EVENTS

6.00 pm: Doors open

6.30 pm: Annual General Meeting

7.00 - 8.30 pm: Book Launch + signing: The Grand Theme and Other Essays by Anders Hallengren

At the Swedenborg Society's 203rd AGM, important business will be presented and voted up and we will discuss the events and publications of 2012. The Society will also launch The Grand Theme and Other Essays (Swedenborg Society, 2013) (pictured, left), by our esteemed President, Anders Hallengren. This is a dazzling collection of articles, constantly moving between historical narrative, storytelling and philosophical insight. In his own unique style, Anders Hallengren reveals the presence of Swedenborg throughout a highly poetic history of ideas, literature and music. The author will be present at the meeting/launch to sign copies of his book, which will be available to buy at a discounted price. Refreshments will also be served. Admission is free but please RSVP to nora@swedenborg.org.uk.

ANDERS HALLENGREN is a Swedish author and scholar, a Harvard alumnus, and a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. He received a doctorate for a dissertation on RW Emerson’s philosophy (The Code of Concord, 1994) and is an Associate Professor and Fellow of Stockholm University.

The author of many books, including Gallery of Mirrors: Reflections on Swedenborgian Thought (Swedenborg Foundation, 1998) Anders is also the English translator of Swedenborg’s Dream Diary and other works. He has provided the revised translation of – and an introduction to - Carl Robsahm’s Memoirs of Swedenborg (Swedenborg Society, 2011). A prolific essayist and also a poet, Hallengren was awarded a prize by the Swedish Academy in 2008. In 2009 he lectured at the Swedenborg Association of Australia, the Hurstville Society, and the Linnean Society of New South Wales. He is currently translating a series of lectures on botany delivered by Carl Linneaus in the mid-1700s, a work commissioned by The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters. Since 2010, Anders has been the coordinator for Configurations of Desire, an international network of scholars researching expressions of desire in literature from antiquity through to the seventeenth century. The result of their research, PANGS OF LOVE AND LONGING: Configurations of Desire in Premodern Literature, will be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2013.

Stephen McNeilly, editor and curator, will also announce the winner of the Flag Design Competition at the meeting.

Doors open at 6.00 for a 6.30 start. Anyone is welcome to attend but only members of the society can vote. Admission is free. Please RSVP to nora@swedenborg.org.uk.