Good morning! Did you know that our latest issue 67.2 can now be accessed through Project MUSE online? Feel free to check it out and let us know which article you enjoyed the most in the comments below. ⬇️ muse.jhu.edu/issue/55623

Well I guess that's really it then. BAVS AGM over, and the president's baton has been handed on to me. I'm honoured and humbled and really looking forward to building on the past 25 years of development. Watch this space for @bavs-uk.bsky.social related news and content.

The journal Victorians (formerly The Victorian Newsletter) is out, with new format and new editor Kristen Pond, featuring a forum on amateurism and professionalization in science with intro by @aktange.bsky.social. Some terrific work here, and all is Open Access. muse.jhu.edu/issue/55573 #C19th

Calling all BAVS members. Hoping to see many of you at the BAVS AGM this morning. You'll have had details about arrangements via email. 10.30 am UK time.

Plenty of interesting stuff in here. Not to mention a review of *Darwinism's Generations* ('ambitious and commanding' - I'll take that!). It's good to see these beginning to appear.

Job in British history 1500-1900! www.christs.cam.ac.uk/college-lect...

Please help me share the CFP for this Literature Compass Special Issue dedicated to the work of Simon J James and covering key Victorian and Edwardian writers like H. G. Wells, George Gissing, Dickens, Wilde, George Du Maurier, and Conan-Doyle on behalf of Hadas Elber-Aviram.

Conference Announcement: Tennyson 2026: Ecology, Landscape, Environment - cfp and details attached. Victorians scholars please circulate @lindakhughes.bsky.social @victorianreview.bsky.social @victorianpoetry.bsky.social @thevicsoc.bsky.social @victorianmasc.bsky.social @jofvictculture.bsky.social

A quick shout out to the Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry site dvpp.uvic.ca which I'm once again using today on the track of a Chambers's Journal poem. It's a great resource if you don't already know of it.

Nice to come home from a short break and find my copy of the Nineteenth-Century Present. I had fun teasing out the generational preoccupations of the Edwardian 'greats'. I encourage you to check out the whole collection - there's a lot of interesting work here!

Much sympathy with J.A. Symonds' response to Macmillan's lack of enthusiasm for his proposed 5 volume history of Italian culture: 'the more I compress the longer and more tiresome the work will be'. Only 2 years before, he had delighted in his slim book on Clough 'in this day of ponderous volumes'.

📣 Last call! VanArsdel Prize submissions are due TOMORROW, June 15! Send your submissions directly to VPR's editor @kmalonephd.bsky.social. rs4vp.org/awards/vanar... #VanArsdelPrize #RSVPprizes #VictorianStudies

Got the poster of Darwinism's Generations framed for my birthday. It looks really good, but suspect hanging it would be just too narcissistic! Anyone else been here?

Given that it's now more than 6 months since Darwinism's Generations was published, I thought I'd send out an ICYMI for all those who haven't yet noticed. You can find a summary of the contents and arguments in the 'autoreview' I've posted on profmartinhewitt.com. Do check it out!

General registration for BAVS2025 is now open. Come and join us in Oxford in July and help to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the formation of BAVS.

Helped by the BL, I have re-established access to my Public Lending Rights account. So I guess I should be reminding all UK&I based authors to register - there's money. Unfortunately, my 2023-24 statement shows that my 8 titles did not register a single loan. Zero. It's a sample, but that's brutal!

Hey @bbcnews.bsky.social can someone with a bit of proper editorial oversight and basic knowledge please correct this item. The rocket lost attitude control, not altitude control.

One last question please. Are you referring to the Victorian era as a literary/cultural designation, or as one that applies broadly to all areas of life?

You characterise any scholarly choice as 'invention', as 'made up'. It's not how I would apply those formulations. So perhaps I should bow out here, with reference to my piece on the Victorian as period (www.jstor.org/stable/3829805); and a blog I did a few years ago on periodization.

I think there is the potential for confusion here between the naming of periods and the periods themselves. 'Victorian' has 'explanatory power' because the approximate reignal dates make sense as the bounds of a set of historical configurations, not merely as an invented 'organising principle'.

But periods are 'real'. They may not be total or discrete and often don't have absolute boundaries, but to suggest that the period of the Cold War, or the reign of Henry VIII, or British-mandate Palestine, or even the 'Victorian period', are merely invented analytic conveniences is just wrongheaded.

Although of course monarchs are real and often significant historical forces, and even when not, at least have the decency not to hang around for 100 years (says the guy who's spent most of his career defending the Victorian as period).

Perhaps it's just time to face up to the fact that the whole idea that centuries could be the default divisions of any sort of history is a standing indictment of historical scholarship?

Why unfortunately? Who said we need to think of historical periods in the same way we think of geographical territories?

May is winding down, but #RSVP2025 is just heating up! We're hosting special pre-conference digital events each Friday in June as we count down the weeks until #VoicesandVisions in July. Register today and join us for some fun and field-shaping work. No travel required! rs4vp.org/june-digital...

Great symposium today on 'Periodisation, Generations and the Gap Between' at Loughborough. Four really thought-provoking papers asking big questions about how we make sense of literary and cultural history.

