Registration is now live for my VPFA Study Day on 'Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities'. It's free to attend, thanks to funding from the VPFA and the Health Humanities Hub at Loughborough University. The programme and the link to register here: victorianpopularfiction.org/sensation-fi...

So excited for this! Please send in your abstracts!!

Apply for our PhD placement scheme to get involved in extraordinary research at the Library. There are eight available placements exploring a variety of themes including war poetry, 21st-century digital tools, illustrated newspapers and decarbonisation. Find out more: link.bl.uk/PhDPlacements

My brain is mush. I need to secure permissions for two famous C19 paintings to appear in my book. My recollection is there’s a database (or two, or…?) where you can get images of many C19 paintings for free or a small fee. Any tips? With thx from a person who deals mostly in words.

Teaching Biltcliffe & Driver on the imperial map, and remembering that Walter Crane invented the Distracted Boyfriend meme in 1901 in 'Socialism and the Imperialistic Will o' the Wisp'

Join us on on Saturday, February 7th, for our free virtual birthday conference! ✍️🏻📅 You can read about it on our blog, The Cricket: www.dickenssociety.org/the-cricket/... Please register via Eventbrite to receive a zoom link the week of the conference: www.eventbrite.com/e/novel-begi...

Join @gothicstudies.bsky.social as our new Assistant Editor! Deadline Monday 9th March. Annual honorarium of £200. More information in attached image, via the @igagoths.bsky.social newsletter or you can message me and I can send you the text if preferred.

The next special issue of Victorian Popular Fictions Journal is “Human–Animal Relations in Victorian Popular Literature and Culture” and will be guest-edited by Dr Bethany Dahlstrom & Dr Helena Esser. For full CFP and submission guidelines, please see: victorianpopularfiction.org/wp-content/u...

Giggling here in the office as just received an email from a major academic publisher with the salutation Dear NULL. I'm so glad they value my thoughts! (That was the subject line.)

Achieved peak academic earlier - during an office move discovered I have 2 copies of the same, unread book.

Looking for some unusual neo-Victorian reads? The @vpfa.bsky.social blog's got you: victorianpopularfiction.org/is-neo-victo...

Very excited that our Ann Radcliffe edition for CUP is about to make its first appearance in the form of Michael Gamer’s wonderful edition of The Italian! The first of eight volumes in the Radcliffe edition …

OUT TODAY: My monograph, The Book Unbound, is printed in hardback today @universitypress.cambridge.org: www.cambridge.org/core/books/b...

New Year, New-ish Call for Papers Calling all #Bronte scholars, #poetry specialists, #Romantic & #Victorian -ists: please consider submitting to our Brontës and Poetry special issue of Brontë Studies - #creative approaches encouraged 🖤 Abstracts: 1 April Manuscripts: 15 December Please RT

My article “‘In Just Seven Days, I Can Make You a Man’: Queerness and Masculinity in Frankenstein (1818) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)” has been published in the Keats Shelley Review! 👇🏼 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The deadline for our upcoming symposium 'Thinking Dickens' (Aarhus University, Denmark - 13-16th July 2026) is approaching! Don't forget to send your proposals to [email protected] by 4th January 📝 & read the Call for Papers here: www.dickenssociety.org/symposium

New end of the year update to At the Circulating Library: just passed 26,000 titles (third of the way through English Catalogue volume 4), plus hundreds of new author biographies. Enjoy!

Out in February from @livunipress.bsky.social: The Corpse in Modern Irish Literature. The book started as a lockdown tweet. Delighted that it’s finally done! With Bridget English and @drreznicek.bsky.social

I have a new piece out in @smithsonianmag.bsky.social for Christmas Eve: Louisa May Alcott wrote to survive for much of her life. What became of her love affair with words later, when she was rich and adapted Dickens' A Christmas Carol for children? tinyurl.com/4ypdyyah #christmas #writers #books

Off to spend my Christmas Eve with Muppet Christmas Carol & One Battle After Another, & then taking a bit of time away from this place. Have a great festive season all!

Oh my, just seen there's a Muppet Christmas Carol Soft Toy Advent Calendar...

"Christmas Morning". Charles Green illustration for Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Pears' Christmas Annual 1892 (Day 7 of 7).

In London a time comes every day where the ghosts get their own back. It's often subtle but always undeniable, and it's strongest in autumn & winter. If you're ever at loose ends on Christmas Eve, pay respects at St Michael's Cornhill. Because here, down the alley, was Scrooge's counting house.

As the year draws to an end, I've been reflecting on the loss of my friend and former supervisor, Simon James, a truly wonderful man. It feels like an especially appropriate time to share this public lecture from 2015, in which Simon discusses the importance of memorial rituals in A Christmas Carol.

