Publishing today!
Ghosts and the Gothic, edited by @ruthheholt.bsky.social and @joparsons.bsky.social
The first book to examine ghostly presences (and absences) in #Gothic texts bit.ly/3I59Uzy
#Ghosts #GothicStudies
Find out more: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181923/
16.09.2025 14:25 — 👍 33 🔁 13 💬 0 📌 1
Hark! The wild west wind rattles yonder casement, and autumn's own breath chills the under-insulated pedestrian trudging the pavement outside. These things betoken the return of hats and overcoats, umbrellas and germs, and of course students... but also the London 19th Century Studies Seminar! Please find the programme below, lovingly curated by myself, Mary Shannon and Briony Wickes. All events will be held from 6pm to 8pm in Room 243 at Senate House.
14th October: Andrew King (Greenwich),
"Periodicals and the Materiality of Marketing", and Clare Stainthorp (Royal College of Art),
"The British Freethought Movement and
Periodical Form".
25th November: Kate Hext (Exeter) and Catherine Maxwell (QMUL) on Decadent
Flowers and Gardens.
9th December: Peter Bryden (Exeter) and Robert Hampson (RHUL) on New Perspectives on Late Victorian Art.
I’m delighted to be part of this term’s London 19th Century Studies Seminar line up, and on a periodicals panel with @andrewkingc19.bsky.social no less! Join us at Senate House on Tues 14 Oct - all welcome!
16.09.2025 16:54 — 👍 34 🔁 12 💬 0 📌 1
This is a brilliant opportunity. Happy to answer any questions if anyone is interested in applying!
05.09.2025 08:07 — 👍 8 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
RSVP Annual Conference – RSVP
The nineteenth century was marked by unprecedented migration, as people moved to urban centers; were forcibly or semi-forcibly relocated; and emigrated to escape war, famine, economic instability, or…
✨ It's official! We're now accepting proposals for #RSVP2026, "Movements and Migrations"! We invite scholars to examine the relationship between periodicals, migrations, and movements for our 2026 conference in Dublin. Full CFP and more details on our main website.
01.09.2025 14:49 — 👍 16 🔁 17 💬 0 📌 3
We have a wonderful line up of keynote speakers for RSVP-Dublin:
KATHERINE BODE (Australian National University) will deliver the Wolff keynote and ANDREW LEWIS and TEJA VARMA PUSAPATI will be in conversation for the Colby keynote!
And you too can be there - submit a proposal by Nov 1.
05.09.2025 16:01 — 👍 13 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0
What a fabulous resource! Wedgwood's intellectual work occupied such a fascinating space within #C19 debates about religion, science, and women's work. What a treasure, to have #OpenAccess to her writings. {I also highly recommend Sue Brown's biography, which is cited in Stone's bibliography.}
16.09.2025 00:37 — 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
RSVP generously supports Periodicals research through several grants competitions. Maybe one fits your project!
16.09.2025 00:38 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Incredible but true - I have just had a tour of #Ouida’s house in Florence by a wonderful nun, sorella Rosa.
I am very moved, of course, but learnt more.
A bit of a change from where she was born in Bury St Edmunds.
07.09.2025 09:17 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The Hemingway Letters Project invites proposals for a panel at the 21st Biennial Hemingway Conference, July 20-25, 2026 in Toronto. 6 vols of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway have been published to date. This edition has allowed access to the author's correspondence, approximately 85% of which is previously unpublished. In its first 6 vols the project has made available 2000+ letters from 100+ repositories & collections. The editors invite proposals from scholars who have made significant use of the Letters in their work in order to highlight emerging research that the Project has facilitated.
We are esp. interested in interdisciplinary engagement w/ the vols & welcome proposals from a range of fields & subfields, including but not limited to, bibliography & history of the book, biography & life writing, creative writing, digital humanities & humanities computing, literary criticism, modernist studies, pedagogy, periodical studies & print culture, textual & documentary editing, & popular culture &fandom.
To be considered for the panel, please submit to the panel organizers a short (500-1000 words) description of your project as well as a short professional bio. Your project description should describe your work as a whole, how the Letters have facilitated your research, and what topic or approach your conference presentation will explore. Please indicate if your work is a finished project or a work in progress. In your bio, please include your professional affiliation and, if applicable, your student status or academic rank. We especially welcome proposals from graduate students, postdocs, and early-career scholars, as well as researchers outside the academy whose work reaches a wide general audience.
Deadline Oct. 1, 2025.
CFP: The Hemingway Letters Project: Emerging Research (Toronto, July 20-25, 2026). Please share with students/colleagues/friends who might be interested. Happy to answer questions about the panel in particular and the conference in general. Funding opportunities available.
26.08.2025 23:17 — 👍 6 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
After an amazing three days in Birmingham at the @vpfa.bsky.social annual conference, it's graduation of my last undergraduate cohort at the University of Greenwich - a truly talented year.
17.07.2025 06:28 — 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Hear hear!
It's the @vpfa's deeply rooted refusal of hierarchy in the interest of welcome and joy combined with serious intellectual ambition, isn't it?
