Dickensians, what are your academic plans for next Thursday?

Mary Shelley's time living near Dundee on the "blank and dreary northern shores of the Tay" fired her imagination 💭 It was here her "true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born." Discover how Scotland shaped her novel, Frankenstein, in our article by Professor Daniel Cook.

#GuyFawkes #GunpowderPlot #RememberRemember #Ainsworth

Our next #RSVPDigiEvent is coming up on Friday, 21 November! We'll hear from the editors of 3 top Victorian studies journals (including VPR's own kmalonephd.bsky.social) on "How to Get Published in an Academic Journal." Come one, come all! buff.ly/ydJkKAK

Yes to the del Toro Frankenstein exhibition at Oxford Street Selfridges. Spend that Netflix cash, Guillermo! Now can we crowdfund a show for Coppola's Dracula? Where are those Eiko Ishioka costumes hiding...

Very happy @matthewchambers.bsky.social has proposed this @englishstudies.bsky.social special issue! One for SHARPists & scholars of bookselling across periods & Anglophone cultural contexts:

Are you looking for spooky Gothic things to watch for Halloween? Here's a bunch of spoktacular Victorian films, TV series, and RPG campaigns for you! 🎃🎃🎃

👉 👉 The call is HERE for AAS 2026: Adaptation and Aurality, hosted by Burman University in beautiful Alberta, Canada! ✍️ Proposals due 15 December 2025 🗓️ Conference 7-10 July 2026 Full details posted on the AAS website: www.adaptation.uk.com/aas-conferen...

📣BREAKING NEWS! We've extended our CFP deadline for #RSVP2026 "Movements and Migrations"! Proposals now due 21 November 2025. Full CFP and more details about all things conference on our website: rs4vp.org/rsvp-confere...

Consider yourself an academic? But where is your hat with tassel, the hair worn in a plait, the spotted suit and checked tights, like this fella from 1773 - called: the Academic Mac - is wearing? #academicchatter

If you were teaching a module on NeoVictorian fiction what is the one Victorian novel you would want students to have read (if it had to be just one) as a useful/informing baseline of knowledge?

@sharpnews.bsky.social is looking for a new Editor-in-Chief!!! Applications are due on November 14th. Get in touch if you have any questions!

Just got a fascinatingly obscure bit of #Dickens ephemera (even for me!) in the post: Mr Pickwick in Timberland, with 14 drawings by Elias Kanarek, which was published by the Polish State Forests for Private Circulation in Christmas 1937👇. 1/2

Just one week until I get to chat with the inimitable @drbeard79.bsky.social about disability, care, and belonging in Jane Austen, Sydney Owenson, and Walter Scott. Do come along if you can. us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Thrilled and delighted to say that my new book, Utopian Variations: Utopia in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture, is now out! Thanks to the University of Essex's open access fund, it's available via open access too. You can download the full book for free here: www.peterlang.com/document/156...

Delighted to make available previously unknown (& unexpected) correspondence by poet #WHAuden to his Austrian lover & confidant, shedding new light on Auden's life in Austria & on Austrian queer history. www.oeaw.ac.at/en/news/sens... @fwf-at.bsky.social @acdh-oeaw.bsky.social @oeaw.bsky.social

Our @ehunineteen.bsky.social seminar series starts next week with @drreznicek.bsky.social talking to me about care in Romantic novels - register in skeet below! Free, online, all welcome!

Was Manchester really as segregated as Engels said? What kept the rich and poor apart.... if anything? My first article is out today in @historicaljnl.bsky.social and I'm so pleased to share it with you all! doi:10.1017/S0018246X25101246 @stjohnscollege.bsky.social @camunicampop.bsky.social

The BAVS 2026 Annual Conference CfP is now live: victorianist.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/c... We hope you can join us in Liverpool next year!

Good morning to everyone, but especially to all the sloths, for today is their special day! This woodcut of a sloth* was printed in 1635 in 'Historia Naturae, Maxime Peregrinae' by Juan Eusebio Nieremberg. * may it not haunt your nightmares 📷Baring-Gould Library 0689 Folio #InternationalSlothDay

The official CFP is a few days off, but I can't wait that long to announce that #BAVS2026 will be held in Liverpool, 27-29 July. We hope that some of the @rs4vp.org crowd will be able to make the trip over from #RSVP2026 and join @bavs-uk.bsky.social for more Victorian stuff. Details to follow.

Happy Birthday, Jane Morris (née Burden), born #otd 1839. We're celebrating her life at the heart of the Victorian art world in our new exhibition, opening Nov 15th. Including this portrait of Jane as 'Blanzifiore' by Rossetti & her little keepsake books too www.arcwinchester.org.uk/event/beauty...

The full line up for our 2025/2026 #EHU19SeminarSeries is available to book now in the thread below! Join us for a free, online, and friendly discussion about cutting-edge research in nineteenth-century studies!

#JaneEyre was published #OnThisDay in 1847. When it arrived on the Victorian stage, #CharlotteBrontë’s novel had a cast of new characters and a new social order. 🔓 This archive article is free for 7 days www.historytoday.com/archive/hist...

📞 Calling all authors! See below 👇

Happy Birthday to Oscar Wilde, whose British Library reader pass is being reinstated today.

A few snaps from a fascinating morning at Dickens Day 2025: ‘Dickens & Art’. Lots to digest along with lunch!

