Chips!

The rain this month has been unbelievable- I feel like I am living in Julia Armfield’s Private Rites

Delighted to be a runner-up in @ucddublin.bsky.social research images award @artshumanitiesucd.bsky.social with this page from @folger.edu V.b.198, Anne Southwell’s scribal letter about poetry written to Lady Cecelia Ridgeway ca.1626-7

app.the-tls.com/215876/conte... This is quite the broadside! He doesn’t seem to even like poetry and fails to mention any of the contemporary poets doing brilliant work. Also 4/5 books by men and he slams the one by a woman.

Thanks to everyone who commented on this; in a new departure I just cited my own bluesky post 😂

Niche #earlymodern and #cake question. Does the term “fancy” mean a cake to you? (Mr Kipling’s French Fancies eg)? This meaning not recorded in OED. Ta.

Some days there’s nothing for it but a day of Johnny Cash

#CfP: Clio Reframed: Women Writing History, 1500-1750. Oxford, June 18-19, 2026 Abstracts by Feb 28 '26. Featuring a quintessential quartet of keynotes: @rhetorician.bsky.social, Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille, @emiliekmmurphy.bsky.social, & Sue Wiseman www.rensoc.org.uk/event/clio-r... #SRS_Sponsored

Today I learned that Johnny Cash made extensive notes on Josephus and I really want to find a way to work this in to a reading of Cary’s Mariam #earlymodern

Did some excellent cutting and pasting today

Southwell again: “What were all objects if there were no “I”?/ Or what were “I”s if darkness all invade?”

More Lady Anne Southwell drip feed (from meditation on the 8th commandment): Methinks my neighbour’s dog that barks at me/And his own tongue that doggedly doth rail/Is all alike, I can no difference see -/Both with confused noises my ears assail”

Am reading over our edited Southwell texts (thanks @luckyj1.bsky.social and Vicki Burke) and it’s such a joy to hear her poetic voice: “poor man…poor water bubble/Thou are but slime, but dew, jelly possessed, A house of skin whose basis stands on trouble” 1/2

I don’t think Trump will understand most of the words in Mark Carney’s speech, let alone the references to Thucydides or Havel.

I dithered, but I know it’s a limitation but I prefer novels to have more than one sentence

You know the ways owners come to look like their dogs? My working methods now resemble those of my subjects…

These lines from @aestallings.bsky.social 2013 poem “Lost and Found” really stood out to me (thanks to @victoriamoul.bsky.social and her Substack “Horace and Friends”) 1/3

#EarlyModern #BookHistory

#earlymodern - this is a page from Anne Clifford’s 1676 day book. What do you make of it. The marks on the left seem to correlate to the various hands or are they the remnant of an already marked up book? Full transcription in Malay’s edition

Here I am: on my way to break some laws and piss off the judiciary

This is absolutely jaw dropping. A judge attempts to justify bringing his own prejudices to bear on a judgement

Why the f is @rteone.rte.ie having open season on cyclists? Very disappointing

This is a stunning resource, beautifully presented - congratulations to Ros Smith Kathy Acheson and their team emwmlibrary.com

Ordering a new monitor via ucd eprocurement. As far as I can see there’s only one brand I can buy; it costs €244. Most other suppliers cost between €91 and €127 for the exact same product. This is bonkers stuff

This stuff is so tasty that it makes dry January a pleasure!

Not that I’m not enjoying it; but Ian McEwan clearly didn’t google “corona” otherwise he would have found Lady Mary Wroth too (easily available to his poet in 2014-15)

This image is from Birzeit University in the West Bank which was raided by Israel today using live ammunition and tear gas. Over 40 people were injured, mostly students. More than 8,000 students are trapped inside. But it’s controversial to talk about scholasticide.

Is it just me or is rte radio really bad from a technical point of view these days? Connection always dropping at home and their lines and connections often poor quality or break down #speirgorm

Very disappointed to see that my local TDs (Gary Gannon, Marie Sherlock, Mary Lou McDonald). are still supporting Twitter by posting there. At what point does the need for followers outweigh the misinformation, abuse and facilitation of child sex abuse material? #SpeirGorm @fertha.bsky.social

@sarahcomyn.bsky.social long before your period but you might find some of these articles interesting

Out now! Open access in current issue of Renaissance Quarterly thanks to @ucdlibrary.bsky.social my thanks to everyone who helped me with this - but a special mention of the late Bríd McGrath for her wisdom, generosity and dedication to all the things that matter.

Out for a bit of shopping and a sneaky afternoon pint with my missus

Photo story: Futureproofing a 700-year-old manuscript www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

Marie Maynard Daly co-discovered the link between high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and the clogged arteries that can cause heart disease and strokes. She also studied the damage that cigarettes have on the heart & lungs. adalovelaceday.subst...

I do love that on 23rd December hodges figgis in Dublin is absolutely mobbed #dublin #booklovers

#heritageireland watching the livestream from Newgrange on the winter solstice is absolutely part of Christmas now www.gov.ie/en/office-of...

I do wonder, if the British state lets hunger strikers die again, in order to preserve its right to supply weapons and military support to an ongoing genocide, who will even notice? To paraphrase Kwame Ture, Britain has no conscience.

Greetings check this out: Amplifying voices is a new Cambridge grant to help under-represented scholars publish. Apply!!! www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

www.theguardian.com/environment/... People are disgusting. We are so awful

It’s not a sine qua non but I particularly enjoy it when a novel sends me to the dictionary- so hats off to Sarah Hall’s incredible Helm. An absolute epic of a novel - so inventive and poetic.

Whatever else you might say about it, at least my book ms contains the word “boustrophedonically” in an actual sentence. What a word!

#earlymodern if I were to (note the conditionals) edit an anthology of verse by early modern women, what would you want to see in it? And what would you want it to do that isn’t covered by current options?

Proofs! An error in first paragraph 😂

This is very enjoyable- to be added to the pantheon of editing projects gone rogue.

Don't cross the picket line at the British Library, their staff are on strike and need our support.

So I’m getting stream of emails from students asking me to tell then whether various secondary sources are reputable. This is new to me; anyone else getting this?

Amazing to me that this book which I edited 25 years ago is still in print (and has never been out of print) - I am grateful to everyone who has read it and used it @penguinclassicsusa.bsky.social would love to propose an updated edition if I could find anyone to contact directly

Join us for the @cemslimerick.bsky.social 4th Winter School in Archival Research Skills and Book History on 2-3 December in the University of Limerick. Programme and registration here: emslimerick.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/4...

It’s still mad to me that a sandwich costs €9.50!