New publication! New Directions in Digital Textual Studies, expertly edited by Christopher Ohge and Kristen Schuster. My chapter on "Unlocking Literary Heritage: From Cabinets of Curiosity to Digital Storytelling" is surrounded by some really terrific work by a bunch of great scholars.

I really appreciate that the article Matthew is referring to aims to make a start at the difficult job of defining slop. I've been working on a project that grows out of an article I published a while ago on a nineteenth-century category with some striking similarities + muse.jhu.edu/article/910951

Sad news in the UK #histSTM community - my former University of Kent colleague and admired historian of 19thC energy physics and steam ocean navigation, Crosbie Smith, died at the weekend following a short illness. We owe him a great deal. www.kent.ac.uk/history/peop...

New Chi skyline on press. Especially pleased with a Bean made of parentheses. #letterpress

It's official! I've been 'doctored'. So many folks to thank - for now, fab supervisors @digivictorian.bsky.social, @bethgaskell.bsky.social, @drbeard79.bsky.social, @miaout.bsky.social, great examiners @jimmussell.bsky.social, @sarahfoxhistory.bsky.social and many friends/colleagues @rs4vp.org.

The British Library’s PhD placement scheme for 26/27 is now open. My team are offering an exciting placement aiming to raise the profile of our illustrated newspaper collection: www.bl.uk/services/res...

#DH #BookHistory Postdoc: printprobability.org

I hadn't realised that Burn's 'Address to a Haggice' first appeared as front-page news!

I just signed to edit a new strand for Cambridge Elements Publishing and Book Culture called "Periodicals and Print Matter." More details to follow but I look forward to your ideas on anything connected to periodicals, catalogues, zines, and ephemera. www.cambridge.org/core/publica...

Surely those aren’t back issues of the eminent Victorian Studies being used as decoration in a hotel in Amsterdam?

Munby Fellowship in Bibliography based @theul.bsky.social in Cambridge - closes on 1 February, so still time to apply.

#MapOnATuesday Here’s the 1946 Birmingham Corporation Inner Ring Road Key Plan. A map of Birmingham city centre showing the proposed route of the inner ring road in relation to existing streets. Ref : 669062 #LibraryofBham

Obit for Michael Slater in the @theguardian.com: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

First published as a 'digital pamphlet' in 2023, and briefly available as a print edition in 2024, here's the free, downloadable PDF of our 'Winter Songs' mini-anthology, with poems apt for the year's end, and the year to come. longbarrowpress.com/wp-content/u...

Well the news is out! I'll be the next Editor of the Curran Index. Thrilled to have the opportunity to take the Curran forwards for the next five years. Looking forward to building on the work of Emily Middleton and Lars Atkin and making the Curran even more central to Victorian scholarhip.

I asked Foucault what his top three post-Beatles Paul McCartney albums were, and he said 'Band on the Run', 'Venus and Mars', and 'Back to the Egg.' That's The Order of Wings.

This is an exciting project on which I am an advisory board member: Uncovering rejects of legal deposit in 19th-century UK libraries. Basically: what did the legal deposit system *reject*. cordis.europa.eu/project/id/1...

Register here: bit.ly/4qfLt2y #AcademicWebinar #DigitalHistory #SocialHistory #CriminalJusticeHistory #AcademicSky

Would you consider your passport a book? Not sure about it? Read Inge Orlowski's FEATURES article, "Passports as Books and Books as Passports" on SHARP News to get you thinking! Read it here: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20... #Travel #BookHistory #WhatIsABook #Materiality #Mobility

Listen up. My book on Victorian New Humour is out in the new year. The perfect gift for loved ones/University Libraries who are into humourists like Jerome K. Jerome. Also guaranteed to ward against dyspepsia, St Vitus's Dance, & housemaids knee. #Victorian #C19th link.springer.com/book/9783032...

RIP Michael Slater www.bbk.ac.uk/about-us/fel...

I like how the FT’s fiscal drag calculator assumes pay will rise with inflation

Sorry to learn of Jimmy Cliff’s passing: www.theguardian.com/music/2025/n...

'It is notable that in the last Research Excellence Framework exercise the Department of American Studies at Nottingham was ranked third in the Area Studies unit of assessment and was one of the top-performing units across the whole of the University of Nottingham.' 1/2

This is a 52-pound 9000+ page accordion-bound artist’s book of Donald Trump’s lies, conceived, printed, and bound by Jill and Ray Nichols of @leadgraffiti.bsky.social in Delaware. Each of the 9000 pages has the text (per the Washington Post) of one or more of Trump’s lies; none are repeated.

📖 Colby Book Prize nominations open today! We're accepting nominations from now until 31 Jan. 2026. The Colby Prize recognizes original book-length scholarship published in 2025 that most advances our understanding of the long #19thC British press. More info: buff.ly/LIi76WJ

Harry Hootman created a db of Faxon's print index of British & Am literary annuals for his dissertation, published it on a personal website, and created a boon of info. He passed away unfortunately and his website disappeared but I've got the data. #periodicals #dataethics

We’re launching our new catalogue on Monday 8 December. To keep our collections safe while we do this, access and ordering will be suspended for a week before launch and all requests for 8 December onwards must be made on the new system when it launches. Find out more: bit.ly/CollectionSu...