Looking forward to Dickens Day tomorrow, & to talking about Fred Barnard again! This time, I'll be giving a paper (with lots of images) on his Character Sketches from Dickens. A tiny teaser below of Barnard's sketch of Sydney Carton & its remediation in a children's edition by Russell Thorndyke.

Our @cncsi.bsky.social C19 Gothic Afterlives programme! 🌴Sonja Lawrenson on Melmoth in Latin America 📖 @romgothsam.bsky.social Adapting Heathcliff 📻 Richard Hand haunted airwaves 🎮 @marijkevalk.bsky.social occult gaming 📺 @drdjohnston.bsky.social Gothic TV Register ➡️ cn-csi.com/event/hallow...

My book, 'Violence and the Brontës: Language, Reception, Afterlives', is out now with @edinburghup.bsky.social! It's the first major study of violence in the Brontës' fiction and afterlives, and I'd be thrilled if you ordered a copy for your library: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-violenc...

Call for Contributions: Victorian Infrastructures & their Environmental Legacies We're still looking for articles to be included in our @openlibhums.org special issue! Abstracts are due 31 October, full texts 31 March '26. @bavs-uk.bsky.social @rs4vp.org @asleuki.bsky.social @easlce.bsky.social

🚨Call for Papers! ❓Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities: A VPFA Study Day 🗺️Loughborough University 📅27 March 2026 💷 FREE For full CfP: victorianpopularfiction.org/studyday/for... Contact the organiser Anne-Marie Beller (@braddonite.bsky.social) at [email protected] for more information

October is the best month for some monstrously fun entertainment. On Halloween @cncsi.bsky.social will be hosting a chillingly-good online workshop: Nineteenth-Century Gothic Afterlives. I hope you can join us. It will be a real screamer! 👻 Details👇 cn-csi.com/event/hallow...

Publication day is October 2nd tomorrow. Launch tonight for the first day of the London Month of the Dead at Highgate Cemetery!

We are currently open to receiving proposals for themed issues with @advancesjournal.bsky.social, which is published through Taylor and Francis, and is the official journal of @incsa.bsky.social. If you have ideas for a collection, email me. Details👇 in-csa.com/themed-speci...

People of Print: Eighteenth-Century England is out today and free to download until 7 Oct: www.cambridge.org/core/element... Edited by Rachel Stenner, Kaley Kramer & I, this volume collects 10 new biographical essays about lesser known, diverse figures involved in the #18C print trade.

Victorian Network's special issue "Victorian Pedagogy" is out today, including my article "The Moralist Critic and the Student Activist: A Reconsideration"! www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn...

Out soon: www.bloomsbury.com/us/gullivers...

📚 Now available! 📚 THE TIGER SKIN AND OTHER TALES OF THE UNEASY, published by @blpublishing.bsky.social I’ve wanted to bring Violet Hunt’s supernatural fiction back for a while now, so am happy to see these stories reach a wide audience again. Please share!

My interview with David Szalay is now out in @englishstudies.bsky.social. We discussed his latest novel, Flesh (since longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize); his explorations of migration and masculinity; and the affective and neurological dimensions of his style. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Publishing today! Ghosts and the Gothic, edited by @ruthheholt.bsky.social and @joparsons.bsky.social The first book to examine ghostly presences (and absences) in #Gothic texts bit.ly/3I59Uzy #Ghosts #GothicStudies Find out more: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181923/

Incredibly excited to be able to announce the launch of our London Journal database, compiled by Robert Shoemaker and David Green, with help from @tandfresearch.bsky.social, which offers a valuable insight into how the study of the metropolis's past and present has shifted over the past 50 years. 🧵

Heads-up that the CFP submissions deadline for the 2026 Dickens Society NeMLA panel has been extended until September 30th!

What day is it sir? Why it's DICKENS DAY sir! Join us in London on 11 October for a day of readings and papers on the theme of Dickens and Art. More details and booking form here: ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Abstracts due today, if anyone's still considering the 2026 Dickens Society panel at NeMLA!

📣Only one week left to apply for the Senate House Library Visiting Fellowships 📣 In 2025-6 up to two awards of £1500 will be allocated to support a fellowship of up to two weeks. Deadline: 15 September 2025 More info 👇 https://tinyurl.com/ykudv9tn

Much looking forward to speaking in the Tennyson Talks Zoom series on 2 October: ‘“Among a World of Ghosts”: Tennyson’s Texts’. Joining details via the poster @engfac.bsky.social @bavs-uk.bsky.social @navsa.bsky.social

Join us for Musical Adaptation in Practice -an @adaptationtoday.bsky.social event exploring how composers and performers bring stories to life through sound, puppets, and live performance. Dec 12, 12PM EST Register: udel.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #AdaptationStudies #FilmMusic #TheaterAdaptation

📢 Our most recent special issue on Posthumanism and English Studies explores the literary #posthuman, with a poignant focus on environmental studies & speculative fiction. Read the #openaccess introduction by guest editors Prof. Başak Ağın and Dr Z. Gizem Yılmaz here 🌱: #anthropocene #ecocriticism

💼 We're hiring! RSVP seeks a new Editor or pair of Co-Editors to lead the Curran Index into its next phase. Many many thanks to our outgoing Editors, @emilyjlm.bsky.social+Lars Atkin for their dedication to this ongoing DH project. Applications due 15 October! rs4vp.org/curran-edito...