Came across what I think is a previously unknown Darwin letter while browsing in The Live Stock Journal. It was well-known that Darwin gave some credence to the now-discredited idea of 'telegony', but with one exception I think this is the only example of him discussing it in his correspondence.

Stumbled across this item about 'The Advertiser's Letter Bureau', which in 1909 was offering for sale by the 1000, letters sent to (in the case of Liquozone -quack) medicine adverts. Evidence that the traffic in 'suckers lists' goes back a little farther than you might have thought.

Some intriguing material here (with great visualisations). There's huge potential uncover more about disciplinary dynamics. Myself, I'd be fascinated to know more of the 'textual atmosphere' or perhaps the 'critical atmosphere' created by citations of texts like Houghton's Victorian Frame of Mind.

📢 Reminder! Prof. Jon Topham’s jontopham.bsky.social Keynote Lecture explores the intertwined histories of science, religion, and publishing 📆 25 April 2025 | 3.30–5.00pm BST 📍 Leeds & Online 🔗 bit.ly/4hDxuyV A joint event by hpsleeds.bsky.social, leedsprhs.bsky.social & BSHS Postgrads

VICTORIA has the advantage of space for discussion. So I hope to see some more interventions there!

Happy #ALCS distribution day! Having moved from waged to freelance work this makes such a difference this year, and I strongly advise anyone who has ever written something for a UK publisher/media outlet to sign up to get your royalties.

Very much looking forward to discussing chap 2 of Darwinism's Generations alongside chap 3 of Peter Bowler's Evolution for the People at the Leeds History of Biology Reading Group at 4pm today. Lots of congruences, but also plenty of divergences to interrogate. Let me know if you want to join online

Recently finished reading Sarah Harkness's Literature for the People. It brilliantly brings out the ways in which the lives of Macmillan brothers were embodied in their publishing house, and shows how the records of a firm can illuminate the lives of its founders. And it's just a really good read.

We're delighted to announce that applications for the 2025-26 BARS/BAVS Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship are now open! Deadline for applications: Monday 12 May 2025.

The BAVS Newsletter needs you! Please send us your CFPs, new publications, and other notices of interest for inclusion in the Spring edition @ireadoldbooks.bsky.social #Victorianist #Victorianstudies #BAVS

The Guardian has published an obituary of my dear friend Brian, written by his wife Maxine. I love the photo she chose for it. www.theguardian.com/education/20... #C19

Delight at my Curran Fellowship somewhat tempered today, as I discover that James Payn's handwriting was so bad, even amongst a crowded contemporary field (A.P. Stanley anyone?), that in 1891 Pearson's Weekly made a readers' competition out of the difficulty of deciphering it.

Never mind the not the Dark Ages, you've got to love a book whose index has Darwin and Darth Vader as adjacent entries. (Although, strictly, shouldn't that be 'Vader, Darth?')

The Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship is such a great initiative. I'm really enjoying mentoring Amy Waterson @ireadoldbooks.bsky.social in her fellowship at @rhul-cvs.bsky.social right now: submit a proposal til 15 March for Amy's 3rd June colloquium on '19C Legacies'. bavs.ac.uk/news/cfp-nin...

Absolutely delighted to have been awarded a Curran Fellowship for 2025 by @rs4vp.bsky.social for an exploration of the contributors to Chambers's Journal during the editorship of James Payn, 1858-74. Many thanks RSVP!

Which begs the question: where's the paste?

Now on the BARS Blog: New Book Series: The New Nineteenth Century See the details here: www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=5831 "The New Nineteenth Century tracks the ever-evolving dynamism of long nineteenth-century studies by publishing exciting innovations and diverse voices in our field." Please share!

Relative numbers of novels in the catalogue of Mudie's Circulating Library for 1903; a reminder of just how many titles late Victorian and Edwardian popular novelists - male as well as female - could rack up. Several were producing 5 or 6 a year. Productivity in authorship isn't what it used to be.

One project is on British natural history film-making in the 1st half of the 20th century. The other is 'Connecting Suffragettes, Technology & Society', using the papers of Dame Caroline Haslett. Both are AHRC-funded.

Whatever happened to 'the motor-boat honeymoon'?

Yes, she was new to me too. But she wrote over 40 novels plus short stories, 1877-97, and was especially popular in the US. Apparently in the Rhoda Broughton mode, set in Ireland with 'irresponsible''wild girl' heroines (who still managed to be strictly moral, and co-exist easily with Mrs Grundy).

'Most selling' US and UK authors as judged by an American newspaper syndicate in 1902. Interesting to see Kipling ahead of Stevenson, Haggard and Conan Doyle. W Clark Russell, a purveyor of naval yarns for boys also apparently 'out of his league'. Hardy flying the flag for the canonical novelists.

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Oxford Faculties of English & History are delighted to host the 25th anniversary conference of the British Association for #Victorian Studies on 23–25 July. Papers on any aspect of long-nineteenth-century studies are welcome (submit by 17 March). #BAVS #Victorianstudies #19thC

There is still time to register for this fabulous hybrid conference, "Cultures of Correspondence," which starts tomorrow, February 14. Looks like a lot on offer here for anybody who works with 19th-c. letters. library.web.baylor.edu/culturesofco... #C19th