Mercedes Sheldon

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Colorized etched portrait of Margaret Oliphant, a white elderly woman in lace cap sitting at a three-quarter profile

A CFP has recently come across our digital desk that is sure to be of interest. /Women's Writing/ is celebrating 200 years of Margaret Oliphant with a special issue! Abstracts (300 words) are due 1 December 2025. Thanks for #SharingYourNews! More info here: think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...

“a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.” There is hope!

Marvelous. @rs4vp.org take note!

So excited to see in the @bavs-uk.bsky.social newsletter that @mdamkjaer.bsky.social's book was awarded the 2025 BAVS-Rosemary Mitchell Prize for a second monograph. Many congrats!!

The Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize – RSVP The Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize is awarded annually to the best Ph.D. dissertation, defended in the previous calendar year, that explores the British periodical press of the long nineteenth cent...

Grateful to share that my PhD dissertation project was awarded the 2025 Sally Mitchell Prize from @rs4vp.org Just back from their conference in Chicago, where I learned so much, presented some of my own work, and most magically, met several of the folks whose work has influenced me most-a real joy.

The French "In the year 2000" postcard series (produced in 1899) was only 25 years off.

The Curran Index is Hiring! – RSVP The Curran Index is hiring a qualified U.S.-based research assistant to conduct archival research at the Huntington Library in California.

🚨 JOB ALERT-The Curran Index is hiring! Editors @emilyjlm.bsky.social + Lars Atkin seek a Research Assistant to conduct archival research on /Fun/ housed at the Huntington Library. Stipend available, with applications accepted through Aug. 20! More details on our website: rs4vp.org/curran-index...

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Photo of a hammock near a pond. A person’s knee is visible behind an open academic journal.

Today’s office surprises me. I experience motion sickness when reading in moving vehicles, so I figured that a hammock was a long shot. Seems to be okay, so long as I don’t close my eyes…which would defeat the purpose of the “office” anyway! So, catching up on VPR from @rs4vp.org

View of the church with its tall spire (as mentioned by Dickens) and red west door

"O lift one thought in prayer for STC"! Coleridge's memorial stone in the church's central aisle, with its inscription, and his family's memorial too.

Spacious interior of the nave looking towards the chancel and the impressive stained glass E Window.

Just one of the new pieces this past month: St Michael's Church, Highgate, by Lewis Vulliamy—the last resting place of Coleridge (photos by @churchcrawler) victorianweb.org/art/architec... #church #Coleridge
(but do look at our What's New page for July, before it slips down a rung!)

Headed to a dude ranch w/ ext. family next week; really enjoyed that section of the article. My small set won’t be dressing up, as I grew up out West & won’t spend money on “brand new Wranglers, button pearl snap shirts, fancy boots and cowboy hats.” 😂 Dude, worn jeans & an old hat work just fine.

The Kilmarnock Burns and Book History - The Bottle Imp Allan Young and I have just published the first-ever attempt to track down all surviving copies of Burns’s first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Kilmarnock: Wilson, 1786), the Kilmarnock...

Robert Burns’s POEMS, CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT was published #OTD, 31 July 1786.

Copies are 3 times rarer than the Shakespeare First Folio: Patrick Scott & Allan Young are tracking the histories of surviving Kilmarnock Editions
1/3
#BookHistory #C18th
www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2017/11/kilm...

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A digital tablet shows annotated text in the foreground. The mid- and background are blurry and show low library shelves and glass doors to a conference room.

Reading Psomiades’ fabulous introduction to Primitive Marriage (2023) while the kiddo is at a summer book club run by high school students from our district. The St Louis Park branch of @hclib.bsky.social is a lovely space for them to chat and me to delve into some great scholarship.

Canvas + OpenAI is horrific, but here is a glorious antidote, at least for a wee moment tonight.

Your artistry strikes me with awe. Your stress baking calms my own nerves.

My own stress baking tonight was a rhubarb blueberry lemon chiffon cake baked in a tube pan, sans decoration. The house smells spectacular. Artistry at an amateur level: filled with love, lacking finesse.

Gotta kick over a few trees to make an omelette.

Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Sioux Falls, Madison, Fort Collins, Earlham—see you next month.

Dessawander.com/events

DENVER. tickets.meowwolf.com/events/denve...

We continue to deepen relationships with AI companies, as we further embed the technology into our internal systems and processes to drive efficiency and innovation, but also as we target further Data Licensing Agreements. In 2024, we generated $75m+ of non-recurring Data Licensing Agreements, with some additional forward recurring revenue streams. In 2025 we have delivered further non-recurring Data Licensing Agreements, underlining the value of our data and content archives."

Any academics keeping track of how your papers are being used by publishers to create value as data for AI companies, here's the latest financial report from T&F on its further "Data Licensing Agreements" for access to its "content archive" www.informa.com/globalassets...

Professors need to do something. I feel like I’m going insane. I fear it is way too late

Same! Looking for more assignment ideas, so fellow teachers who aren’t getting on the “let’s develop ways to use AI” bandwagon, please share! I am NOT going gently into the AI night…

A very cool technology that allows students to interact with John Maynard Keynes’ ideas as he develops them is called a book

Instructure and OpenAI Announce Global Partnership to Embed AI Learning Experiences within Canvas /PRNewswire/ -- Instructure, the world's leading edtech ecosystem and maker of Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) and OpenAI, the artificial intelligence...

I’m literally on record predicting this. It’s been obviously in the works since last year.

Still, it makes me soooo fucking sad/mad.

We can fight this. We must. But right now I’m just tired.

I love Austen and adaptations of her work as much as anyone, but this is fundamentally getting embarrassing at this point. Give us big budget adaptations of Belinda, Clarissa, and Moll Flanders!!! I swear to you it will be better than the unending morass of super hero films!!

Any Braddon would be great. How is there not a rash of adaptations of novels by the queen of sensation?

If I’m missing out on such adaptations, then please educate me. 😀

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Yes hi I just walked my dog through a public park here in Minneapolis. The most threatening thing we encountered was the heat.

In response to another question, Alison Chapman explained that she teaches Victorian poetry in the special collections.

When looking at a single poem, she gets out all the places in which it appears, which gets students to think about print culture.

#RSVP2025 #BookHistory

Since penny fiction is cheaper and more widely-spread, it is even more important to study its contributions to constructing the empire.

(And here's my database of penny fiction up to 1860 to help you identify the stories you could study. Still need to update available scans!)
#RSVP2025 #BookHistory