Factory Gothic / Bridget Marshall

I am wondering about all of this, too, Mike! I am wondering if there's any difference in AI integration issues between Canvas and Blackboard, since our campus *just* made the switch to Canvas. Sigh.

Just successfully accomplished this and feel the slightest bit better about things.
www.engadget.com/big-tech/how...

close up of the document showing the names of the teachers; all teachers are male-named, and there are two "assistants" with female names. Full original here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.06201600/

FWIW, in relation to the article's question about the impact of teachers' gender on student success, all the teachers listed have men's names; there are two women "Assistants."
Oh, and one girl was taking Greek with 12 boys; 59 girls took Latin, along with 51 boys.

A section of the document titled "Order of Exercises" that separates into "Male Department" and "Female Department" showing the different subjects offered to students and the number of males/females in each class. Full original here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.06201600/

Other great data found here includes the different subjects that were taught to boys/girls & how many were taking each subject. Top classes for boys: Composition (99), Declamation (99), Penmanship (61), History (56); for girls: Vocal music (145), Composition (145), Penmanship (139), Arithmetic (85).

one column from the document listing the names of "Females" and showing that all of them have a "deportment" grade of "1" Full original here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.06201600/

A list of names for students who are "Males" highlighting a "deportment" grade ranging from "1" to "5" with a lot of variation. Full original here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.06201600/

A small sampling of deportment: Three girls -- Lucy A. Eaton (2), Clara A. Fletcher (3), and Arabella L. Lunt (2) -- were the ones to watch out for. Among the boys, Abel C. Tuttle (6), Lyman P. Byrant (6), Edward H. Carlton (7!), Lucius W. Hinton (5), Patrick W. Rend (5) and many more!

This article reminded me of this item from 1856 www.loc.gov/resource/rbp... showing the grades of each student at #Lowell High School. Boys' scores for "deportment" range from 1 to 7 (1 being the highest/most positive), while girls' scores are almost always "1" with just two 2's and one 3.

This is amazing! I love it!

"GHOST IN A FACTORY" "Bristol is puzzled with a spook that has walked regularly for a fortnight. The foreman on night duty at a large factory discovered it one night between eleven and twelve. ... [three men agree to come back to watch another night] ..they saw the solitary figure (in a couching position, walking with deliberate stride, and casting a shadow as it went) emerge apparently from the wall in the corner, cross the archway, and in about three minutes return again, disappearing over the wall." Full original here: https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3378305/3378307/42/factory%20ghost

"The foreman says the figure was that of a man clad in dark clothes and carrying himself with a marked stoop -- everything natural in appearance except the head, which looked as if it had been crushed or mutilated, only a stump remaining...."

#OTD 14 July 1906, Wales' Weekly Mail published "Ghost in a Factory," an account of a ghostly figure walking through the factory a night, "everything natural in appearance except the head, which looked as if it had been crushed or mutilated, only a stump remaining..." On-theme for Bastille Day?

Graphic showing many different gothic and horror books. Text reads: Up to 50% off entire Gothic and Horror series! Code: GOTH50

Today is the first day of Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies ‘Gothic Crossroads’ conference!

Unable to attend in person (or perhaps don't quite have the luggage space)?

Explore our virtual stand via the link below ⤵️

www.uwp.co.uk/gothic-and-h...

I am so so sorry for your loss, Kassie! Sending big hugs from me and from Alice.

Haven't seen it but am very curious to learn more about the John Proctor extended universe.

I love love love "John Proctor is the Villain" -- have now seen 3 productions of it, including the Broadway one I'm guessing you saw! It's fantastic.

Cover of The Female Vampire in Hispanic Literature which features an illustration of a woman looking directly at the viewer.

BLOG: 'My interest in the gothic lies primarily with women as Other; with how female protagonists and women authors create, embody and/or expose ‘monstrosity’.'

Megan DeVirgilis introduces The Female Vampire in Hispanic Literature on our blog:

➡️ www.uwp.co.uk/the-female-v...

There were several of those! ;)

HAHA OMG, we were there too. Great show. Sorry I missed you!

