Our October ’25 speaker, Fay Shaefer, last spoke to us about Charles Dickens and his illustrators at our Open Day in 2023.
Fay has a BA (Hons) degree in Creative Studies and an MA in Charles Dickens and Victorian Culture. She is at present studying for a Phd at the University of Surrey.
She will be speaking about the origins and subsequent variations in the text of the Sweeney Todd story. She is calling her presentation ” A Close Shave with Sweeney Todd.” Most of us are familiar with the macabre tale from various stage and screen productions.
She has lived in Italy, Switzerland and France and until 2019 in Guernsey where she taught literature classes for the WEA and Adult Further Education. The courses varied – some were on themes such as Spy Novels and Detective Fiction, others were on time periods such as the Jazz Age and the Victorian era, and others were themed, such as Immigrant Literature and Writing Home. She also taught Creative Writing to a group of aspiring, and some now published, authors.
She has been living in West Sussex for the last six years, the last four in Barns Green. She is currently Chairman of Rudgwick Arts Society which has 200 members. Her interest in the arts is wide ranging; contemporary art, sculpture, modern ballet, musical theatre and drama, classical music. Authors who have influenced her are Scott F. Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. I