"SLAVES, toil no more! Why delve, and moil, and pine, To glut the tyrant-forgers of your chain?" ---Thomas Cooper the Chartist, The Purgatory of Suicides (1847). #history #poetry #politics #literature #English #Chartism

'people who are multilingual are half as likely to show signs of accelerated biological ageing than are those who speak just one language.' Good thing that schools, universities and governments are so actively promoting modern languages then, isn't it? 1/2

CFP: Gender, Violence and the Early Moderns Confirmed keynote speaker: @jddavies66.bsky.social Deadline: 20 December 2025 Conference: 22 May 2026, European University Institute, Florence all info: www.rensoc.org.uk/event/gender... #EarlyModern #SkyStorians

New #CFP on 'Embodied Knowledge Practices in the Early Modern World', to be held in June 2026 at the University of Amsterdam Abstracts of >200 words due by the 1 February 2026 #18thc #skystorians 🗃️

CFP: Reading the Practical in #EarlyModern Literature University of Sheffield, 16-17 April 2026 Deadline for submissions: 24 November 2025 All info: www.rensoc.org.uk/event/readin... #SkyStorians #EarlyModernEvents @sheffieldcems.bsky.social

Deborah Cartmell and I are pleased to announce a virtual conference on AI and Shakespeare which we're running on behalf of the BSA in February 2026. Details and cfp at www.britishshakespeare.ws/events/

EARLY MODERN PHDs!!! #EarlyModern #SkyStorians

I am looking for recommendations for recent scholarship about the English Civil War from a literary historical perspective, what have you got? Realizing that both my knowledge and confidence in that knowledge crater c. 1640.

“I’m anti-Trump, but…”

I realized today that my article on source study and the plot of romeo and juliet was published online a few days ago! i'm very proud of this one & if you're working on R+J or teaching the play, please check it out

Anyone aware of any non-Shakespeare early modern plays being performed Jan-Mar 2026 in London? Setting texts for a Renaissance Drama module and would love to track down something the students can go and see!

For the feast of William Tyndale, executed 1536, here's a reminder that 500y earlier it wasn't such a big honking deal to translate scripture into English. Here's the opening of John in Cambridge, CCCC 140, an 11c copy of the West Saxon Gospels. 🕯️ On frymðe wæs word ond þæt word wæs mid gode.

I was very excited to come home to find the author copies of my book had arrived! Though one young reviewer is disappointed that there are no tractors in it, if you are interested in early modern poetry and the occult, you can order below 👇 www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...

Hannah Arendt should be compulsory reading for everyone right now.

When the last Labour government got in, if you married a UK citizen you could get British citizenship after one year for less than £100, and claim benefits straight away. By 2010, it was a minimum five-year process that cost seven grand, you had to do a test, and couldn't claim benefits in that time

AN #EARLYMODERN POST!! They still exist! And a lovely one at that, for five years and with the brilliant people at KCL who have turned that place in quite the hub of exciting early modern research. Run, don’t walk.

Incoming 18 year old undergraduates have never known Pluto as a planet (ousted in 2006!) and that makes me sad all over again for Pluto - and the students with an impoverished solar system - and me as I’m so old.

Smol voice: perhaps my first book, RENAISSANCE ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters, would work as what an example-of-a-dissertation-might-become? www.surekhadavies.org/renaissance-...

OH MY GOD

This is, I believe, the first official word from the Government on what happened yesterday in London. Not only inaction in the face of violence and hate, but a celebration of it. I passed through London twice yesterday with my two kids & what Labour seem to be missing is that people aren't just...

Our collection, Mapping the Early Modern Inns of Court: Writing Communities, is being launched! Come and join us (in person at Middle Temple Library or online) at 6.15pm on Tuesday 9 Sept. Email [email protected] for more details. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

I was delighted to have a chance to be on what turned out to be Melvyn Bragg’s last series of In Our Time and also thrilled that an article in The Times today lists our episode (on George Herbert) as one of the best 15 ever! You can listen to it here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

paperback coming early 2026! ✨

Melvyn Bragg has decided to stand down as host of In Our Time, the BBC says.

Dia dhaoibh, a chairde! The Northern Ireland Place-Name Project has just landed on Bluesky. We will be sharing stories, history and a few surprises behind our local place-names. Do you have ideas on what type of content you would like to see? Maps, archives or just fun facts? Let us know below 😀

📣 #CfP: "Death and Bereavement in Early Modern Britain, 1520–1689" Join us for a one-day conference at the University of St Andrews on 26 June 2026. The keynote speaker is Professor Alec Ryrie. The deadline for proposals is 11 December 2025. #EarlyModernHistory #skystorians

I've updated #EarlyModern Resources earlymodernweb.org/resources/ Quite a few new links but also a big overhaul of the site to be more usable + a visual refresh. (If you can't see a change, you may need to clear your browser cache and refresh hard. 😬)

Acting a play! Acting a bloody play! In the City! In 1635!!