I'm also co-chairing a roundtable panel on Teaching the American Gothic. We're 16G, Saturday 10-11:20, also in Empire room. This panel (full details in screenshot and alt-text) is one of two organized by the Society for the Study of American Gothic @ssag.bsky.social We'd love to have you join us!

Putting together some slides for my 8:30 am (yikes!) panel at ALA next Saturday morning in Boston. I'll be talking about Harriet Jane Farley (and her Lowell Offering) and George Rex Graham (and his Graham's Magazine). We're session 15E (Empire room).

I'll be at the American Literature Association conference in Boston next weekend. I'm presenting a paper about The Offering on one panel & co-chairing another panel on Teaching the American Gothic, both on Saturday the 24th.
americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferen... Let's meet up!

image of a dark and creepy factory with smoke coming out of many smokestacks. Original here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3g05734/

watercolor image of a smoky sky over an industrial city. Original here: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1886-0607-9

black and white postcard image of Lowell, Vermont, circa 1920. Original here: https://oldstonehousemuseum.org/glimpse-of-the-past-19-lowell-vermont/

Black and white photo of smoke stacks of Lowell beside the river. Source: https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?id=393f4e51-fe8f-41b0-9776-fdfa8efdea78&gid=06FA0E8B-9F13-491D-A47C-6AE71373E232

Not quite sure why #smoke is such a big deal today. I've seen a lot of it in my research, so here are a few favorite images: Bethlehem Steel Works (1881), view of a British industrial town (1850-70-ish), Lowell, Vermont (1910-20-ish), Lowell, Massachusetts (1910) (probably my very favorite).

Line graph titled "What's my share of NEH appropriations" with a caption: "Between its founding in 1965 and fiscal year 2024, the National Endowment for the Humanities received congressional appropriations totaling $7.37 billion. NEH used this funding to support thousands of individuals and cultural organizations - both directly through various grant programs and indirectly through funds disbursed by the 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils. Beyond these appropriations, grantees raised millions of dollars more from non-federal donors as part of grant matching requirements. To put NEH appropriations in perspective, this chart shows cumulative annual per capita contribution to NEH by age, that is, the total dollar amount the average taxpayer has given to NEH over their lifetime. A few relevant purchases are helpfully included to show what a person could have bought instead, had they kept their personal NEH contribution for themselves..." The x-axis ranges from 0 to 59 years old. The y-axis ranges from $0 to $30. At three ages, items that could have instead been purchased with an individual's lifetime NEH contribution are shown. At 13 years, an egg is plotted on the line with a dollar amount of $6.41 and the caption reads, "Just in time to feed a growth spurt, a person at 13 years old has contributed enough to NEH that they could instead purchase one dozen eggs ($6.23/dozen)." At 36 years, a popcorn bucket is plotted with a dollar amount of $18.20 and the caption reads, "Millennials who are at least 36 years old could exchange their nearly four decades worth of NEH support for a one month subscription to Netflix ($17.99/month)." At 50 years, a gasoline pump is plotted with the dollar amount of $26.00 and the caption reads, "Those 50 years old or older - who have been contributing to the agency for nearly its entire existence - could instead have saved that money to purchase about a half tank of gas (8 gallons at $3.23/gallon)."

As an elder millennial, I could trade my lifetime of tax contributions to the NEH for one month of Netflix and have just enough left over to get some avocado toast if I split it with two other people

photo of the cover of the book "Mary Elizabeth Braddon: The Factory Girl (1863) edited by Bridget M. Marshall"

book open to Chapter 1 featuring an illustration

Very exciting mail today: actual physical copy of my new edition of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's The Factory Girl (1863), via Wales University Press: www.uwp.co.uk/book/mary-el.... Available in the US in June: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... It includes all the original illustrations!

Photo of a room with a screen in front projecting slides for "The Lives and Graves of Lowell Mill Girls Barilla Adeline Taylor and Louisa Maria Wells."