"Scrooge and the Third Spirit". Charles Green illustration for Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Pears' Christmas Annual 1892 (Day 6 of 7).

The Signalman. My cheery Christmas gift to you. Have a jolly peaceful one. Back after the festivities 🎅🏼👍🏻

Buy my holly green and gay, to deck your walls on Christmas day The Met 1874

"Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim". Charles Green illustration for Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Pears' Christmas Annual 1892 (Day 5 of 7).

The Dickens Society is thrilled to announce: 'Novel Beginnings: The Charles Dickens Birthday Virtual Conference' on 7th February 2026. The conference is free. Please join us and register for the event using this link to receive a Zoom link for the event: www.eventbrite.com/e/novel-begi...

"The Second of the Three Spirits". Charles Green illustration for Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Pears' Christmas Annual 1892 (Day 4 of 7).

EXTENDED DEADLINE: AAS 2026 is now accepting proposals until 15 January 2026!

When the light begins to return, and you all watch winter #solstice sunset images, the next summer solstice comes closer. Here is a 19c etching of Stonehenge's summer solstice, illuminated from behind by the rising sun; with a few sheep in foreground at left.

It would perhaps surprise no one that I was raised with public radio as the background noise to my daily existence, so it was a singular delight getting to go on NPR to talk about Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol omny.fm/shows/in-the...

"Marley's Ghost Appearing to Scrooge". Charles Green illustration for Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Pears' Christmas Annual 1892 (Day 3 of 7).

I love a bit of literary tourism - visiting places I know from stories in books and films. So what a joy it was to talk to Lee Jackson about #Dickensland! Join us for the start of the new season of #LifeandLanguage @victorianlondon.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/0aB3...

"Not a knocker,--but Marley's Face!" Charles Green illustration for Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Pears' Christmas Annual 1892 (Day 2 of 7).

On December 19, 1843, A Christmas Carol was first published. This is a 1946 edition from King Features Syndicate. With a cover & interior art by Hal Foster, the endpages show characters such as Flash Gordon, the Phantom, Prince Valiant, Popeye, Olive Oyl, Blondie, the Katzenjammer Kids & many more.

In 1892, Charles Green contributed 28 fresh illustrations to a reprinting of Dickens's A Christmas Carol. To kick off my Christmas Carol illustration advent this year, here's his half-page title. (1/7)

Birmingham Town Hall (UK). New! Birmingham Civic Society blue plaque commemorates Charles Dickens' first public reading of A Christmas Carol in 1853. #novella #fiction #literature #English

Another early Christmas gift from @angelawright1794.bsky.social and me: Jimmy Packham's splendid book on 'Coastal Gothic, 1719–2020' has just been published, and is available on open access for the next 2 weeks: www.cambridge.org/core/element...

@sinsleyh.bsky.social offers a characteristically thoughtful, generous and appreciative assessment of Austeniana. I want to read the graphic novel!

Today marks Jane Austen's 250th birthday! Celebrate with 30% off select books - plus, get free shipping on orders of $50 or more. Use code HJANE25 to save on in-depth biographies like "The Making of Jane Austen," essential poetry collections, and much more. https://tr.ee/oyFyMj

Reading a very recent novel and feeling smug at the narrator describing another character as 'not old, only about forty-five'. (Yes, alright, I am around this 'not old' age, so am enjoying this judgement of not-oldness from a millennial novelist while it lasts & definitely not asking my students.)

"Mr. Trump's countenance was orange, his manner coarse, accent harsh, and wig ginger. No one could ascertain his income, as the number kept changing at his own report."

📢 We are delighted to announce that our most recent special issue "(Dis)location: The Shifting Thematics of Home" has just officially been published! 📚 This issue comprises a diversity of promising articles on home, #belonging, transcultural memory and #diaspora. More details on the entire issue👇:

More on Fennell's "Wuthering Heights", though to be fair this is an enjoyable piece on Haworth & Brontëmania.

It is with deep sadness that the Institute of English Studies reports the death of Michael Slater, MBE. Michael was a world-leading authority on Charles Dickens, who generously shared his enthusiasm, knowledge, understanding, and promotion of all things Dickensian. ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

The stirring of the pot in this article is predictable enough - and of a piece with Fennell's other work. Was probably more intrigued by Robbie's claim that the new Wuthering Heights is primarily for the demographic of women in their 30s, which seems niche even for classic literary adaptations.

Some interesting thoughts in this column on narrative video games & Victorian fiction: 'There’s that same sense of slightly spread out storytelling that you get in those big 19th-century novels from Thackeray onwards'.

Our latest “Document of the Week”, chosen by our Editorial Assistant, Chloe Haney, is a page of festive puzzles, riddles, and jokes published in The Illustrated London News in December 1847. Why not have a go at solving some of these puzzles yourself! Read the full article here: buff.ly/F6WzRJu