April 29, 2024
Students, alumni follow professor Bruce Graver to the Lake District to explore Wordsworth
By Martha Young
Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.
That line by British Romantic poet William Wordsworth is a calling that Bruce Graver, Ph.D., professor of English at Providence College, has answered for decades. For 40 years, Graver has immersed his academic research in the world of Wordsworth, traveling to the Lake District in northwest England where Wordsworth often found inspiration for his poetry.
Wordsworth Grasmere, a complex of stone buildings surrounded by ancient oaks and whispering pines, is the setting where scholars at all stages of their careers gather to share research and explore the bucolic surroundings. The conferences serve high-level academic discourse, feature luminaries in Romantic studies, and provide visitors the opportunity to retrace Wordsworth’s footsteps around the Lake District.
As a trustee and membership secretary of the Wordsworth Conference Foundation, Graver displays an insatiable eagerness to share with a long list of PC students and alumni Wordsworth’s writings and the nature that nurtured his work.
In early 2023, Graver directed the newly revamped Wordsworth Winter Conference, welcoming PC alumni James McGuire ’19 and Caroline O’Shea ’12. McGuire presented a paper as a second-time conference attendee. Having earned his master’s degree from Hunter College, CUNY, he is applying to Ph.D. programs. O’Shea, a professional flautist, talked about the 19th century blind Irish fiddler and poet Anthony Raftery, and performed during an evening of music.
Graver was among the many scholars presenting work that crossed a spectrum of topics related and unrelated to Wordsworth. With his colleague, Dorian Greenbaum, an ancient historian, he presented “Inspired by Mary Shelley, Produced in London. The Prompt Script for Peggy Webling’s ‘Frankenstein.’”
Meeting up in Grasmere after the conference were Christina Schwab ’25 (Havertown, Pennsylvania) and Maisie Cocker ’25 (Nantucket, Massachusetts), who visited the Wordsworth Museum.
Graver reflects fondly on the 16 students who participated in Maymester courses in the Lake District that he offered for PC students in 2015 and 2017.
“The Wordsworths are unique in that the home they lived in and wrote about also houses the world’s finest collection of their books and manuscripts,” Graver said. “Students walked where the writers walked, saw the sights that inspired them, and carefully studied the complex writing process that produced great works. It was for them all a life-changing experience.”
The consistent stream of students and alumni who have joined Graver at Wordsworth conferences through the years highlight his tenure at PC. These include Joel Pace ’94, now an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and Elizabeth Rubasky Roewe ’03, who teaches at Gonzaga University. Micaela “Kit” Freeman ’20, a two-time summer conference presenter, is finishing a Ph.D. at Southern Methodist University. Kalynda “Kaly” Thayer ’10 also attended the summer conference following her PC graduation. She is now assistant director of the student success center at the Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business.
How do Frankenstein, Providence College, and Wordsworth connect? How did Frankenstein become a compelling topic at Grasmere?
Graver said the story began with Anne McCullough ’15, who was researching a paper on the history of adaptations of Frankenstein when she discovered Peggy Webling, a British playwright, novelist, and poet who wrote the 1927 stage adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a play that was seemingly unavailable online or in print.
In 2017, while attending a lecture at PC, Graver coincidentally sat next to Greenbaum, who introduced herself as the great-grand niece of Webling.
“After talking a bit, Greenbaum shared with me that she possessed typescripts of Webling’s Frankenstein plays,” Graver explained. “I asked her if she would share them, and I was intrigued to learn Webling had a central role in the history of Frankenstein reception.”
Thus began a long collaboration between Graver and Greenbaum to recover Webling from history and reintroduce her into present-day scholarship.
Schwab, Cocker, and Graver are working to bring Webling’s Frankenstein to the theatre at PC in February 2025. The play will be directed by Schwab, with Cocker serving as costume and lighting designer. Graver is, naturally, thrilled to lend his subject matter expertise to the show.
Learn more about Graver and Greenbaum’s Frankenstein collaborations in their book, Peggy Webling and the Story Behind Frankenstein: The Making of a Hollywood Monster, on their website, and on the SCARE U podcast.
