Delighted to be in this talking about ridiculousness in BBC’s Ghosts and excited to see the rest of this first volume of new directions in the ghost story! Congrats all 🥳👻🥳

1. My opening ramble, 'At the Borderlands: A Haunted Introduction' grapples with the history of ghost story taxonomies & the complexities of terminology, before briefly surveying & sketching out key works of influential scholarship. Hopefully a good primer chapter for teaching 👻📚 #NewDirections

So grateful to have an essay in New Directions in the Ghost Story: "Ghost Gear and Cetacean Bodies: Stories of Spectral and Material Entanglement in the Necrocene" 👻💙🐋💙👻 Thanks @joanpassey.bsky.social, @henrybartholomew.bsky.social, @jendeavour.bsky.social! link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

It’s here!

Happy birthday to the one and only Algernon Blackwood #BOTD

Calling all Thomas Hardy scholars - I bought a book for an obscure Algernon Blackwood story only to discover that it appears to be inscribed by Hardy. Can anyone confirm? And who is Caroline (‘Sammy’)? 🧐

The latest issue of @edinburghup.bsky.social's Gothic Studies features articles by our own Dr Nick Freeman and doctoral researcher Milly Harrison, on 'Algernon Blackwood and the Gothic':

ICYMI - the latest issue of Gothic Studies journal is devoted to the author, mystic, and media star Algernon Blackwood. The Intro asks how we can understand Blackwood as an author both in and beyond the Gothic tradition and how his work reshapes the genre. doi.org/10.3366/goth...

Publication day! My special issue on Algernon Blackwood and the Gothic is officially out: www.euppublishing.com/toc/gothic/c... My heartfelt thanks to all the contributors. So much in here - will cover in future posts. The issue positions B as a major force in C20th British Gothic.

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The cover of my upcoming special issue of @gothicstudies.bsky.social - 'Algernon Blackwood and the Gothic' - is here! Eight essays on Blackwood's fiction, delving into questions of genre, war, empathy, occultism, and much more. Full issue out soon! @edinburghup.bsky.social @igagoths.bsky.social

Something cosmic this way comes... the special issue of Gothic Studies I have been working on - Algernon Blackwood and the Gothic - is now in production ready for its November publication. Thrilled with the depth and breadth of insight and expertise from the contributors. More updates soon!

The wondrous Algernon Blackwood was born on this day in 1869! Excited to say that I am currently editing a special issue of Gothic Studies on ‘Blackwood and the Gothic’ due Nov. Features a truly fantastic line-up of contributors. I can’t wait for people to read it.

The most uncanny thing I've learnt from @henrybartholomew.bsky.social's excellent Handheld Press edition of Algernon Blackwood's writings is that—before turning to weird fiction—he tried to open something called 'the Hub'. Presumably bean bags, open plan desks, big lamps, Starbucks, no microwave.

Some fantastic prices here. You can pick up a copy of my books ‘The Unknown’ and ‘The Living Stone’ for £5 each! Last chance to support a small publisher before they close 👻

Algernon Blackwood’s “The Woman’s Ghost Story” republished in the Picture Post on Christmas Eve 1949 as “The Story the Woman Told”. Wonderful illustration by a 27-year old Susan Einzig (who would go on to illustrate Tom’s Midnight Garden)

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A small book filled with extraordinary ideas. I think aesthetic empathy is due a comeback. #VernonLee

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My first post over here! In case you don’t know, my biography of M. R. James, ‘For the Dead Remember’, will be coming your way next year from Oxford University Press.

First paperback colonial edition of Algernon Blackwood’s ‘Pan’s Garden’ (1912).

A discovery! Lovely little clipping-bookmark…

Thought I’d make my first post both positive and useful-so here’s a list of all of the free-to-view titles now available on the British Newspaper Archive: blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2024/09/19/a...

Sunshine (or last of) and autumn leaves in St James Park this afternoon. The appearance seemed too exciting not to note after weeks of grey …

👋🏻 so many new people about! Follow if you want extremely intermittent posting about ghosts, weird fiction, and Algernon Blackwood 🧐 Also shelfies from time to time…

Calling all Gothic Studies scholars! This is a tiny start on a list of folks working in the #Gothic to help us find each other. Halfway through compiling I thought it might be better to opt-in to make sure you all want to be here, so please comment below if you want to join! go.bsky.app/Si2MduA

A year ago! Copies can still be purchased from the press 👻 Happy Halloween

We are very pleased to announce a new Bloomsbury Academic series. Spectres, Hauntings and Horrors The series editors are Dawn Keetley, Adam James Smith @elementaladam.bsky.social and myself. More information below. Logo & illustrations by the fantastic Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social

We've published the findings of the first phase of SHAPE research careers, synthesising a range of engagement with SHAPE researchers to better understand what a good, sustainable, and meaningful career does or can look like for SHAPE researchers. www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications...

Yesterday’s book shop find. A lovely 19th C copy. Cat stole focus, as she tends to do..

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #1,318,578!

Went to see Alien: Romulus in an IMAX in China last night. It was so loud, making the soundless ‘vacuum’ moments very effective. Felt like I was in space. Not sure re the ethics of revivifying Ian Holm, but it was effective, story-wise. Next question: how much gore was cut for the Chinese release?

My new book The Living Stone: Stories of Uncanny Sculpture, 1858-1943 is officially out! You can get it most places, but if you want to support the small press that published it, purchase it directly: www.handheldpress.co.uk/shop/fantasy... Halloween may be over, but fear lives forever…..

My timeline consists almost entirely of Neil Gaiman and the Pope.

“Archeology expands from sorting out the time of antiquity to openly working with the sorting that is itself the antiquity of time” - Witmore. What are people’s thoughts on semantic inversions as rhetorical technique? I often do it in my own writing (perhaps too much) - something compelling about it

First book I’ve read purely for pleasure in a long while. Enjoyed it a lot - the prose is astonishing and doesn’t dip in quality as it progresses. I’m not sure about the ending, but I loved the whole conceit of the under/over story. Plus I learned a whole load of facts about trees.