dear Penguin, hire more proofreaders

🪡🧵: As a part of the Robinson special collections bequest scheme, I’m working on the diaries of Hilda Runciman, one of the first women members of parliament. In 1938, her husband, Walter, was sent to Prague to help negotiate between the Nazis and the Czech government. She went along. (1/?)

"oh, you research literature? you must get to read all the time, how fun!" *me, going through every single (digital) issue of an 18th century daily newspaper to make a spreadsheet listing number of advertisements and the portion of them that were for books*

I am grateful for any help to get closer to completeness, even if this is an impossible task. Do please send any and all suggestions!

just a slice* of my reading for the c18 novel section of the Year's Work in English Studies (*not pictured: several other monographs, about 250 more pages of articles and chapters I didn't print)

i feel it, Francis

when does sex/gender a supposedly self-evident, "mere" "historical fact" to be recorded on documents, indeed

its the dust mites that add the flavor

to be fair the novel does pass the bechdel test - at least if you count Walton's recounting of Frankenstein's recounting of a conversation between Justine and Elizabeth about Justine being accused of a murder Frankenstein was ultimately responsible as being a conversation not about a man

my favorite part of Duchovny's English lit career is that an XFiles character, who gets hit by a bus in the first minutes of the episode, shares a name with the prof who graded his Princeton thesis

A new special issue of English Studies I'm really keen to put together! Please consider submitting and circulate widely! @drchrislouttit.bsky.social bookshoplit.com/cfp-booksell...

me, but story = argument

one of those times i wish i had a library degree

I'm a big fan of the ts-dash, pioneered by Laurence Sterne:

i have genuinely started reflexively spelling "complete" as "compleat" and that's how I know I'm a true 18th-centuryist

Every time you say "actually Frankenstein was the name of the scientist" you're just replicating his damnable act of disavowal and abandonment that drove his creation to murder but okay

Anyone happen to have access to "The use and organisation of domestic space in late seventeenth-century London"?

this rocks. when indiana edu killed the student newspaper, Purdue stepped up, printed the forbidden issue, drove it to Bloomington and stocked the boxes.

the modern food industry's handling of allergens and cross-contamination--especially the proliferating use of lengthly 'may contain' labels listing almost every known allergen--is unacceptable and in dire need of reform

Friends and colleagues! I am looking for suggestions for literature on failure. I know Halberstam, but anything else – from queer studies or not, will be welcome.

anyway, apropos of nothing, if anyone needs provide editing, proofreading, or archival/special collections/bibliographical research services, I have those skills that can be used on a freelance basis and otherwise

gotta love having to identify random objects in a set of obviously AI-generated images in order to prove you're sufficiently human to access research resources overrun by bots, which are presumably slamming the servers hosting said resources with attempts to scrape them for AI

Does anyone recognise this late Victorian periodical? Based on the page numbers this is obvs an article from a larger work but I can’t trace it anywhere. It’s got lots of full-page images & I’m confident for various reasons that it was produced in 1881.

very lucky to have gotten an early look at this! ali smith readers & those interested in novels, serialisation, and the physical book in general, look out for this very soon -

The full LGBTQIA+ Book History Bibliography is here 🏳️‍🌈!!! 650+ items of LGBTQIA+ #BookHistory!! Check out the intro to see how we made it, the primary bibliography, the article appendix, and the absolutely magnificent zine!!! From monographs to zines, you'll find it here! sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

alternatively, 6th year PhD students just trying to finish their dissertations before funding runs out

moving to edinburgh be like

me: i think i'll be more productive today if i put my phone in the other room before getting down to work every website: to log in, we need to you put this code into your phone, which will give you a code on your phone to type in here, and then maybe we'll let you login

my institutional email address imploded this morning - before it happened, i tried to broadcast more stable contact details to anyone who might not have them, but if for whatever reason you're here trying to figure out where to reach me, you can find that on my website: ceyingst.org/contact/

Anyone know whose bookplate this might be? In an English book printed in 1909.

rpril is the cruelest month

if you're in Edinburgh on Friday (7/11, 1pm), and are interested in histories of astronomy, institutional archival practices, and/or family/domestic/womens' labour in Victorian science - there's a talk for you: sigma.mathsworlds.org/activities/s...

finally having an flat where we can have bookshelves means finally getting the collection back out - complete with some new(ish) acquisitions!

i used to draw, paint, and make prints, before i finished undergrad, after which it became too expensive and time consuming to keep up alongside trying to make even enough money to cover the basics of living

Review deadline extended: July 9! There is still time to apply to the Curator of Literary & Poetry Collections position at Emory! apply.interfolio.com/167978 I’m very happy to speak to folks about this role! This is a phenom. opportunity to work with a stellar staff and unparalleled collections!

best (very) belated birthday gift to myself in a while

footnotes + bibliography is the only way to go. footnotes give you the reference when you need it, bibliography means you don't have to wade through a bunch of footnotes' commentary to see what the book/article cites.

Not a palaeography but a "find the book" challenge: There was an edition of Johannes Eck's Homiliarum super evangelia de tempore in an unknown number of volumes (likely 3) printed in Paris in 1553 by Sebastian Nivelle. CCPB potentially lists the third volume (CCPB000484460-2), but... #BookHistory

me, as an undergrad, when a prof said they had to miss class to give a talk in Paris: 🤩 how cool, i want to do that me now, when i have a conference 1.5 hrs away by train and nothing else in particular to do that week:😪

books are like eggs, you only have to refrigerate them if you’re in the US

Overbooked - like Overcooked, except set in an early modern print shop, where players have to co-operatively manage flows of printing, paper buying, contract negotiation with copyright holders, etc., & manage a balance of, e.g., daily jobbing print vs larger scale/longer term book production

query: does anything know (/know about) a former (I think?) librarian at the National Library of Wales, Charles Parry? the BBTI has a reference to a collection of "late 17th century proposals/prospectuses & adverts for patent medicines" attributed to him - but I can't find anything else out about it

Reading an incredible essay on asexuality in the 18th century novel, & thinking about how, just 10 years ago, I encountered total bafflement from a WGS professor during a PhD program interview, because I said I was potentially interested exploring asexual approaches to literature.

for the queer bibliographers among you - some of D'Eon's notes on her hopes for her library: "I should prefer ... my MSS to be bought by some Oxford library where they would be kept as a sacred and honourable trust"

it's finally out! if you don't have access but would like it, please let me know :)

always fun when basic research behavior makes basic research infrastructure think you're a robot and try to block you

‘In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did the year after another, a little before the fire.’

#BookHistory friends! Work has begun on the LGBTQIA+ Book History bibliography, and the team is looking for you to share your citations! If you know of or have published something on LGBTQIA+ book history, submit it to this Google form! forms.gle/c1pkNBPbbyCF...

Somewhat random, but can anyone recommend something to read about the history of chess typography / the printing of chess games/manuals?