveling World's Fair, 70. New York: Wynkoop & Hallenbeck, 1874.Google Scholar
Marshall, Caitlin. “Crippled Speech.” Postmodern Culture 24, no. 3 (2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayer, Alfred M. “On Edison's Talking-Machine.” Popular Science Monthly, 12 April 1878, 719–24.Google Scholar
Mitchell, David, and Snyder, Sharon. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“New York Correspondent: I Had a Half Hour's Interview with the TALKING MACHINE.” Daily National Intelligencer, 5 March 1844.Google Scholar
“Notes on Science.” Cornhill Magazine 7, no. 39 (1863): 412–16.Google Scholar
Ormond, Leonée. George Du Maurier. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Ott, Katherine. “Prosthetics.” In Keywords for Disability Studies, edited by Adams, Rachel, Reiss, Benjamin, and Serlin, David, 140–43. New York: New York University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Page, Norman. Speech in the English Novel. 2nd ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perkins, Frederic Beecher. Devil-Puzzlers and Other Studies. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1877.Google Scholar
Peters, John Durham. “Helmholtz, Edison, and Sound History.” In Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture, edited by Geil, Abraham and Rabinovitz, Lauren, 177–98. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Picker, John M. “My Fair Lady Automaton.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 63, no. 1 (2015): 89–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Picker, John M. Victorian Soundscapes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purcell, L. Edward. “Trilby and Trilby-Mania: The Beginning of the Bestseller System.” Journal of Popular Culture 11, no. 1 (1977): 62–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ralph, Julian. “How Du Maurier Passed Away.” New York Journal, 9 October 1896, 7.Google Scholar
“Remarkable Talking Automaton.” Illustrated London News, 13 December 1862, 643.Google Scholar
Rockey, Denyse. Speech Disorder in Nineteenth Century Britain: The History of Stuttering. London: Croom Helm, 1980.Google Scholar
S. “The Speaking Machine.” The Athenæum 2991, 20 May 1843.Google Scholar
Saint-Amour, Paul K. “Ulysses Pianola.” PMLA 130, no. 1 (2015): 15–36.Google Scholar
Schroeder, Janice. “Village Voices: Sonic Fidelity and the Acousmatic in Adam Bede.” Victorian Review 37, no. 1 (2011): 181–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Showalter, Elaine. “Introduction.” In Trilby, by Maurier, George Du, vii–xxi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
“The Speaking Automaton.” The Times, 30 July 1846.Google Scholar
Spielmann, M. H. The Hitherto Unidentified Contributions of W. M. Thackeray to “Punch.” New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900.Google Scholar
Stern, Kimberly J. “Rule Bohemia: The Cosmopolitics of Subculture in George Du Maurier's Trilby.” Victorian Literature and Culture 38, no. 2 (2010): 547–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Suffered in Silence.” New York Times, 24 July 1887.Google Scholar
“Supported by Her Talking Machine.” New York Times, 12 November 1885.Google Scholar
“Talking Machines.” In All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal, 4:393–96. London: Chapman and Hall, 1870.Google Scholar
“The Talking Phonograph.” Scientific American 37, no. 25 (1877): 384–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Tea with Du Maurier in the Temple.” Leslie's Weekly 81, 10 October 1895, 233.Google Scholar
Thackeray, William Makepeace. “The Speaking Machine.” Punch, 22 August 1846, 83.Google Scholar
Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. 1848. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Tompkins, Dave. How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop. New York: Melville House, 2011.Google Scholar
“Very Sensible.” Punch, 9 October 1869, 143.Google Scholar
Vest, J. Martin. “Mr. and Mrs. Talking Machine.” Sounding Out! (blog). https://soundstudiesblog.com/2018/11/12/mr-and-mrs-talking-machine-the-euphonia-the-phonograph-and-the-gendering-of-nineteenth-century-mechanical-speech (accessed 11 January 2019).Google Scholar
“A Voice from Egyptian Hall.” Punch, 22 August 1846, 64.Google Scholar
Weliver, Phyllis. Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860–1900: Representations of Music, Science and Gender in the Leisured Home. Farnham: Ashgate, 2000.Google Scholar