#WyrdWednesday "'What monstrous place is this?' said Angel. 'It hums,' said she. 'Hearken!' He listened. The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp ..." Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Stonehenge 🎨D A Wehrschmidt

The second #Inklings Yearbook I had the pleasure to co-edit with Kristin Aubel, Marion Gymnich, and @maethorath.bsky.social is now online 📚🐉

In 1891, an excavation at Max Gate unearthed this sarsen stone. #ThomasHardy put it in his garden and referred to it as the Druid Stone. It still stands there today. This standing stone is part of a larger henge structure beneath Max Gate. 1/x 📸2024 #WyrdWednesday

A repost for this week's #WyrdWednesday.

The word 'wilderness' visibly comprises the elements 'wild' and '-ness', but where does its middle ER come from? A third ingredient has gone into the word, namely Old English dēor 'animal' (the source of today's narrower term 'deer'), making 'wilderness' literally 'wild-animal-ness'.

Went to see #Pulp last night - this time it was almost 40° C outside (last time it was a few degrees above 0). Jarvis Cocker still wore his suit!

A new addition to our #openaccess repository The Stacks - Vol. 42 of the Inklings Yearbook - on children in #fantasy literature & on fantasy for children! 📖 Follow the link to read & download for free s.gwdg.de/kzWLox#openaccess#fantasy #childrensliterature #EnglishLiterature #FilmStudies #GamesStudies #RPG

THEY'RE HEEEEERREEEE

I promised you a book cover for Hookland Fragments Volume One at Midsummer and here it is:

Since my name is very frequent, the book club scam emails don't even bother to find the right book matched to the right person. Apparently I wrote Deus Não te Odeia: (eu posso provar) - God Doesn’t Hate You: (I can prove it). 😆😆

After a rather drawn-out process, I am so delighted that the festschrift for the wonderful @lisahopkins.bsky.social that @matthewsteggle.bsky.social and I have edited is only a few months out from publication with @dgb-mem.bsky.social! www.degruyterbrill.com/document/isb...

It’s alive!

RIP Margaret Cavendish, you would have hated AI. (see if you can spot the two Early Modern Accidental Emoticons (TM) )

www.theguardian.com/music/2026/m... Only today did I read Beverley Martyn's obituary. Sadly another case of how women facilitate men's careers by unpaid care work...

‘He swerved toward a gap in the stones, but as he approached, the perspective seemed to alter, to become reversed, so that instead of growing broader the gap appeared to shrink.’ — Alan Garner, 'Elidor' (1965) #WyrdWednesday 📺 'Elidor' (BBC, 1995)

“The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,—no prospect of an end.” #C18 geologist James Hutton (1726–97) was one of the first Western proponents of “deep time”. His THEORY OF THE EARTH undermined religious ideas of Creation & Apocalypse #WyrdWednesday

The first English depiction of an infinite universe can be found in Thomas Digges' "A Perfit Description of the Celestiall Orbes" (1576) which is attached to his father Leonard Digges' almanac. Note how the fixed stars at the margins aren't contained by an orb anymore. #WyrdWednesday

Call for Papers for the Smell Studies Journal

Singaporean artist Leia Ham reimagined LotR as Tale of the Middle Kingdom, since Chinese name for China (Zhōngguó) means "The Middle Kingdom." Her concept art includes the Fellowship, armors, buildings like Bag End, props like Aragorn's banner and Fellowship brooches, and more. #TolkienTrewsday

Need some advice: is anyone currently working with #Obsidian to organize their research? Any tutorials you found particularly helpful to adapt the App to a humanities project? Thinking about using to compile my notes and plot out my current book project #followerpower

rād-wērig, adj: weary with riding or journeying. (RAWD-WAY-rih / ˈraːd-ˌweː-rɪj) Image: Arthurian romances; France, 1290-1300; Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Beinecke MS 229, f. 233r. #OldEnglish #WOTD

See, a proper book, (little book, but a proper one) with an ISBN number and everything. Cover reveal and ordering details coming soon-ish. And yes, there is an-anti piracy, anti LLM curse embedded in the text. It is Hookland – you'd expect nothing less.

I am after your top children's (/family) British Folk Horror / Folk Gothic / Just Bloody Weird and Unsettling for Kids. Preferably books ir audio drama over film/tv series. E.g. Dark Is Rising, The Owl Service etc

In October, the upcoming PGR-led conference, Dark Enchantments: Gothic Folklore and the Monstrous Fairy-Tale, will be held at the University of Sheffield. Interested in getting involved? Follow the QR code and send us your abstracts by the end of July! 🦇👻 (Risen from the🪦 with a new QR code).

It's a good day when you get to bust out a sentence like this. #18C

‘Fear is my name, and I am Death’s messenger and the reminder of Death; and I have come before him to warn you of his coming.’ Killer description of Hell in this!

