Happy New Year, everyone! 🥂 For those heading to #shax2026 in April, be sure to check out the Digital Exhibits on Saturday, April 4! We’ll be there and would love to see you there too! ✨🎩 (And yes, we’ll have stickers!)

🚨🚨 Texas A&M Board of Regents is meeting next week and set to approve a new policy requiring pre-approval of courses on race and gender. This is a blatant violation of academic freedom.

Tickled that one of you apparently bought me Maria Edgeworth’s copy of Emma. ~$300k? You shouldn’t have! www.sothebys.com/buy/b94a60c5...

Thank you so much to the SSEMWG, and many congratulations to the winner, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's writing, and to our fellow Honorable Mention, The Four Books by Alice Thornton! ✨ Read about the other projects at the link below! ⤵️ www.ssemwg.org/2025

We have some very exciting news to share! ✨ We just learned that our database has been awarded an Honorable Mention for the 2025 Digital Scholarship, New Media, and Art Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender! 🎩

This batch also helped us grow our number of records for performances in Philadelphia, while also helping us expand into St. Louis. You can see this growth on our interactive map of historic theatres. ✨🎩

In this performance, Ellen and Kate Bateman played Richard and Richmond, respectively, while Julia Jones played Prince Edward and Miss Schoolcraft played the Duke of York. The Bateman sisters were famous for playing these roles as young girls, with prints like these capturing their performances.

This batch included our first performances in St. Louis, Missouri, with one production even having four performances of genderfluidity at once! On October 15, 1850, the St. Louis Theatre had a production of Richard III, with Richard, Richmond, and the two princes all being played by girls or women.

Today, 93 records were added for performances of As You Like It, Coriolanus, Henry IV Part I, Julius Caesar, King John, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, and Twelfth Night in Philadelphia and St. Louis from 1822-1878 to bring the record total to 8,265. ✨🎩

In this batch of records were our first breeches performances in Othello. In February 1863, an actress by the name of Miss Miller played a page in Othello at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. While other tragedies have often seen breeches performances, Othello almost never has.

Today, 88 records were added for performances of Coriolanus, Henry IV Part I, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Richard III, and The Taming of the Shrew in Philadelphia from 1863-1865 to bring the record total to 8,172. ✨🎩

Among these performances was our first record for a performance in Love's Labor's Lost! ✨ On January 6, 1862, Mrs. Charles Henri played Moth (also known as Mote) in Love's Labor's Lost at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia. 🎩

Today, 34 records were added for performances of As You Like It, Henry IV Part I, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, and The Taming of the Shrew in Philadelphia from 1854-1864 to bring the record total to 8,084! ✨🎩

From this trip, she has been able to gather 237 records for performances in Philadelphia, and another 31 records for performances in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC! ✨ She is now in the process of cleaning up these records and getting them ready to add to our database site! 🎩

This summer, @aelagrand.bsky.social visited the Library Company of Philadelphia and UPenn's Kislak Center to consult playbills and collect records of women's breeches performances in Philadelphia! ✨🎩

Check it out! Our project director, @aelagrand.bsky.social won the @honeyandwaxbks.bsky.social Book Collecting Prize for her collection of materials related to Shakespearean breeches actresses! ✨🎩 Points Like A Man even gets a shout-out!

Call for Applications: SHARP News Bibliographers As @bibliowingate.bsky.social's term comes to an end, we're looking to shake things up & establish a bibliography team of 2+ people. Applications due October 1 2025. The full call for applications and how to apply: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

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...

📢 Restoration: Studies in Literature and Culture, 1660-1700 is looking for an Associate Editor to join our editorial team. 📢 Deadline is Sept. 5 and more info is linked below. Academic friends please share widely. DM @drerinnerung.bsky.social with questions. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Opening at Penn for a Special Collections Accessions Librarian, responsible for acquiring and accessioning all special collections materials for the Kislak Center. The salary range for this position is $66,000 - $89,039. Come work with meeeee! wd1.myworkdaysite.com/recruiting/u...

Jumping on the Jane Austen bandwagon and offering a short course from Halloween to her birthday (approx!) - join me! Or help me spread the word! Please and thank you!!

We're looking for an Associate Professor/Professor who can contribute to research and teaching at Cambridge Digital Humanities from January 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter. This is a permanent role with a closing date of 21 September. Apply now: www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/about/news/n...

Happy 15th anniversary of the peak achievement of literary criticism, to all who celebrate

Taking place TODAY: BARS Digital Symposium: Expanding Queer Romanticisms, 25th July 2025, 3pm-6.15 BST. Members should have received an email containing Zoom links to attend! www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=6045

Save on plays📚 For 1 week only, until Sun 27th July, enjoy up to 30% off the whole of The Arden Shakespeare Third Series! Browse the Third Series: bit.ly/4o03Bxf Browse all sale highlights: bit.ly/40vQoCl

For those interested in theatre, circus & music hall history, Part 2 of my blog on early 19th century comedian 'Joe Cowell in America' is now online 👉 bit.ly/4eWBhrF @musichallsociety.bsky.social @youngalison.bsky.social @billyrough.bsky.social @roadsw9.bsky.social @victorianlondon.bsky.social

