Such a glorious day and one worthy of a proper walk under blue skies and through woods where light was filtered through a lingering canopy of leaves. Then coffee in the garden in the company of Dorothy Wordsworth’s ‘Rydal Journals’. As Sundays go, it was pretty much perfect 📚🍃

Interested in PG study in the fields of literary, cultural, heritage and environmental studies? Why not come along to our Open Day on Sat 4 Oct to find out more about our MA Literature, Romanticism and the English Lake District, based at our Ambleside campus: www.cumbria.ac.uk/events/open-...

Finally found a window in which to dip into Nick Mason’s ‘monumental’ and ‘period altering’ edition of Dorothy Wordsworth’s ‘Rydal Journals’ - such a joy and am very touched to be mentioned in the acknowledgements along with two of my wonderful and extremely knowledgeable former MA students 📚🍃

#cfp: “The Past and Future of the Environmental Humanities”, Conference "Beyond Dualism—Thinking Creatively Across Worlds" (8–10 July 2026, Germany), org. @carsoncenter.bsky.social Info: www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/news/news_ev... Deadline: 31 October 2025 #envhum #envhist #ecocriticims

Thanks Penny! Thrilled to be the 3rd member of the class of '24 to be featured in Cumbria Life: really highlights the contribution of the Cumbrian Lit MA to the local community & beyond. And testament to the excellent teaching, of course! @cumbriauni.bsky.social @kirawelland.bsky.social Jade Cookson

This is wonderful news and fantastic to see another piece of important research, begun as part of an assessed project on our MA programme, now reaching a wider audience and being showcased in this way. Many congratulations @suewilkinson.bsky.social 📚🍃

‘A celebration of the poetry of place’ (28 September) featuring the Lake District poetry collection chosen by @pollyrowena.bsky.social (which includes one of the poems we commissioned in 2022 by the wonderful Reshma Ruia). Hope many of our MA students past and present can join you 📚🍃

It's here! Welcome to the Lancaster Litfest Autumn Weekend 2025, running 17-21 October and 18 November. Ft Sarah Hall, Simon Armitage, @oliverklangmead.bsky.social @mkhardywrites.com Xiaolu Guo @malikalnasir.bsky.social & more! Browse the full programme and get your tickets now! litfest.org

We'll be opening our Autumn Weekend on 17th Oct 2025 by celebrating the release of HELM, the new book from acclaimed and best-selling author Sarah Hall that has been twenty years in the making. Book your tickets (£6 attend in person/£4 watch online) and browse the full programme: geni.us/helm_sh

For this Autumn's post-festival event, we've teamed up with our friends at Lancaster Arts to bring poet laureate Simon Armitage back to Lancaster for a very special event discussing Poetry and Land with @kimmoorepoet.bsky.social! Join us on 18th November, book tickets £12-£16 here geni.us/simon_A

The journal is co-presenting an online event with Oak Spring Garden Foundation on 8th October – 'Plants, Memory belonging' Join us for some wonderful research on plants by writers, artists, and academics Register here: www.osgf.org/programs-and... #envhist #envhum #PlantStudies

Newly advertised part-time Museum Assistant (Marketing & Content) job opportunity at The Armitt Museum & Library in Ambleside. Deadline for applications: 3rd October. See here for further details: uk.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=c...

You probably know that Walter Scott worked extensively with the oral tradition, collecting ballads and incorporating folklore into his work. But how does he portray storytellers in his work? Read the article by myself and Lisa McKenna to find out: jiss.aberdeenunipress.org/issue/38/info/

One of my favourite days of the year: meeting a new cohort of MA students and taking some of the group on a literary tour of Ambleside. We took in some favourite spots, including Rydal Mount where we read a very moving Dorothy Wordsworth poem in the room in which it was written #LiteraryLandscapes📚🍃

A very auspicious hint of a rainbow outside our seminar room here in Ambleside this morning to greet the new cohort of MA students 🌈📚🍃

Always a treat to receive the Beatrix Potter Society Newsletter and in this issue there is the added pleasure of seeing the announcement that I will be giving the 2026 Linder Lecture in London. I am looking forward to this so much and feel very honoured to have been invited 📚🍃🍄

The new show at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery covers the late medieval age to the Arts and Crafts Movement.

An excellent CNPPA research centre event in Ambleside this week, sharing research plans and projects for the coming year including forthcoming publications and new doctoral projects which relate to our work on the Cultural Landscapes of the Lake District 📚🍃

Submit your #envhum work for ASLE Spotlight 2026, deadline October 1, 2025, details here: www.asle.org/stay-informe...

I’ve just finished reading Sarah Hall’s new novel Helm. It is a truly astonishing thing, this book, so vivid that you keep wondering how she could have been witness to all those events, from the Neolithic onwards. Then you remember she made them up. But how? 🧵1/5

'This new walking trail is the best way to see the Lake District without a car' - excellent piece in The Independent on 'The Wordsworth Way', the guide-book to which was written by our own recent MA graduate, Jade Cookson 📚🍃 www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/en...

We'll have early paperbacks of #TheCompanyOfOwls at this event in Ambleside on 7th October - it's free to attend and open to anyone - come along if you can! #DorothyWordsworth #RomanticLegacies #LakeDistrictLit #CumbriaCulture #LakePoets #NatureWriting #Memoir #Biography #BookSky

The first event in our 2025-26 Cultural Landscapes series will be a talk by @pollyrowena.bsky.social: ‘Companions of nature: sickbed consolations & mimic hootings', on Tue 7 Oct (6.30pm) at our Ambleside campus. Details & booking link for this free event here: www.ticketsource.co.uk/cultural-lan...