This is currently open access.

Making a rare appearance on here to ask for thoughts on an embroidery from 1668. Do you have any idea what Old Testament story/stories these panels represent? Previously labeled as Abraham and Isaac but I’m not convinced. I think they may be the same figures in both. Thank you for your ideas!

The Complete Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Coming this Autumn from @selfmadehero.bsky.social www.moorereppion.com/complete-gho...

A heads-up that my online talk on the Cranford adaptations on Wednesday is the start of a #Cranford summer season of online @eilzabethgaskellsh.bsky.social talks. More info 👇

early modern facepalm

#earlymodern delighted that this is now out it has been a privilege to work with such fine scholars and a tribute to Betty Hageman who commissioned the volume

@jfpackham.bsky.social examines haunted coasts in New England writings of Celia Thaxter & Sarah Orne Jewett: Spectral apparitions haunting the shorelines show American literary regionalism as substantially concerned with what lies beyond its immediate shores & US colonial history #NewDirections👻

Nicht vergessen - am 31. Mai ist die Deadline für Eure Beiträge zum Thema "Unwelt, Um-Welt und Mit-Welt in Tolkiens Werk". 💙📚 #envhum #envhist #Tolkien #lit #fantasy

Don't forget - you can still submit abstracts on "Environment, the World around us, and the Connatural World in Tolkien’s Works" by 31st May! 💙📚 #envhum #envhist #Tolkien #lit #fantasy #CfP

Don't forget to check whether you're eligible for the ECR scholarship - you can find all details in the post above.

Schaut euch auch die Bedingungen für das ECR-Stipendium an - alle Infos gibt es im Link oben.

I am still in my social media break, but take this meanwhile: a stone eating worm covered in a 1707 German journal, "Ein Wurm der Stein frist". En passant: the article to this starts with worms eating human brains ("Gehirn-Würmer"). Yes, this is part of my current book project on news. #skystorians

@jenniferschell16.bsky.social's chapter examines spectral whale tales circulating in contemporary print/visual culture of “ghost nets” & “ghost gear,” lost, abandoned, or discarded at sea; two different, yet viable, approaches to dealing with the precarity of life in the Necrocene 🐋 #NewDirections👻

This just out! Quite stoked to be included with an essay on EcoGothic as I’m alongside some seriously proper Victorianists in there

CFP: Hogg’s Worlds Now 2–4 July 2027 @glasgow.ac.uk The James Hogg Society invites paper proposals that engage with any aspect of Hogg’s life & writing & with the broader community of authors associated with Scottish #Romanticism #CallforPapers jameshoggblog.blogspot.com/2026/05/fort...

Great to see our Coastal Studies & Society's special issue, 'Coastal Imaginaries 2: #Haunted Space, Story and Place' is now available online: journals.sagepub.com/toc/CLS/curr... Many thanks to Mike Benbough-Jackson, Eamon Doggett, Prash Naidu, Claire Waffel and @jfpackham.bsky.social

New #coastalstudies special issue just published – on 'Haunted Space, Story and Place'! My piece on container shipping sits alongside some excellent looking essays - lots open access. Many thanks to @karlbell.bsky.social & Brad Beaven for overseeing all this! journals.sagepub.com/toc/CLS/curr....

Why commemorate dead men when you can have a proper statue of a ram? Seen in Torshavn, Faroer Islands. #WyrdWednesday 📸 2023

I mean, look at what happens to statues. This is Robert Burns' statute in Aberdeen covered in... bird shit, paint or alien green slime? #WyrdWednesday

In Istanbul, one can visit this monument to the street cat Tombili, who was a neighborhood favorite and became popular online after being photographed posing in this position. #WyrdWednesday

@bronteschiltz.bsky.social's chapter reads #TwinPeaks & 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as an ongoing ghost story fundamentally concerned with television, from the uncanny mechanics of the technology itself to its impact on audiences. #NewDirections👻

In our first 5 years Temporal Boundary Press published 4 issues of the Detectorists zine, 4 issues of the Coil zine, 7 issues of The Journal of Psychick Albion, 1 lo-fi zine, 3 non-fiction books, and some misc merch. This is all that is still available. Thank you to everyone who has supported TBP!

Ch13. @cmcdonell.bsky.social examines 3 Victorian stories for how ghost-seeing & ghost-knowing can empower female domestic workers as they gain access their employers’ secrets, the strength to protect themselves & others from harm, & the chance to vocalize their own needs & concerns #NewDirections👻

Happy 91st birthday to Susan Cooper, author of the incredible Dark Is Rising fantasy sequence and a worthy heir to #Tolkien. Read all about her extraordinary work in my latest blog post. tinyurl.com/susancooper #susancooper #darkisrising @mythsoc.bsky.social @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social