It’s my last week at my current retail job meaning I’ll no longer be lovingly known as “curtain lady” 🫡

Word of the Day is ‘theic’ (19th century), defined as ‘one given to immoderate tea-drinking; a tea drunkard’.

Please help. Please sign & share. I work on a degree programme known as ELCE for mature students who didn't or couldn't do a degree at 18. Bristol uni has decided to close it. Bristol was set up to serve this community & now we are losing our most accessible degree. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Paperback edition of 'Made in Manchester', due near the end of this month, has a new cover illustration. I'll be signing copies at Waterstones Oldham, Saturday 23rd August 12-2pm. All welcome. www.waterstones.com/events/brian...

My poem ‘Desiderium’ is in the recent issue of Twisted Ink! Read it (and everyone else’s lovely work) here >> twistedinks.wordpress.com ✨🫶🏻

LOVE studying literature until I’m walking around with 7 books and my laptop in my bag and my backs trying not to snap in half

Went to the National Museum of Scotland and just had to take some time appreciating all the Jacobite drinking glasses 🍷🍷

Wordsworth and Coleridge at the Coldplay gig

Had a fantastic time at my first @defoesociety.bsky.social conference! I presented my research on drink, class, and narrative in Fielding and Defoe 🍻 Big thanks to @nick-seager.bsky.social for organising & the board who awarded me the John Richetti Student Bursary to enable me to go 🫶🏻

First post 🥳 A little intro to my PhD project. I'm currently researching surrealist aesthetics and tendencies in contemporary world cinema. My current focus is on the Surrealist documentary of Jean Painlevé and the docufiction of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. 🎬

Attention Digital Defoe readers! The 2025 (Vol. 16) issue just dropped! Content screenshots below with exciting article abstracts to follow. Thanks for reading and sharing! cedar.wwu.edu/digitaldefoe/ #18thCentury #C18 #C18th #18thC #danieldefoe #defoe

Had a great couple days attending the Drinking Studies Network’s Women and Alcohol Cluster’s #dangerouspleasure conference in Dublin 🍻 some great discussions from a range of disciplines and I got to present my own research on the Georgian pub landlady in art and literature!

Panel 5 of #womenandalcohol #dangerouspleasure leads off with Megan Bennett, exploring figures of the Georgian landlady in Fielding & others, and the extraordinary figure of Mary Robinson, the Maid of Buttermere, who became something like a tourist attraction in the Lakes for Coleridge & others 1/3

Panel two reflects on visualizing pleasures. Megan Bennett starts with a brilliant reading of the land lady in literary and visual cultures of 18C

In true drinking studies fashion, I’m ending today at the University Arms after a jam-packed workshop talking about publishing ✨ Organised with my fellow PGRs on behalf of the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies at @uos-artshumanities.bsky.social Grateful for everyone who came and who spoke 🫶🏻

A great day attending and presenting my research on Margaret Harkness at today’s Sheffield PGR Colloquium on Archive and Preservation!

Took grandad to Old Trafford as an early bday present ❤️❤️

My 18thC reading does sometimes make my reading tracker a tad bit skewiff

Queen Mill, Dukinfield, by Edna Lumb (1931-92). #WomensArt #NorthernArt

a very book-ish day exploring london (managed 13 bookshops!!!!)

a world without trans people has never existed and never will

cable leaf jumper finished 🍃🧶

living the retired lifestyle by spending all day looking forward to my tea package and spending the night knitting a jumper 😎😎

Registration for our biennial conference, "Discoveries and Improvements, 1660-1740," is open! Please visit our conference page for details, including links to our registration form and payment page. Register by Friday, May 16 to take advantage of our early bird rate! www.defoesociety.org/conference/

Just started re-reading Joseph Andrews- ‘but Life every where furnishes an accurate Observer with the Ridiculous.’ (Preface)

Just realised I used 3 exclamation marks in one email and that’s what I call being an anxious emailer ✌️

my plans- get the second sleeve of this leafy jumper done (i hate sleeves 😠😠

A great perspective of FND, I had my first seizure at 13 and have had to navigate everything that comes with it since

Looking forward to sharing some of my work on Fielding this Friday! ✨

This Friday (21st March), Sheffield will be hosting an interdisciplinary workshop on beer! Topics of discussion include the politics of brewing, how to make beer more sustainably, and the globalisation of the drink! To join, get in touch!

I don’t know if anyone here loves Labyrinth as much as I do but finally finished this massive (18” x 15”!) cross stitch 🪡 it makes my collection of Labyrinth cross stitches a grand total of 3 ✨✨

There is still time to submit a proposal for the 8th biennial @defoesociety.bsky.social Defoe Society Conference, which is happening in beautiful Lichfield, U.K., 3-5 July 2025. All details here: www.defoesociety.org/conference/

#C19th #Chartism Prove you’re not a whig

On my desk these last few days (and for the foreseeable) are these 2 very well-loved editions of Fielding

early morning train journeys to campus means 45 mins uninterrupted time so I got to finish the edging on my ghostie bookmark 🪡👻

A little intro to my PhD project for those interested 🫶🏻: I am exploring the relationship between alcohol and class in 18th and 19thC British art and literature, with an interest in satirical art, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, Robert Burns, the Bröntes, Elizabeth Gaskell, and more 🍻

decided to move away from Goodreads. I’ve been using Storygraph for a while and have also created a Fable account to try and figure out a replacement (who knew tracking my silly little reads was so hard?!)

Been making my way through the Greater Manchester Ringway. I have now completed Stage 7: Marple to Broadbottom which, being from Tameside, I sometimes forget some of the views I can get just down (or up) the road from me ✨

currently reading Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form & Emptiness ✨

Lucille Clifton, always.

ending the year on 68 books read and only 6 5 ⭐️ reads with an average rating of 3.67… only slightly picky on my reading choices

Christmas Drinks At The Hairy Dog, by Clare Allan. Hare and Hounds, New Mills, Derbyshire. #WomensArt #NorthernArt

thinking about the last couple of weeks of my first semester as a PhD student ✨ I graduated from my MA!!! Cried very real (happy) tears, and continued my studies of alcohol, class, and Henry Fielding. This passage from A. E. Richardson’s The Old Inns of England felt very fitting 90 years later 🫶🏻

the christmas finishes are in full swing 🎄

Realised I posted once about my recent reads and then never again so here’s my goodreads recents (currently reading Fieldings Amelia and Iris Murdochs The Bell)

book pouches 📚

I don’t know if anyone on here has seen what is happening with Dr Ally Louks over on X but it has only reinforced the fact it is no longer a space I want to be a part of. The fact she is getting threats for her PhD thesis on smells in literature is absolutely insane

Had a great evening at the Pints of Interest event hosted by the Being Human Festival and the University of Sheffield. Very interesting panel discussing all things pubs 🍻 big thanks to Phil and Nick for organising it!

very happy with how this pouch turned out… now time to make a million more

phd mood board ✨