Lucy Allen-Goss

I'm so very sorry for your loss, Heike.

Bruising, IVF, and Being 'Over Sensitive' One of my favourite authors, Barbara Trapido, has a wonderfully on-point description of the way women are encouraged to feel about medical appointments.

I've been researching infertility histories since 2019 - and I am very tired of seeing the same myths being used over and over to silence women. If you're able to read, or share, that would be wonderful. I really don't think I am alone in feeling like this? lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/bruising-i...

So pretty!

Bruising, IVF, and Being 'Over Sensitive' One of my favourite authors, Barbara Trapido, has a wonderfully on-point description of the way women are encouraged to feel about medical appointments.

I seem to be on a roll with the fertility-related posts. This one is about expectations of women's emotions and caring/carelessness in fertility treatment.

lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/bruising-i...

That's so kind - will do!

Ooh, thank you! Much appreciated.

(Btw, this is such a useful conversation! I had so much missed these sorts of interactions from the way twitter used to be - I really appreciate it here!)

Oh, I must read that! Thanks. I know medieval English people were aware of the effectiveness of some herbs (and they're accurate about which ones would be effective). But my sense is it would still have been very risky/hit and miss (a lot of herbs that would work, would also mess up your liver).

I wonder when the shift happened? I suppose probably as methods of abortion became more reliable? (I mean, my medieval people have some sense of what might work, but it would have been very hit and miss. And dangerous!)

'She had a miscarriage eight days after conception': Very Early Pregnancy Loss - A Modern Invention? In 2019, I began a research fellowship in the history department at Trinity College, Dublin, and my subject was pregnancy loss.

Latest post. I think it is so important to challenge the myth that grief for pregnancy loss is a modern invention. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/she-had-a-...

Yes! Though, in the medieval texts I mostly study, it is clear some people genuinely do want pills to ensure regular periods, not as secret abortion pills - though I think that does happen, for sure.

'She had a miscarriage eight days after conception': Very Early Pregnancy Loss - A Modern Invention? In 2019, I began a research fellowship in the history department at Trinity College, Dublin, and my subject was pregnancy loss.

Why do we keep using the past as a stick to beat women with? In this post I'm looking at the myth that women (and men!) didn't recognise, or grieve for, pregnancy loss. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/she-had-a-...

Increasingly I think a major function of “masculinity” IS its crisis — a vehicle for the dominant & dominating group to justify focusing their social attentions primarily on themselves

Thank you. Yes, I'm really frustrated by the myth that parents didn't grieve. I think we are very invested in these ideas, and we use them to punish women today. And men who grieve, too.

'She had a miscarriage eight days after conception': Very Early Pregnancy Loss - A Modern Invention? In 2019, I began a research fellowship in the history department at Trinity College, Dublin, and my subject was pregnancy loss.

'In the past women would have thought it was just a heavy period - why are you upset?'. My new post is tackling one of my absolute pet hates in fake history: the idea that grief for early pregnancy loss is something new. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/she-had-a-...

THURSDAY! Looking forward to seeing my fellow #Gummies then!

Indeed.

Good old Captain Cocke.

She is ... but Pepys?! (My daughter has been doing Pepys at school ... I had forgotten ...).

Woman’s memoirs give fascinating insight into life in 17th-century northern England Newly reunited manuscripts by Alice Thornton show how she navigated personal crises during tumultuous events such as the civil war

Lovely to see Alice Thornton and @cordeliabeattie.bsky.social getting some love in the press. 'A female Samuel Pepys' Thornton is a bit less self-obsessed! www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Five copies of 'Eely' by Steve Ely, spines facing outwards.

Daybreak in the wreck of Dogger. Gulls drifting
over the slowly rising sea. Seals hauled-out
on sandbanks, bleached ribs of stranded whales.
Dunlin and knot, swarming the mudflats,
armies of silt-spearing godwit and whaup.

Last day to order 'Eely' with £2 off
longbarrowpress.com/current-publ...

I sensed 'The Book of Bogs' would look good, but I didn't think it would look THIS good...

My piece is about a walk Nic and I took on the Carneddau above Bethesda, and Clare Shaw and Anna Chilvers helped shape it into something quite lovely.

@littletollerbooks.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/Bookofbogs

Thank you!

TBF I think some of them are barely aware lesbians exist now.

Mudlarking John Stowe's London with Thomas Cromwell The other day my eye caught on a quotation from Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, courtesy of Simon Haisell.

I really enjoyed writing this one. Thomas Cromwell, and Hilary Mantel's brilliant drawing-together of Charters of Christ, and Dante, and Thomas Browne, and maybe an echo of Eliot and John Stowe in there too. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/mudlarking...

I really loved your book. And enjoyed that piece, too.

Nature Beyond Cure: Disabled Perspectives Books that explore nature and living with disability and illness from disability perspectives. No magical cures here!

uk.bookshop.org/lists/nature...

The reason historians don’t now use the term ‘witch hunts’ as a generalised term for the prosecution of people for witchcraft is that it implies witchcraft was always prosecuted in a different way compared to other crimes - it wasn’t

Mudlarking John Stowe's London with Thomas Cromwell The other day my eye caught on a quotation from Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, courtesy of Simon Haisell.

This one is for the lovely people who pay me to write - which is, right now, very, very much appreciated - but I am going to share it here in case anyone fancies a little excursion down Thomas Cromwell's literary memory. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/mudlarking...

It's absolutely worth it- I have been a Goldsworthy fan for years, and it blew me away! And, thank you!