VPFA's Third Sex Reading Group are back with their first session of 2026! In this session, co-hosted by Crescent Rainwater, they will be discussing Netta Syrett's The Victorians. If you would like to attend or be put on the mailing list,please email [email protected] with 'FAO: Third Sex'.

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

If that isn't the coolest way to wake up on a rainy Monday morning: A whole video on #Ouida's Under Two Flags (And there are T-shirts, too!!!) ✨ Thank you, @ouidaite.bsky.social, for the tip! www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgNX...

New Special Issue of Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, edited by @helenaesser.bsky.social and @drclaireocall.bsky.social alert ‼️ The issue explores Victorian popular fiction and culture as key sites for negotiating gender and sexual non-conformity, with a focus on the concept of the ‘third sex’.

Had an absolutely wonderful evening talking about Austen adaptations and why we love them at the local cinema. 🩷🩷🩷

Introducing: Dr Helena Esser @helenaesser.bsky.social is an Independent Scholar in Germany. Her area of research is Victorian and neo-Victorian gender and popular culture, with specific publications on steampunk and Ouida.

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! 🎃🎃🎃

New Blog post alert- 'Neo-Victorian Gothtober 2025' by Helena Esser. Some spooky neo-Vic gothic films and tv series recommendations for your Halloween watching pleasure! Read here: victorianpopularfiction.org/neo-victoria...

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

Do you want to start reading Ouida but don't know where to start? Find my handy #Ouida Starter Guide on the official VPFA blog: @vpfa.bsky.social victorianpopularfiction.org/the-official...

Been reading these back to back: One is 1890s decadent gothic, one is 2020s fantasy horror. Both are grotesque and beautiful and raw and weird. Basically, -- *gestures wildly* -- what I want to say is: !!!!!!!!!!!

It's finally here! What an incredibly rich contribution to #TerryPratchett studies. Thank you so much @bretonjustine.bsky.social for your hard work on this project (and in getting my author copy to me!). I am so proud to have a chapter in here. #GNUTerryPratchett

Excited to announce that the VPFA blog has launched! Thanks to Emma Butler-Way for her hard work in getting it ready for today, for more information check out the blog at the link below: victorianpopularfiction.org/the-vpfa-blog/

What a joy it was getting this page ready to go! All the thanks to @helenaesser.bsky.social for the material! Here we'll have reflections, contemplations, speculations and more (all of a Victorian/neo-Victorian nature, of course). Interested in contributing? Follow the link below & get in touch!

The dirigible has landed & dropped 2 new arrivals on #NeoVictorianism ! "Steampunk London" by @helenaesser.bsky.social analyses how #NeoVictorian fiction, visual art, film & video games, 1980s to present day, reimagine urban space(s) in #steampunk visions of London #CulturalStudies #LiteraryStudies

VPFA Third Sex reading group will be returning for their first session of Season 6 on 17th September, 5.30-7pm. The topic will be Mary Shelley's Lodore, co-hosted with Susan Civale and Siobhan-Michelle Smith! Sign up here: www.eventbrite.com/e/lodore-tic...

Step into the world of steam, scandal, and storytelling at our Virtual Victorian Tea Salon. Brew your favourite blend and join fellow members online for a lively afternoon discussion, creativity, and Victorian charm. All are welcome at our virtual tea table, whether sharing, reading, or sipping!

Please allow me to recommend some summer reading, followed with an invitation to join our book discussion. Everybody is welcome so please share widely (this poster has the correct start time of 5.30pm!) The text and audiobook are available on Internet Archive/Gutenberg. @vpfa.bsky.social

#BAVS2025 you were a blast! 5 x Birkbeck papers from @drvickymills.bsky.social @nonfictioness.bsky.social @helenaesser.bsky.social Julia Kuehn and me! Great to hang with @jeremynewton64.bsky.social too! Such fun and sociability with so many great #Victorian scholars! @19birkbeck.bsky.social

Here are a few of the #BirkbeckVictorianists on tour again, this time at the @bavs-uk.bsky.social 2025 Conference in Oxford. With @janetteleaf.bsky.social, @helenaesser.bsky.social and @nonfictioness.bsky.social.

#BAVS2026 Day2: Exploring Oscar, travel, transcultural encounters, modes of gazing & enmeshing, and multiple stages & versions of female embodiment.

Here's an excellent opportunity for anyone working on Margaret Oliphant! Please help spread the word. This special issue is looking for more contributors.

Excited to see our collection on Tauchnitz & publishing here at #BAVS2025! There is a little #Ouida chapter in it, too 😉

More #BAVS2025: Exploring travel & Orientalism, the colonial imagery of tea & labour, transatlantic tea rooms, & the domestic masculinity of Japonisme.

