WHAT'S ON @ FOBL
FOBL hosts regular speaker events with a wide range of renowned authors, journalists, actors, academics and local identities.
The funds raised are utilised both to enhance the library’s services and to enrich its book collection.
We gather in the Balmain Town Hall Small Meeting room. A light supper is served after each event and audience questions.
FOBL greatly appreciates the time generously given by our speakers to entertain and enlighten us as well as supporting our fund raising efforts.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Friday 31st May - Dr Olivia Murphy - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Romantic science, Romantic fiction
A war across Europe; a volcano in Indonesia; two generations in crisis; one desperate teenager. These were just some of the ingredients that would become one of the most influential narratives of Romantic literature: the story of the mad scientist Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous Creature. It is now more than two hundred years since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was first published, its influence never abating. This strange and wonderful novel can help us uncover the triumphs and catastrophes of Romanticism, and cause us to reflect on the Romantics' lessons for us today.
Olivia Murphy is a postdoctoral research fellow in English at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Jane Austen the Reader (2013) and the co-editor of Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives (2013) and the forthcoming Romantic Climates: Literature and Science in an Age of Catastrophe (2019). With Mary Spongberg she holds an ARC Discovery Project grant investigating Jane Austen's maternal family, the Leighs of Warwickshire. She is currently writing a book about Barbauld, Joseph Priestley, and the violent backlash against Enlightenment in the 1790s.