Once a year I ask my students to imagine a red star. It’s cognitive psychology and we are about to talk about whether “imagery” is the same or different from “perception”, but first, I like to check in on what our class experience when we imagine something. Friends, the results NEVER disappoint!

Celebrate Pancake Day with Christina Rossetti's 'Mix a pancake', illustrated by Arthur Hughes.

The deadline for the first ever Ecocriticsm / Tennyson Conference is Saturday: all details below... @thevicsoc.bsky.social @tennysonsociety.bsky.social @victorianpoetry.bsky.social @poetrysociety.org.uk @profjt.bsky.social @eecocriticism.bsky.social @gothicstudies.bsky.social

Currently prepping these wooden beauties for a new display on Richard Owen’s science, art and legacy going into the NHM’s Images of Nature gallery tomorrow! #woodengraving #megatherium #bones #specialcollections

One can begin to understand why cats (even big ones) don't like the water. Stories and Pictures of Animals c1890s #BookologyThursday #booksky

Ladybird book in the spotlight Sleeping Beauty (1965) Artist: Eric Winter

That feeling when you are ready to swap your first-born for a really crisp lettuce (Rapunzel, 1968) Artist: Eric Winter

Today’s #MastheadMonday is the Pen and Pencil (1855). It aimed to tap into several fashions that coalesced in the mid C19th: illustrated newspapers, cheap family papers, & the Crimean War. It lasted only 8 issues. Digitised by the BL & free to view: www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/pen-a...

I can already hear the tech bros calling me a luddite: here it is with no paywall I think app.theneweuropean.co.uk/story/133185...

🧠✨ Did you know that 1 in 25 people experience reading without mental images? In a new piece for @tes, Prof Julia Thomas explores aphantasia, which affects how we engage with literature. How can educators support readers who don't "see" stories in their mind’s eye? 🧐 🔗 Read more: bit.ly/3RdXbvg

Have you ever thought about what you see — or don’t see — in your mind’s eye as you read? Take a look at this piece I’ve written about reading and aphantasia: www.tes.com/magazine/tea...

The Guardian has published an obituary of my dear friend Brian, written by his wife Maxine. I love the photo she chose for it. www.theguardian.com/education/20... #C19

This recommendation is a career highlight (I have a new book out, by the way!)

There are so many ways to use artificial intelligence (AI) in the humanities. This NEH-funded collaboration between the University of Wyoming and Cardiff University in Wales used AI to preserve more than 3,000 images of 22 medieval cathedrals at high resolutions. ow.ly/PS0T50V0qAB

For those who may not yet have heard, our dear friend Brian Maidment passed away a little over a week ago. It is difficult to put into words how much he meant to our community, but @pritijoshi.bsky.social has paid him wonderful tribute here: rs4vp.org/in-memoriam-...

This (typo) is literally the dream, not an inconvenience

Jimmy Page's Zodiac Dining Table in his Arts & Crafts home, Tower House, London, designed by William Burges.

🚀📈 Making Victorian visual culture searchable: Introducing an open-access and AI-powered dataset of 72,000 illustrations from the Illustrated London News (1842-1890). (w. Bethany Warner, @pfyfe.bsky.social and @bcgl.bsky.social) openhumanitiesdata.metajnl.com/articles/10....

All our AI tools for searching the content of digitised image collections are free and available now via the website. Please use! findingaplace.org.uk?page_id=285

Publication day! *Literary Illusions* is finally out!

For those interested in AI and historical images (and cathedrals), here is a lovely exhibition of the work we’ve been doing with @lampallib.bsky.social shorturl.at/0gTgn

My book, Fiction on the Page in Nineteenth-Century Magazines, is out now with Oxford University Press! academic.oup.com/book/58989 It’s a book about page fillers, product placement, and strange hybrid fiction. It asks how the page of the magazine became a spur for new, odd genres.

Everyone has to see a ghost on Christmas Eve. Here’s one, just in case. From The Ingoldsby Legends (designed by John Leech). Available on The Illustration Archive

Mr Pickwick under the mistletoe (Phiz) farm8.staticflickr.com/7390/1128770...

Contrary to popular mythology, there were quite a few red-robed Father Christmases pre-Coca Cola. This one is from 1888. illustrationarchive.cf.ac.uk/image/11195180743

One for the publication day of Dickens's A Christmas Carol: 'The Last of the Spirits - A Scene from A Christmas Carol at the Adelphi Theatre', published in The Pictorial Times, 2 March 1844.

Curran Fellowships are now open for applications (due Jan 15, letters Jan 22), and they can be a big help to anyone researching any aspect of the 19th-c. British press. Topics pursued by past winners have ranged far and wide: rs4vp.org/awards/curra... Details here: rs4vp.org/awards/curra... #19th

The Curious Case of Mr. and Mrs. Holmes: jvc.oup.com/2022/09/02/t...

Dear followers, old and new. Here is one of my favourite illustrations (by Frederick Sandys). I’m interested in all things Victorian, books, pictures — and (life after) death/consciousness

Fabulous illustration for one of the most haunting figures in European folklore. He plays a very scary role in the book I'm currently rereading and working on: Maggie Stiefvater's Ballad. 'Herne the Hunter' English folklore ghost with hounds and owl, by George Cruikshank, 1843.