Starting #bavs2025 with a really fun séance & a panel in which I fall in love with illustration:

Today's #VPFAExtremes has assembled FIVE (5) whole #Ouida scholars in its hybrid space! A lovely Study Day 2023 re-union with Lorraine Dubuisson, @ouidaite.bsky.social, Crescent Rainwater, & @andrewkingc19.bsky.social ✨️🩷✨️

in the Third Sex Reading group conference session we were discussing Nebedita Sen's Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island. A very poignant commentary on literal, intellectual, cultural, and literary consumption #VPFAExtremes

This year's 3rd Sex reading group session @vpfa.bsky.social was om "The Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island" - a remarkable short story that led to really interesting discussion! #vpfaextremes

A great meal with great conference pals! @vpfa.bsky.social #VPFAextremes

Great to see my fellow #BirkbeckVictorianist @helenaesser.bsky.social in action this morning, talking about #Ouida and spy fiction at the @vpfa.bsky.social conference in Birmingham. With fellow panellists Professor Claudia Capancioni and Dr. Alison Dingle.

It's been a lovely 1st day at VPFA 2025! @vpfa.bsky.social #VPFAextremes

We're all a big family at VPFA! So great to see so many familiar and new faces joining us every year ❤️ #VPFAExtremes

Next we have Lucy Ella Rose discussing the decadent transformations of protagonists in Netta Syrett’s novels as they come to epitomise the transgressive extremes of the 'New Movement' #VPFAExtremes

Next we have Professor Andrew King very appositely discussing the ‘Brummagem popularity’ of Granville Bantock’s song cycle Sappho #VPFAExtremes

We now have Casey Reeves discussing Renee Vivien and Natalie Burney’s poetry and their use of Sappho to signal to the queer community #VPFAExtremes

Just chaired an excellent first panel of #VPFAExtremes with fellow #Birkbeck Victorianists @janetteleaf.bsky.social, Jeremy Newton, & Gordon Bates on Hypnotic Gothic Fictions!

Exciting new issue of VPFJ is now out in the world, featuring my review for Helena Esser's fantastic Steampunk London: Neo-Victorian Urban Space and Popular Transmedia Memory. I'm a big fan. Get your libraries on it. @vpfa.bsky.social @helenaesser.bsky.social doi.org/10.46911/TWO...

We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2024 VPFA Second Book Prize: Tara MacDonald, Narrative, Affect, and Victorian Sensation: Wilful Bodies (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Prof. MacDonald will receive a £200 cash prize and be honoured at the Annual Conference AGM.

"Ouida" has been selected as the runner-up to the VPFA Second Book Prize 2025! Thank you very much to the lovely scholars who supported this book and for these wonderful, generous reviews! ✨

One week to go! Very excited for #VPFA 2025. I'll be hosting a killer reading group about queer cannibals and colonialism AND conclusively proving that #Ouida invented James Bond in my paper. 😎

Join our Third Sex Reading Group on 18th June to discuss the MET Exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Clothing and its relation to c19 Black Dandyism with Jesse Erickson. Bring along your favourite MET Gala look from this year too! Sign up: www.eventbrite.com/e/superfine-...

Chapter 3: Freedom! Truth! and Justice! In the Big Wahoonie: Ankh-Morpork's neo-Victorian Urbanity Helena Esser (@helenaesser.bsky.social), Independent Scholar

Super excited for this excellent volume on #TerryPratchett, who deserves so, so much more scholarly attention. Incredibly happy to have a chapter on urbanity, #neoVictorian vibes, & Truth and Justice (and a Hard-Boiled Egg) in here.

🐢Discworld and Pratchett fans! I am delighted to announce the upcoming publication of our collective book, Power and Society in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Building a Fantasy Civilization! It will arrive on April 24 in the wonderful series Perspectives on #Fantasy (@bloomsburyacad.bsky.social)!

Out now! Beth Palmer and I co-edited a special issue of VPFJ on Victorian transmedia storytelling. It's open access, read it now! victorianpopularfiction.org/publications...

A new and spectacular special issue of Volupté is here, featuring some absolutely brilliant contributions from our conference on #neoVictorian #decadence in lovely Pescara (and maybe a little something from me, too): volupte.gold.ac.uk/neovicdec

I'm so very chuffed to represent #Ouida in this new & exciting collection on Tauchnitz, her German publisher. "English Literature in Your Pocket" offers fascinating insights into 19C transnational publishing: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Seems a good time to say: Hello! I look at #steampunk from a #neoVictorian cultural studies POV, & I wrote a PhD-now-book on what steampunk London tells us about the evolution of genre, media, and city-ness, and how steampunk reflects ideology and popular memory: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/steampunk...

Thought I’d make my first post both positive and useful-so here’s a list of all of the free-to-view titles now available on the British Newspaper Archive: blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2024/09/19/a...