Full house for my talk today about Lowell's mill girls in the Talbot Chapel in Lowell Cemetery. Thanks to the Lowell Historical Society, the Lowell Cemetery and to all who came out! Read about Barilla and Louisa in my article here: victoriansociety.org/upload/NC-38... (skip to page 32 of the PDF)

URGENT: Save the NEH

I just wrote to all of my congressional representatives to plead them to support the NEH, for everyone, for public history, for scholarship, for teaching, for all of it. I used this widget: very easy, it has a template, and automatically looks up the emails of your representatives. p2a.co/DdtlGIT

I used some of my snow day today to make a few calls with the assistance of @5calls.org which made it easier for me. Would recommend to others, and I will do it again.

YouTube video by Saturday Night Live AI Software - SNL

"Bobbins be flying!" Wait til the 4 minute mark on this SNL AI sketch for Timothee Chalamet's AI podcaster talking about his experience as a young girl "working in the textile mills in Lowell Massachusetts in the 1800s." Shoutout to #Lowell history!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua4r...

newspaper clipping "The Factory Girl. For the Enquirer." Story starts: "Cold, stiff, silent and beautiful she lay on the marble slab at the morgue....."

continued newspaper clipping "Her Story" "A factory girl -- beautiful as an angel -- who supported a dependent, helpless, mother and two little brothers in a manufacturing town in Massachusetts. Her fair face fired the brutal lust of the foreman of her department. Temptation; threats of loss of employment; the vision of the black spectre of hunger hovering at the door of her mother's tenement; of her little brothers suffering for those things which constitute the plainest life necessaries -- these were the pressures that pushed her over the precipice at the bottom of which are the blackened, ruined lives of thousands of the poor working girls of our land."

1/14/1888 Denver's Labor Enquirer: "The Factory Girl" depicts the boss's "brutal lust" leading to predictable ends: “The factory foreman is now a respected pillar of the church, & has become part owner in the works." Factory girl: "cold, stiff, silent & beautiful...on the marble slab at the morgue."

The Gist: AI, a talking dog for the 21st Century. Séamus O'Reilly on the year's biggest con, AI. This is a Christmas Cracker Gist.

I wrote about how much, how fiercely and why, I hate A.I.

On eternal cons, a dying earth and talking dogs.

www.thegist.ie/the-gist-3/

Newspaper clipping in LARGE font reads The most extraordinary story ever written by Miss M. E. Braddon, entitled The Factory Girl; or The Blossom and the Blight, is now being published in the columns of the....

Book cover for Mary Elizabeth Braddon's The Factory Girl (1863) edited by Bridget M. Marshall in the Gothic Originals series. Features a black and white illustration of a woman in distress on a bridge at night; a sinister-looking man in a top hat looms behind her, watching.

A new edition of Braddon's Factory Girl will be coming out this year. *I'm* not calling it "the most extraordinary story ever written by Miss M. E. Braddon" but this ad from an 1868 newspaper (promoting a pirated edition with an alternate sub-title) is! www.uwp.co.uk/book/mary-el...

Happy New Year! Just a few more days -- til January 10th -- to submit an abstract for our ALA roundtable on teaching the American #Gothic. We would love to have a few more presenters! See CFP here:
call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/10/...
ALA is in Boston May 21-24, 2025

Title page reading "Catalogue of Christmas and New Year's Presents, for sale by James P. Walker, 61 Merrimac Street, Corner of John Street. Lowell: B.H. Penhallow, Printer, 1851

black and white cover image of Catalogue for James P Walker featuring a two-story building with windows on a corner.

Titled "Games, Toys, Dissections, Puzzles, etc. for Children, with a small black and white picture of children playing.

continuation of goods in the catalog featuring "Rewards of Merit" and a black and white image of what looks like an open book with the word "Reward of Merit" and a line for to and from

Still have holiday shopping to do? Perhaps consult this 1851 catalog from Lowell. Tag yourself with your preferred gift to make it easier! Rewards of Merit perhaps? Maybe a 6 foot long mahogany bagatelle board? Or some magnetic ducks, swans, or fishes? iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/vi...