!Stop Press! Article on bias in digitised newspaper collections: ’Whose News’, in the new journal of @comphumresearch.bsky.social by Kaspar Beelen, @jonhistorian61.bsky.social, @kmcdono.bsky.social and me. See blog for summary & 🧵 1/7 Article doi.org/10.1017/chr.... Blog is.gd/2IFc30 #dh #c19 🗃️

"What shall we go with on the first issue cover, Dave?" "Yeah, I'm thinking a gothic vibe."

Really pleased to announce the launch of the all-new, all-dancing, London Lives website - www.londonlives.org It has been thoroughly re-engineered to facilitate more types of search, and redesigned for phones and tablets. The team very much hopes peope like it. 1/

Very happy @matthewchambers.bsky.social has proposed this @englishstudies.bsky.social special issue! One for SHARPists & scholars of bookselling across periods & Anglophone cultural contexts:

Work at the British Library on pulling structured information from scanned card catalogues: https://web.archive.org/web/20250805102551/https:/blogs.bl.uk/digital-scholarship/2023/09/convert-a-card-past-present-and-future-of-catalogue-cards-retroconversion.html [1/2]

I enjoyed being interviewed about Adelaide Anne Procter, the English Woman's Journal, and the Victoria Press by Lizzie Ludlow and Amanda Vernon for their podcast Adelaide Anne Procter: Victorian Poetry, Faith, and Fundraising. First episode here (I'm in no. 3): open.spotify.com/episode/7iHS...

📣BREAKING NEWS! We've extended our CFP deadline for #RSVP2026 "Movements and Migrations"! Proposals now due 21 November 2025. Full CFP and more details about all things conference on our website: rs4vp.org/rsvp-confere...

So excited to launch our new MA in Classics and Ancient History now recruiting for 2026 entry! 🎉💐🥳

This is delightful

The Public Dream 21–23 November 2025. Delighted to be working on this project with THE ART HOUSE. Transforming the Main Gallery into a live working studio from 10 Nov and unveiling fully with extended opening hours during the Light Up festival (21–23 November). the-arthouse.org.uk/news/autumn-...

when I visited korea last year I went to haeinsa temple to see the tripitaka koreana, a set of 80k+ wooden printing blocks for buddhist scriptures, made in the 13th century en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripita...

New open-access article on a peculiar type of periodical, the county magazine: Rural Modernity in an Interwar English County Magazine: Cheshire Life, 1934–39 doi.org/10.1080/1478... In Cultural and Social History

Join us for the 2025 Annual Graduate Lecture in the Humanities & Social Sciences featuring award-winning historian Julia Laite on 'Stories at the Edge of Empire: Newfoundland, 1763-1829'. 19 November 2025, 18.00, Birkbeck, London. All welcome but please register: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

Calling all c19 art and queer theory ppl! @frankiedytor.bsky.social and I are still welcoming proposals for our #AAH panel on c19 British art after trans studies: see CFP below. #c19 #lgbtqhistory

Tetley Malthouse, Mill Street, Leeds, winter 1973, photo by Peter Mitchell.

Help: I need photos of *Bengal Annual* 1831, 1832, 1833, 1834 & 1836 at @britishlibrary.bsky.social BL isn't doing digital scans for remote patrons, tho a/o in London who mt be able to get to the BL? @rs4vp.org @victstudies.bsky.social @jimmussell.bsky.social

🗣️Speakers: 🗽Melanie Chambliss, Assistant Professor of History (Rochester) 💂‍♂️Bridget Bennett, Professor of American Literature and Culture (Leeds) 🗽Autumn Haag, Assistant Director, Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation (Rochester) 💂‍♂️Kate Dossett, Professor of American History (Leeds)

Published today! Facsimile: Making, Likeness, and Medieval Manuscripts, by Siân Echard. Siân is not on here to promote it, but I will! #medievalsky #manuscripts #bookhistory www.pennpress.org/978151282705...

We’re excited in Liverpool to hear that LJMU will be hosting the fab @bavs-uk.bsky.social conf in July. I can’t wait to see Victorian scholars treading the corridors of my historic c19th building. Well done to @drhorrocks.bsky.social for getting this off the ground! Now to dust of my organisers hat…

Yorkshire really is a lovely place

Don't miss this year's Holden Lecture by Prof Jason Peacey at Senate House Library, University of London, 30 October at 6PM. It's inspired by Senate House Library's Spineless Wonders Exhibition. 1/2 @uclhistory.bsky.social

Join us for this special online event that brings together a panel from two universitiess, separated by the Atlantic Ocean while joined by a common history. We’ll hear from academics and archivists with an interest Black history and how libraries and archives support these histories 👇