Saturday treats: a lakeside walk along the shores of Derwentwater under suitably Darcyesque brooding skies before a superb and witty production of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ @tbtlake.bsky.social 📚🍃

I will be giving a talk on 'Children’s Literature and the Evolving Cultural Landscape of the Lake District' at the Armitt Library & Museum in Ambleside on Tue 30 September (2pm). Further details & booking link can be found here: armitt-library-and-museum-centre.arttickets.org.uk/armitt-libra....

Just a few places still available at this free symposium on the work of Norman Nicholson, which will take place at our Ambleside campus on Saturday 27 September. See link below for booking details 📚🍃

"[August] 24th, Sunday. A fine cool pleasant breezy day - walked in the wood in the morning ... I was ill in the afternoon and lay down - got up restored by a sound sleep." 🖋 📔 'Dorothy Wordsworth's Illustrated Lakeland Journals' (1991). 🍃 Dorothy's journal entry, 225 years ago today. .

I am absolutely thrilled with the cover design of my new book on Beatrix Potter. Forthcoming with @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social in early January, the book is now available to pre-order: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/az-of-bea...

Helm by Sarah Hall review – a mighty epic of climate change in slow motion A Cumbrian wind is the central character in this hugely ambitious, millennia-spanning novel, which was 20 years in the makingEven if Sarah Hall did not begin her acknowledgments by saying that it’s taken her 20 years to...

‘You can always rely on Hall to blow you away.’ Helm by Sarah Hall is one of i newspaper's best new books out in August 🍃

Helm by Sarah Hall review – a mighty epic of climate change in slow motion

In this new article @uk.theconversation.com my wonderful PhD student @nadasaadaoui.bsky.social offers a powerful case for Elizabeth Bennet as Jane Austen's best heroine: one who 'demands respect, not rescue' & defies 'social expectations to forge her own path’ theconversation.com/who-was-jane...

August 1851: #Dickens publishes 'Our English Watering Place', his ode to #Broadstairs, written while staying at #BleakHouse. ‘In the Autumn-time of the year, when the great metropolis is..so much more disturbing and distracting in all respects...a quiet sea-beach becomes indeed a blessed spot.’

Booking is now open for a free full-day symposium on the work of 20th-century Cumbrian poet, playwright and topographical writer, Norman Nicholson, on Sat 27 Sept at the University of Cumbria’s Ambleside campus. See here for further details and guidance on booking your place: www.normannicholson.org

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Kate Hamill | adapted from the novel by Jane Austen Thursday 7 August – Saturday 6 September Jane Austen’s most iconic love story is brought dazzlingly to life on stage. Book here bit.ly/TBTLPP25 Photos by Pamela Raith #TBTLake #prideandprejudice #LetsCreate #cumbriaarts

"...Her whose eyes Saw light through every wildering maze uncouth." 🖋 📕 'Suspiria', Edward Quillinan. 🎊 Happy 221st Birthday Dora Quillinan née Wordsworth!

Saturday morning iced coffee and book proofs under the shade of the apple tree 📚🍃 ‘An A-Z of Beatrix Potter’ is forthcoming from @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social in January 2026 #WeekendWorking #AugustSunshine

I picked up three copies of this beautiful booklet by Polly Atkin @pollyrowena.bsky.social while visiting @samreadbookseller.bsky.social in Grasmere yesterday. The perfect gift for friends far away. Ten Poems from the Lake District share.google/nc6f2Ozxjtup...

Hear me read 'Frog Song' through the Aftershock Review substack Along with my other new poems given a doorway to readers by @maxwallis.bsky.social, Frog Song is going to be in my 3rd collection Emergency Dream, publishing with @serenbooks.bsky.social in March 2026. #Swims #PondLife #BeMoreFrog

Fantastic contribution to the #JaneAusten250 series by my brilliant supervisor @DrPennyBradshaw. Thoughtful and compelling defence of Mr Darcy and a brilliant reminder that Austen’s heroines helped redefine what makes a true romantic hero.

The winner is down to you!

Very pleased to have been able to voice my support for Mr Darcy in this newly published article in @uk.conversation.com on Jane Austen's best leading man. Voting is now open! 📚: theconversation.com/jane-austen-... #JaneAusten250

The University of Cumbria is ranked best in the UK for postgraduate research experience according to data recently published by Advance HE from the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey: tinyurl.com/3f8wekj7; great news for our growing community of literature PhD students📚

The University of Glasgow’s Centre for Robert Burns Studies is offering a PhD scholarship on “Robert Burns & the Environment” – part of a new research strand on Burns, the Environment & Sustainable Cultural Heritage DEADLINE 18 AUGUST #C18th #Romanticism www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships...

Article in The Guardian on seaside towns features a lovely section on Millom and Cumbrian poet Norman Nicholson's connections to the town: Where tourists seldom tread, part 18: three seaside towns that defy the tides of fashion www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/... #LiteraryLandscapes #Poetry&Place

In an age where walking is once again praised for its physical and mental benefits, #JaneAusten's fiction reminds us that these virtues are not new. Her characters have been walking for centuries. scroll.in/article/1084... ✍️Nada Saadaoui Via The Conversation

"- I love that house because it is The very Mountains' child." 🖊 📔 Dorothy Wordsworth, 'Grasmere - A Fragment'.

'...No longer, scattering to the heedless winds The vocal raptures of fresh poesy, Shall he frequent these precincts...' 🖊 📘 'The massy Ways, carried across these heights', William Wordsworth. 🖼 Ursula Hurst 📍The Summer House, Rydal Mount & Gardens