It's proof renewed every year that fun and rigour make a great alloy!
17.07.2025 05:59 — 👍 10 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Conference programme: 17th Annual Conference of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association. Heights, Depths, and Extremes. The Birmingham & Midland Institute, Birmingham UK. Victorian picture of a group of people confronted by a sea monster
Well, #VPFAExtremes has been wonderful - the height of my summer so far, as ever! I am deeply grateful to be part such a fantastic, extremely warm and collegiate association. Thoroughly enjoyed the last few days - diolch pawb!
16.07.2025 20:58 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 1
![Reading Scenario Experiments. This series of prompts is designed to get you thinking about how the setting for reading affects concentration, comprehension, and even the existential experience of reading. Every week, one of the following prompts will appear on the syllabus. I encourage you to try all of them that you are able. How does a different reading setting affect your mood? Your receptiveness to the prose? Your pleasure or difficulty reading? What are the particular impacts of changing your lighting or surroundings? What do you notice about yourself and about the work you are reading during this experiment?
1. read by candlelight (use a small lamp in dorms where no candles are allowed!)
2. read for one hour without checking any devices, answering texts, etc.
3. walk out into nature (climb a tree, sit on a rock, grab a spot in a hammock) and read
4. host a reading night with friends & food (sit in companionable silence, reading without chatting)
5. read aloud a chapter to someone else
6. climb into bed at night and read by flashlight under the covers for at least 30 minutes, as if you’ve already been told “lights out” as a kid
7. reread a chapter and see what new things you notice the second time through
8. change your ambient-noise level: add music if you normally read in the quiet; or read without music if you are normally a music-listener
9. read with a sketchpad at hand and sketch scenes, characters, or other elements from the story
10. practice focused listening: have someone read to you
11. make yourself a special, fancy snack on a real plate to nibble while eating: pay attention to the cooking or arranging or choosing of ingredients to make it especially appetizing first
12. make tea (even if you’re not usually a tea drinker), and read and sip
13. invent a new reading scenario for yourself, or repeat the one you liked the best from this term
[writing assignment using these prompts follows; text character limit prevents inclusion of it in full]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:rfs7afx6ue4mknbhhpnrzkyz/bafkreiel77b25truczj372qokmg5p3apa2dphux3jtplpz3dv35jul6wdu@jpeg)
Reading Scenario Experiments. This series of prompts is designed to get you thinking about how the setting for reading affects concentration, comprehension, and even the existential experience of reading. Every week, one of the following prompts will appear on the syllabus. I encourage you to try all of them that you are able. How does a different reading setting affect your mood? Your receptiveness to the prose? Your pleasure or difficulty reading? What are the particular impacts of changing your lighting or surroundings? What do you notice about yourself and about the work you are reading during this experiment?
1. read by candlelight (use a small lamp in dorms where no candles are allowed!)
2. read for one hour without checking any devices, answering texts, etc.
3. walk out into nature (climb a tree, sit on a rock, grab a spot in a hammock) and read
4. host a reading night with friends & food (sit in companionable silence, reading without chatting)
5. read aloud a chapter to someone else
6. climb into bed at night and read by flashlight under the covers for at least 30 minutes, as if you’ve already been told “lights out” as a kid
7. reread a chapter and see what new things you notice the second time through
8. change your ambient-noise level: add music if you normally read in the quiet; or read without music if you are normally a music-listener
9. read with a sketchpad at hand and sketch scenes, characters, or other elements from the story
10. practice focused listening: have someone read to you
11. make yourself a special, fancy snack on a real plate to nibble while eating: pay attention to the cooking or arranging or choosing of ingredients to make it especially appetizing first
12. make tea (even if you’re not usually a tea drinker), and read and sip
13. invent a new reading scenario for yourself, or repeat the one you liked the best from this term
[writing assignment using these prompts follows; text character limit prevents inclusion of it in full]
Here you go! I'll write some new ones for this semester too. They loved them. The "read without your phone or screens in the room" was a revelation, and many of them decided to keep doing it. They had NO IDEA (& were horrified) how often they interrupt themselves to look at a phone for no reason.
16.07.2025 14:30 — 👍 629 🔁 178 💬 44 📌 69
Very excited but also sorry its the last day of @vpfa.bsky.social #VPFAExtremes! The panel I'm in is kicking off with Alison Dingle on Victorian depictions of the Holy Land, esp. Disraeli's Tancred and Tonna's Judah's Lion. Horribly topical.
16.07.2025 08:42 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2024 VPFA Second Book Prize:
Tara MacDonald, Narrative, Affect, and Victorian Sensation: Wilful Bodies (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Prof. MacDonald will receive a £200 cash prize and be honoured at the Annual Conference AGM.
11.07.2025 08:54 — 👍 11 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 1
Illustration by Édouard Riou for Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth. An engraving depicting a host of prehistoric animals, including Megatherium, moa, and Pleiosaurus, called 'Axel's Dream'.
Writing a keynote paper for @vpfa.bsky.social's annual conference about encounters with prehistoric animals in nineteenth-century fiction, and as I write Colossal Biosciences can't stop announcing that they're resurrecting extinct creatures. I prefer Jules Verne.
