Proofs! Forthcoming chapter in *The Cambridge History of the Irish Novel* amongst stellar company & excellently steered by Prof Chris Morash. I’ll be doing these with some Easter chocolate to power me through #IrishLiterature #Novels #speirgorm #GulliversTravels

Today: QMCECS Seminar 31 March Rebecca Tierney-Hynes (Edinburgh) 'Richard Steele and the Corps of Comedy' More info: tinyurl.com/2uy8668m 31 March 2026 Time: 17:15. UK Time. Location: QMUL Mile End Campus ArtsOne, Room 1.36 (entrance from the rear of the building).

Friends in London and in the area! If you are free on the 15th of April, please come to my book launch!

Akira Kurosawa on writing

Here is my best Habermas story. I am grad student waiting in LONG line for Habermas talk. There is a tall man waiting in front of me. Line moves so we are eventually visible to organizers, a woman looks over & makes horrified face. Runs out: "Prof Habermas! You don't have to wait in line!"

Niche but cool. I mentioned in class that there was little evidence that #18thc readers had ever responded to the invitation tendered by the blank page in Tristram Shandy & drawn the Widow Wadman. & then a student revealed the portrait of Slawkenbergius she found inscribed into her copy of our novel

Book post is the best kind of post.

If you're trying to finish a book (& it's not easy now!), best not read Tristram Shandy w/ all its examples of how not to do it. But I do rather like the example of the Archbishop who dawdles b/c convinced that his first thoughts, indeed any good thoughts, might be "the temptations of the evil one."

Soon in New Haven.

Happy birthday to Montaigne, and to my book! This product of love and errance, now available @academic.oup.com.

Friends in Cambridge, MA/Boston and nearby. I’m giving a lecture about my upcoming book at Harvard’s Davis Center + a conversation with Daria Khitrova!

Dear friends in Oxford, I would be very happy to see you at my talk on Laurence Sterne and his translators on Monday, if you are around. @oxfordcct.bsky.social

On this anniversary, spare a thought for anyone who publishes research on Jane Austin, and can’t go a day without explaining to someone, “No, it really is the one with the -i- in it.”

Without much reading, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths. (Happy birthday to Laurence Sterne.)

Endless journey cards by @tomgauld. Green version available here: laurencesternetrust.org.uk/shandy-hall-... A great postable #Christmaspresent for all ages. These 12 picture cards can be arranged to form 479,001,600 different landscapes! Inspired by the works of Laurence Sterne.

𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗵 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝘆, 𝟭𝟲𝟲𝟬–𝟭𝟴𝟯𝟬 Edited by Brecht de Groote, Lieve Jooken, Sonja Lavaert & Guy Rooryck More info: bit.ly/4ntQjaJ #Translation #Literature #C18 #History

1/9 Our latest print issue, a special issue on "Wandering Ideas: Circulations of Radical Social Thought in the Long Nineteenth Century" guest edited by @pkuligowski.bsky.social from papers presented at the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2022. The introduction: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

‪ Great to see Mary Newbould's new book on #Sterne and networks of reception out and open access rom @universitypress.cambridge.org! Lots of rich #18thcentury material here, including oral recitals & naughty Sternean poetry @shandyhall.bsky.social @lsternetrust.bsky.social

EVENT: Join us at @sotauol.bsky.social on 6/11/25 from 11am - 12:30pm for an ECR Publishing Roundtable with publishing professionals followed by an audience Q&A. Part of the #TerraqueousGlobe Conference @shandyhall.bsky.social @lsternetrust.bsky.social Tickets & registration: bit.ly/Registration-TG🌍

Congratulations to Xiaolu Ma, honorable mention recipient of the University of Southern California Book Prize for Transpatial Modernity: Chinese Cultural Encounters with Russia via Japan (1880–1930) with Harvard University Asia Center. #ASEEESPrizes See all winners: buff.ly/nwIZZjj

Absolutely outrageous to say that a uni’s academic press doesn’t serve its undergraduates. Non-profit university presses support and sustain a scholarly and intellectual system THAT MAKES TEACHING UNDERGRADUATES POSSIBLE. No presses? no fields of study, no professors, no college.

Proofs! I hope that novel people and #19thc people will like this essay on Ali Smith & her remaking of Victorian serial fiction (hey, I hope that people like and read Ali Smith!). Many thanks to @ceyingst.bsky.social for their help in the final stages of the essay's preparation.

I’ve just discovered that my short article in The Shandean (vol. 33) is available open access through @livunipress.bsky.social, together with the rest of the rich festschrift issue for the great Peter de Voogd. It looks at how Soviet editors censored Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey.

The deadline for submitting proposals for #BSECS2026 is only two weeks away. Get scribbling! #skystorians #18thC 🗃️ This year's theme is 'Big and Small', 7-9 January, Pembroke College, Oxford. www.bsecs.org.uk/conferences/...

I've been stewing about this today. Throughout the summer my employer has been quietly transforming organizations that are key to student life & that are life-lines for the most vulnerable of our students. I bet no faculty member or student asked for this. Who did? www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Orbis Sensualium Pictus / The World of Things Obvious to the Senses drawn in Pictures (1658) publicdomainreview.org/essay/in-the...

Most read in The Shandean this week 📚 'Black Page: Tristram Shandy after Conceptualism' by Amelia Dale Find it on the LUP website: bit.ly/Shandean-Dale @shandyhall.bsky.social @lsternetrust.bsky.social @antiquaries.bsky.social @bairishstudies.bsky.social @drwilliams.bsky.social

Found out that book can be pre-ordered on Amazon, as well as on the OUP and Waterstone’s websites for, well, just peanuts!

Just read this evening that Bucknell UP, which has published so many great books about the 18th century like this one, is closing for good. Terrible news for this field of research.

Terraqueous Globe: Land & Sea in the Age of Sterne University of Liverpool, 5-7 Nov 2025 CFP open until 15 Sept 2025 More info: terraqueousglobe.wordpress.com #18thC #18C #18thCentury #Sterne #LaurenceSterne @bsecs.bsky.social @cecs-york.bsky.social

Goethe in Frankfurt Airport

Publishers, please take note that at least one person just bought three books SOLELY based on the viscerally appealing covers designed by a human being.

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow @peterbudrin.bsky.social, investigates the history of institutionalised intellectual autonomy under Stalinism. Read now: media.leverhulme.ac.uk/feature/pbud...

📚 Most read in The Shandean this week: 'The Life of Books in Tristram Shandy' by Judith Hawley Read it online: bit.ly/Books-Shandean ‪‪ @drwilliams.bsky.social ‪ @shandyhall.bsky.social @lsternetrust.bsky.social @antiquaries.bsky.social‬ @llc-rhul.bsky.social‬