How’s this for a theatre poster? 1849, Theatre Royal, #Dundee. A bit of a curiosity as it looks like a budding poster designer has sketched out ideas on the back. Always welcome for some thoughts on #Alexander and #Woodward! #History #Theatre #Pantomime #Turpin #TomKing #Punch

After a bit of a break, we are back to bring you some more records! ✨ Today, 17 records were added for performances of Romeo and Juliet in Dublin, Leeds, Liverpool, London, and Torquay from 1809-1830 to bring the record total to 8,050. 🎩

My first article, "Becoming Jane on stage: queerness in early twentieth-century Austen bioplays," has been published and it is open access 🥳🥳 Huge thanks to the editors at Adaptation Journal and peer reviewers who have been a pleasure to work with doi.org/10.1093/adap...

Posting to announce: 1. My visa for my postdoc in Swansea has officially been approved! 2. Alice Equestri’s Shaping Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern Culture, to which I contributed a chapter, is out now! edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-shaping...

The open access version of Selling Sexual Knowledge is out (hardcopies coming shortly)! Reposting this little thread from December where I take a break from chowing down on holiday treats to talk a little about what it's actually about and why I wrote it.

BREAKING: Justice Jackson cites the Colored Conventions Project Digital Archive her dissent in Medina v. Planned Parenthood. These public collective digital projects MATTER and they WILL be heard. 👏👏👏 @ccp-org.bsky.social @profgabrielle.bsky.social @jimccasey1.bsky.social

Just came across this web resource: 76 digitized handwriting manuals 1600-1800 - mostly with models for handwriting exercises (bibliotheques-specialisees.paris.fr/search/N-503...). A bored child learning to write doodled in one of them (source: bibliotheques-specialisees.paris.fr/ark:/73873/p...).

Some of Henry David Thoreau’s notebooks, written during the 1850s.

Call for papers | Routledge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft: Wollstonecraft at Work Deadline for submissions: January 15, 2026. www.csecs.ca/en/calls-for...

I’m absolutely delighted to receive my contributor copy of ‘Bluestockings and Landscape in Eighteenth-Century Britain’. Thank you to the editors, Markman Ellis and Jack Orchard, and congratulations to all contributors. I can’t wait to read all the other chapters!

Yet another example of daughters‘ essential roles in bookselling families: In 1581-2, Middelburg bookseller Dierick van Helmondt repeatedly sent his daughter Janne to buy books from Plantin in Antwerp and settle his accounts (his son worked in the business too) (Museum Plantin-Moretus Arch. 60 f. 2)

Enrolment for next year’s @saaupdates.bsky.social conference is now open #Shax2026 so please consider joining our seminar (chaired by Dorothy Todd and Robert Stagg) about ‘Variorum Shakespeare’:

Celebrating reaching 8,000 performance records on my database today 🎉 Since @pointslikeaman.bsky.social launched in 2023, it has grown exponentially, reaching 8,033 performances by 1,090 actresses at 133 theatres, representing 90 roles across 25 Shakespearean plays in cities throughout the world.

Both of these bills are from The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, from the “Macbeth ephemera, 1840-1857” portfolio. See its catalog record below! ⤵️ legacycatalog.nypl.org/record=b1643...

These bills feature Rignold as Macbeth at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, in 1842, and Bateman as Macbeth at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, in 1852 when she was just ten years old! ✨🎩

Not every day that you see actresses playing Macbeth! ✨ We’re preparing our next batch of records and came across these two playbills featuring Patricia Rignold and Kate Bateman as the titular Macbeth. 🎩

I don't always paint cats but every once in a while I get inspired. This is my cat Kimmy sleeping in a sunbeam on my bed. Cat Nap 12x16, Oil on wood panel

24 records were just added for performances of Twelfth Night in Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London from 1811-1877 to bring the record total to 7,955! ✨🎩

One of our Associate Digital Editors Dr. Kris May has won the David Greetham Prize (alongside former @tamu.bsky.social professors Heidi Craig and @lauraestill.bsky.social) for an article about trans-inclusive bibliography. Congratulations! newvariorumshakespeare.org/news/

These mark our first performances in Chicago and Providence, as well as our first of actresses in the role of Curio in Twelfth Night. With these, we have reached 130 theatres represented in our database throughout the world and 84 roles from the Shakespearean canon! ✨🎩

We are inching ever so close to 8,000 records! ✨ Today, 50 records were added for performances of As You Like It, Cymbeline, and Twelfth Night in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, London, New York, and Providence from 1820-1901 to bring the record total to 7,931. 🎩

Moment of appreciation to the Polish-American actress Helena Modjeska, who was so renowned that she was billed simply as “Modjeska.” ✨ See, for example, this 1887 playbill for Twelfth Night from the Hollis St. Theatre in Boston, which listed her last name first and in bold type! 🎩

For instance, on April 22, 1884, Helena Modjeska played the role of Viola alongside Lulu Stevens as Valentine in Twelfth Night at the Cincinnati Music Hall! ✨🎩 See these performance records and more on our site at the link below! ⤵️ www.pointslikeaman.com