Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada

Watch lost in US shipwreck comes home to UK after 165 years - BBC News The pocket watch belonged to Boston MP Herbert Ingram, who drowned in Lake Michigan in 1860.

There's a Victorian periodicals story with a Chicago connection: the loss of Herbert Ingram, founder of the Illustrated London News, in the wreck of the Lady Elgin in Lake Michigan in 1860. His pocket watch, found at the bottom of the lake, has now returned to England: tinyurl.com/y763rhhv #C19th

Daniel Deronda is turning 150 in 2026. Help us observe this milestone by submitting a short, op-ed style essay to an upcoming forum, guest edited by Ilana Blumberg, on George Eliot's world-changing novel. See our blog for details: victorianreview.org?cat=217

Wooohooo! the crowd errupts with joy at learning that #RSVP2026 will be held at Trinity College Dublin, 23-25 July! 🥳

#RSVP2025

Reminder that the Hamilton Prize deadline is July 1! Get your essays in!

Hey grad students! Reminder: the Hamilton Prize deadline is coming up July 1. The winning essay gets publication in Victorian Review and $500 CAD. Visit the website for details victorianreview.org?page_id=358

Hey, grad students! Do you have a great essay you’d like to publish? The deadline for the Hamilton Prize is coming up: July 1, 2025. The winner will have their work published in the journal and receive $500 CAD. See the website for details. victorianreview.org?page_id=358

🎶From reverent compositions to subversive street ballads🎶 Queen Victoria’s image was contested and co-opted through 19th-century popular song. Learn more about the monarch’s complex cultural after life in music: jvc.oup.com/2021/09/16/m...

See the call for @victorianpoetry.bsky.social’s 2025 Early Career Essay Prize (more info below & in the alt text) — please help me get the word out, with thanks!

I welcome the open access format, and, for art historians especially, the undertaking to publish exhibition reviews.

Congratulations!!

Photograph of action without hope on a stand at people’s book, Takoma Park, Maryland

A stack of copies of action without hope, at peoples book, Takoma Park, Maryland

met this thing for the very first time yesterday at @peoplesbooktakoma.com— a weird feeling, truthfully, to see eight years of your life condensed into a 1-pound stack of paper. But it is very pretty & I hope some of you guys like it 🌿

CFP: Special VPR Issue (Winter 2026) – RSVP Call for proposals for a special issue of VPR honoring the late Brian Maidment! Proposals due May 15, 2025 and will be published Winter 2026.

CFP for a special issue of Victorian Periodicals Review in honour of Brian Maidment:

Hey, grad students! Do you have a great essay you’d like to publish? Consider submitting it to the Victorian Review’s Hamilton Prize. The winner gets publication in the journal and receives $500 CAD! Submissions are due July 1st, 2025. See the website for details. victorianreview.org?page_id=358

Check out Daniel Hannah's blog post about his new article on Henry James' In the Cage (1897) and its reflections upon air, contagions, and illness in Victorian Review 50.1. muse.jhu.edu/issue/54558
Post: victorianreview.org?p=2205
Article: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

Congratulations, @saruzzza.bsky.social!!

VR 50.1 just dropped! Check out our forum on Victorian studies and climate change, guest-edited by Barbara Leckie. +The Secret Garden! In the Cage! The French Revolution! Mary Barton! Robert Elsmere! Happy reading. muse.jhu.edu/journal/508

not sure it will add that much to my book, but I've spent two weeks trying to compile every mention I can find of shops in Covent Garden in the 1790s in newspaper ads and trade directories.

MVSA: engrossing talk by Kristen Renzi based on her work in the Foundling Hospital archives, now (partially) online at archives.coram.org.uk

Here's the latest edition of Open Access 19th-century Periodicals, with a number of new listings, ranging from the Journal of the Institute of Bankers to the Asiatic Quarterly Review to Wide World Magazine. Suggestions very welcome. www.victorianresearch.org/openaccesspe... #C19 #19th-c

The Gaskell Journal Joan Leach Memorial Graduate Student Essay Prize 2026 Deadline for submissions: 1 February 2026 The Gaskell Journal runs a biennial Graduate Student Essay Prize in honour of Joan Leach MBE, founder of the Gaskell Society. The winning essay will be published in the Gaskell Journal (with revisions as appropriate), and its author will receive £200 from the Gaskell Society, and a complimentary copy of the Journal. The essay competition is open to all graduate students currently registered for a PhD or MA. Entries must offer an original contribution to the field of Gaskell studies, whether to read her work in relation to Victorian social or intellectual contexts, or in the light of critical theory, or to offer a comparative study connecting Gaskell with another author. Essays will be shortlisted by the Gaskell Journal Editorial Board, with the final winner being chosen by our guest judge who is an eminent scholar in Victorian Studies. Previous judges have included Professor Kate Flint, Professor Joanne Shattock, and Professor Jill Matus. Essays should be 6000-7000 words, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. All shortlisted submissions will be considered for potential publication in the Gaskell Journal. Please see the Gaskell Journal website for submission details and style guide: www.gaskelljournal.co.uk. Please direct any queries to the Editors, Dr Ben Moore: B.P.Moore@uva.nl and Dr Rebecca Styler: rstyler@lincoln.ac.uk

Call for submissions to the Gaskell Journal for the 2026 Joan Leach Graduate Student Essay Prize. See below for details, or visit the Gaskell Journal website: www.gaskelljournal.co.uk.