🥳 Announcing our reading group! Thurs, Sept. 11, 4-5:30 EST, Sex Lives, Joseph Gamble Thurs, Oct. 9, 4-5:30 EST, Glorious Bodies, Colby Gordon. @badinfinity2.bsky.social will join us! Thurs, Nov. 13, 4-5:30 EST, Kinky Renaissance, Gillian Knoll, Joseph Gamble Register here! tinyurl.com/mr3mjauz

What conversations are we having or should we be having, in Shakespeare studies? Authors are invited to submit articles for publication in the first issue of the SQ under the new editorial leadership, with a focus on the Twenty-First century and Shakespeare. 3 Oct 25 academic.oup.com/sq/pages/cal...

Job klaxon: full time, permanent lectureship in Liberal Arts at the University of Glasgow: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOM506/l...

In a lot of disciplines, including mine, this would be the end of granting PhDs to international students altogether. Even cutting time to degree to the bone, there is no realistic way to complete an archival based PhD in history at our expected standard of rigor in that time frame.

@emjlynajsh.bsky.social and I are delighted to be running this conference on EM practical texts, generously supported by @themhra.bsky.social, and with fabulous keynotes by @endeeekay.bsky.social and Laurence Publicover. Abstracts due by 24th November!

Although how a 17th century noblewoman shelved her books shouldn't have any bearing on how an individual chooses to arrange their personal library, it IS satisfying to see all the anti-shelving-by-colour snobs have to eat this

A rather stern lady: portrait of Ginevra Aldrovandi Hercolani (and her little dog, too) by Lavinia Fontana of Bologna, who was born on this day in 1552.

Still time to apply!

*THE OPEN ACCESS COMPANION TO THE CANTERBURY TALES*, a free, scholer-produced onlyne resource for teachinge and learninge *The Canterbury Tales* at the universitye level: opencanterburytales.lsusites.org

The new issue of The Journal of Marlowe Studies is now available. Over 200 pages of original Marlovian research, book reviews and performance reviews, all open access. journals.shu.ac.uk/index.php/Ma...

A very interesting and sadly overlooked moment. John Marston (John Marston!) was involved in writing some of the pageant speeches and the City livery companies lined the streets as Christian processed through London. @matthewsteggle.bsky.social has done some great research on this.

Sheer. fucking. spite.

My favourite primate based shenanigans involves 17th century libertines dressing a baboon as The Devil and using him to menace unsuspecting members of the nobility (who don't know what baboons are)

Okay, I'll post it here as well. It's unforgivable. I can't believe someone could get away with THAT in 2025. STOP Sinophobia and Asian Hate in the UK. #StandUpToRacism #LoveMusicHateRacism #StopAsianHate

I’ve posted about #poltergeists 👻 today so it’s probably a good moment to post my latest #witchcraft 🧹 blog. This story is big & complicated but here it is blog sized. www.louiserylandepton.co.uk/blog/the-fir...

Heminges moonlighting for his friend the Mayor, and working with Thomas Dekker, not a writer he’d had a great deal of contact with via the King’s Men, though they did revive, & perform at court, his and Webster’s Merry Devil of Edmonton in 1612

For more images of this letter, see the blog post I wrote with Gail Falkingham of NYCRO. 📜 #EarlyModern 🗃️ nycroblog.com/2024/07/04/a...

'One of the cancelled projects, ‘improving smallholder poultry production and egg consumption in children under two in Ethiopia’, was led by the University of Liverpool, alongside collaborators in the US and Africa.' Which went "woke" first: the chickens or the eggs?

📢 REGISTRATION OPEN! Built with books: shaping the shelves of the early modern library 9–10 Sep UCL @livesandletters.bsky.social This symposium will explore the rich field of early modern library studies, inviting fresh, interdisciplinary perspectives & methodologies. www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

Love the cover of the latest book in @englishassociation.bsky.social & @livunipress.bsky.social monograph series by Dr Rachel White *** Elizabethan Occult Poetics: Exploring Practice and Knowledge in English Poetry *** Out 28 September 2025! 📚🧙 www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....

Gave my first conference paper as a PhD student this week at @earlymodern2025.bsky.social So happy my piece on The Golden Ass and early modern youth education got some laughs and thoughtful feedback during and after the panel. Thank you all you generous people :)))