11.07.2025 07:44 — 👍 40 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
THRILLED to share that my book has won the VPFA Second Book Prize! 🎉
11.07.2025 14:02 — 👍 16 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 1
Victorian Popular Fictions 7.1 8 Butler-Way
Helena Esser, Steampunk London: Neo-Victorian Urban Space and Popular Transmedia Memory. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024, 248 pp. HB £85.00. ISBN: 9781350433908 Reviewed by Emma Butler-Way Downlo…
Exciting new issue of VPFJ is now out in the world, featuring my review for Helena Esser's fantastic Steampunk London: Neo-Victorian Urban Space and Popular Transmedia Memory. I'm a big fan. Get your libraries on it.
@vpfa.bsky.social @helenaesser.bsky.social
doi.org/10.46911/TWO...
11.07.2025 12:15 — 👍 11 🔁 7 💬 0 📌 0
First keynote, The Submarine Gothic beginning now in the Charles Dickens room 🦈🦈🦈 #VPFAExtremes
14.07.2025 10:33 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
We are delighted to welcome the @VPFA1 for day 1 of their 3 day conference "Heights, Depths and Extremes."
#VPFAExtremes #VPFA #bmi1854 #birmingham #victorian
14.07.2025 11:35 — 👍 9 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 1
@vpfa.bsky.social So happy to see you here!
18.06.2025 14:28 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Don’t forget! Our first (free!) members-only writing retreat is on 21 June, 10am–3pm (UK).
Whether you're drafting a paper, editing a book, or just need focused time—you're welcome!
Structured blocks, breaks & reflection included. Check your email to register!
16.06.2025 15:53 — 👍 8 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859–1909: Darwinism’s Generations
Abstract. Darwinism’s Generations uses the impact of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) in the fifty years after its publication to demonstra
Given that it's now more than 6 months since Darwinism's Generations was published, I thought I'd send out an ICYMI for all those who haven't yet noticed. You can find a summary of the contents and arguments in the 'autoreview' I've posted on profmartinhewitt.com. Do check it out!
07.06.2025 06:45 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Metropolitan Police lives and stories 1829-now.
Open to researchers and visitors by appointment.
Like/repost/follow≠endorsement
No bio or posts, no follow back.
https://t.co/f5xOlVyLoc
Senior Teaching Fellow in Modern European Culture, UCL. Proudly Cornish and quasi-Italian. Interested in the 1930s (1848-1950). Biographer of Celia Fremlin.
Malcolm Shifrin FRHistS—"Victorian Turkish Baths": 'a major act of historical recovery', 'readable', 'scholarly', 'something in it for everyone'. Profusely illustrated. worldcat.org/title/931082056. Complementary website http://www.victorianturkishbath.org
Hanesydd / Historian. Emeritus prof.
Interested in ideas and practices of freedom in 19th century Atlantic world, transnational journalism, Wales, Ireland and France.
Co-edited Gender in Modern Welsh History (2023) with Drs Beth Jenkins and Stephanie Ward
English Language & Literature. PhD: Monstrosity. Queer history. Gothic. Antifa. Archaic English. NEW BOOK: Woke Shakespeare. Prof. d'Emeritus. https://linktr.ee/drianmccormick
Cultural historian interested in the UK temperance movement, including its songs, buildings, publications, entertainments, teaching activities, and much more, together with its legacy and contemporary resonances.
BlueSky account for History: The Journal of the Historical Association. Academic history journal published by Wiley; editorial team based at Northumbria University. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1468229X
PhD student at University of Vechta | Victorianist
Doctoral Researcher at the University of Birmingham. Working on disability in fantasy and medieval literature.
PhD Student at Université Clermont Auvergne (France). 19th century literature, Gothic, ghost stories, Victorian Gothic, Vernon Lee. Dissertation topic: "Vernon Lee's rewriting of Gothic literature." She/her.
Teacher, mother, wife
First-year Eng lit PhD student (Sherlock Holmes post Doyle) and former MA student (Victorian Gothic) at the University of Portsmouth
PhD researcher. Aberystwyth Uni & Uni of Bristol SWWDTP. Female ageing in late Victorian literature & medicine.
Scholar of Earth's history in literature and culture. Research Associate in Natural History Humanities at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge.
Associate Lecturer at the Open University; Victorianist; researcher on Mary Braddon, periodicals, women's writing; Secretary of @vpfa; dance teacher; and I love sewing.
Professor who writes about Victorian literature & culture on screen, neo-Victorianism, postfeminism, the real and fake Sherlock Holmes, World Lit & translation. I also dabble in DH and gardening.
Decolonization enthusiast. Feminist. Victorianist.
Assistant Professor at Bilkent University
Aberystwyth alma mater
Early career researcher specialised in fairy tales and villainy | adaptations, reworkings, and retellings
Senior Lecturer Victorian Lit and Culture at Loughborough Uni. Mental health in the 19th century; Victorian asylums; sensation and gothic fiction; Neo-Victorian-dabbler; dog-parent; Dahl-maker. (She/Her)