The Gaskell Journal Joan Leach Memorial Graduate Student Essay Prize 2026 Deadline for submissions: 1 February 2026 The Gaskell Journal runs a biennial Graduate Student Essay Prize in honour of Joan Leach MBE, founder of the Gaskell Society. The winning essay will be published in the Gaskell Journal (with revisions as appropriate), and its author will receive £200 from the Gaskell Society, and a complimentary copy of the Journal. The essay competition is open to all graduate students currently registered for a PhD or MA. Entries must offer an original contribution to the field of Gaskell studies, whether to read her work in relation to Victorian social or intellectual contexts, or in the light of critical theory, or to offer a comparative study connecting Gaskell with another author. Essays will be shortlisted by the Gaskell Journal Editorial Board, with the final winner being chosen by our guest judge who is an eminent scholar in Victorian Studies. Previous judges have included Professor Kate Flint, Professor Joanne Shattock, and Professor Jill Matus. Essays should be 6000-7000 words, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. All shortlisted submissions will be considered for potential publication in the Gaskell Journal. Please see the Gaskell Journal website for submission details and style guide: www.gaskelljournal.co.uk. Please direct any queries to the Editors, Dr Ben Moore: B.P.Moore@uva.nl and Dr Rebecca Styler: rstyler@lincoln.ac.uk

Call for submissions to the Gaskell Journal for the 2026 Joan Leach Graduate Student Essay Prize. See below for details, or visit the Gaskell Journal website: www.gaskelljournal.co.uk.

The Gwalior Gate, the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 1886, RIBA Collections. SOURCE: Builder, vol. LI (1886 July 3), 16. An image in B&W of ornate Indian gate with women in Victorian dresses and a child wandering through.

Hey! You need a break. I can tell! Consider joining the super kind, fun, and interesting folks at VISWAUS!

Meet me in St. Louis for VISAWUS 2025: Gateways
October 3-5, 2025
Saint Louis University
Keynote Speaker: Kristin Mahoney, Michigan State University

Proposal deadline extended to March 31!

A collage of the new book review titles listed on the BAVS website.

Are you interested in reviewing for @bavs-uk.bsky.social? 📖

We have just updated our list of recent releases we're looking to review, featuring these amazing books and more!

See the website below for details and email us if you're interested 📧

bavs.ac.uk/newsletters/

Work ID card for University of Leeds

Current entry for Frances Power Cobbe on the Curran Index

Eagle-eyed @rs4vp.bsky.social members may have seen in the newsletter that I'm back at the University of Leeds to work on the fantastic Curran Index! I'll be delving into the scrapbooks of feminist philosopher and journalist Frances Power Cobbe to give attributions for her work as a jobbing writer!

This is a really useful resource especially for students doing dissertations

Andrea gives the three canonical options:

A: CAUSE-a-bon
B: ca-SOW-bahn
C: ca-SAW-bun

This platform doesn't do polls, but please vote below so we can get this settled definitively ASAP. I have a whole chapter on *Middlemarch* that I've already written, so I need to learn soon?? 😂😱

New issue alert!
66.3 features essays originally presented at the 2023 NAVSA conference, held in Bloomington, Indiana. The conference’s theme, “Revision, Return, Reform,” is reflected in this issue’s three essay clusters: Stretch*, Textures of Empire, and Global Decadence, Global Victorian Studies.

In this post and the next two, we will introduce the contributors to 66.3!
66.3’s first essay cluster, “Stretch*,” is organized and introduced by Priti Joshi @pritijoshi.bsky.social, and features essays written by Hosanna Krienke, Ryan Carroll @ryancarroll.bsky.social, and M.A. Miller.

66.3’s second essay cluster, “Textures of Empire,” is organized and introduced by Jason Rudy @jasonr75.bsky.social, and features essays written by Meghna Sapui @meghnasapui.bsky.social, Bassam Sidiki @super-bass.bsky.social, and Erin Cheslow.

66.3’s final essay cluster, “Global Decadence, Global Victorian Studies,” is organized and introduced by Carolyn Lesjak, and features essays written by Colton Valentine @, Sourav Chatterjee, and Cherrie Kwok @cherriekwok.bsky.social.