Becca

Peter wakes up and realises that the time travel is a dream. Smith suggests we can understand the text to be a time travel comedy with a didactic message. It is a text situated somewhere between Dickens and Wells, taking parts from didacticism and science fiction #VPFAExtremes

To date, Sarah Alexander is the only scholar to pay any critical attention to this novel - so Smith's research is extremely original! #VPFAExtremes

The final paper of the conference is Hayley Smith discussing Thomas Anstey Guthrie's Tourmalin’s Time Cheques as an early time travel narrative #VPFAExtremes

Next we have Marijke Vale, who is discussing the fascination with radium's rejuvenating properties that led it to be known as the “elixir of life” #VPFAExtremes

In the final science and imagination panel, Adam Baldwin is talking about tales of Venus. In these stories, the contemporary imperial assumption that other worlds are there to be conquered is subverted #VPFAExtremes

Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island - Nightmare Magazine “There are few tales as tragic as that of the denizens of Ratnabar Island. When a British expedition made landfall on its shores in 1891, they did so armed to the teeth, braced for the same hostile re...

read the short story here and let us know if you have any thoughts on it: www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/ten-...
#VPFAExtremes

in the Third Sex Reading group conference session we were discussing Nebedita Sen's Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island. A very poignant commentary on literal, intellectual, cultural, and literary consumption #VPFAExtremes

Fowler says she finds walking a useful methodology because it allows her to situate herself in the landscape and understand why certain places were valued above others #VPFAExtremes

in a fascinating intersection of labour and colonial history, Ghandi visited Lancashire in 1931 to discuss the impact of the Indian boycott of British goods (particularly cotton) on the textile industry #VPFAExtremes

George Loveless was sent to modern day Tazmania for being a Tolpuddle martyr. He was concerned about the brutality of the colonial regime and wrote that it was a good warning about aristocracy possessing unfettered power in the colonies as they do back home #VPFAExtremes

1 example is Charborough Park, owned by MP Drax. His ancestor went to Barbados and built a sugar empire. The wealth from this & compensation for enslaving people affected locals. A toll road was built meaning local people suddenly had to pay to go in that direction #VPFAExtremes

Take a look at Fowler’s book ‘Our Island Stories: Ten Walks through Rural Britain and its Hidden History of Empire’. She has an opium walk through the Lake District and more. It is a useful way of understanding what our colonial histories in this country are #VPFAExtremes

Now for our final keynote of the conference, Corinne Fowler with her talk 'The Impact of Empire on the Countryside, 1837-1901' #VPFAExtremes

Edwardian spy fiction activated the idea of the chivalrous gentleman hero who is loyal to country, class, and kingdom. Ouida sets her spy fiction in the glamorous courtly world of high society and manipulates ideas of powerful men #VPFAExtremes

Ouida anticipates the trope of cosmopolitan clandestine networks. She believed that ‘to the true poet his native land lies wherever what is beautiful can be beloved, or that which is sorrowful needs solace’ #VPFAExtremes

Adventure fiction often features a hero ‘whose connection to his world is eccentric, who cannot or does not accept the strictures of that world [...] undergoes many improbable adventures, and finally abandons the exotic and reintegrates into the adult world’ #VPFAExtremes

finally we have Helena Esser discussing Ouida's spy fiction! Ouida is often discussed as a sensation writer, but Esser says that discussions are lacking with regards to her as a writer of adventure fiction #VPFAExtremes

her writing asserts the permeability of geographical borders and finds new ways of asserting multilingual and multicultural identities. The mountains, particularly, represent a place where the world convenes and how she understood her own multicultural identity #VPFAExtremes

Collier writes ‘that “other side of Italy” where we had made up our mind to settle [...] I should see Italian ways in all their unsullied primitiveness’. Collier's use of 'primitiveness' reflects not an opinion on class, but an interest in their connection to nature #VPFAExtremes

Second we have Claudia Capancioni discussing Margaret Collier's writings on the Sibylline range of the Apennines. Collier married an Italian Lieutenant #VPFAExtremes

Last day of @VPFA1 conference :( I'm attending the Adventures Abroad panel, and first speaker is Alison Dingle talking about representations of the Holy Land in early Victorian fiction and society more broadly #VPFAExtremes

Situated against the backdrop of the pan European fear of degeneration, combined with growing xenophobia, the novel is a radical and extreme means of cleansing society of undesirable elements and people. The burning sickness is a ‘wonderfully discriminating plague’ #VPFAExtremes

the result of the plague is New England: 'A great number of the poorer classes had been swept away, and in this case of the survival of the fittest those left in England to rebuild London..' - definitely seems a bit classist #VPFAExtremes

Sporting Life wrote: ‘we have heard something of germs [...] but when plague germs sufficient to slay thousands upon thousands can be carried in the waistcoat pocket in a phial, and distributed at will, it might be time to seriously question the benefit of science' #VPFAExtremes

finally in this panel is Justyna Jajszczok talking extremes in Fergus Humes' The Year of the Miracle. In this novel a plague is intentionally transported to England from Arabia in order to have the sinful Victorian society repent and change their ways #VPFAExtremes

When disaster strikes, the instinct for survival takes precedence over civility in apocalyptic fiction: ‘the platform was crowded with men, who fought each other like demons […] hundreds were dead under foot' #VPFAExtremes

apocalyptic fictions used Gothic tropes so that nature and the weather become active forces that shape the atmosphere. London is a space where 19th century anxieties converge to create an uncanny atmosphere of decay and fear #VPFAExtremes

Stark argues that fictional depictions of devolution and destruction are not simply dramatic narrative devices, but a reflection of their authors' grappling with the limits of human control over progression and the world #VPFAExtremes

third is Anna Stark talking about apocalyptic weather and apocalyptic society in late-Victorian disaster fiction. The environmental disaster tale is a new genre that arose in the late 19th century and is artistic expression that included and responded to human’s role in society #VPFAExtremes

Maybe humans are not the most evolved creatures. The introduction of mythological creatures into the natural world has the potential to disrupt the traditional human, plant, animal hierarchy by asserting the plants' dominance in the animal kingdom #VPFAExtremes