The unprecedented popularity of the podcast Serial is closely linked to the producers’ unconscious debt to the seriality, narrative techniques and framing strategies pioneered by Victorian popular fiction #VPFAExtremes

And rounding off this panel we have Gregory Brennen talking about the roots of true crime podcasts in Victorian popular fiction, focussing on how Serial (2014) uses the same narrative techniques as Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1859-60) #VPFAExtremes

Shiela Crerar advertises her services in the ‘laying of ghosts’ in the newspaper. ‘Always psychic’, she gets to walk around London watching the events of past ages unfold before her. She finds that there’s quite a demand for her services! #VPFAExtremes

Now we have Betty Hagglund discussing the relationship between inner vision and bodily sight in The Adventures of Shiela Crerar, Psychic Detective (1920) by Ella M. Scrymsour, a text rooted in the Victorian period #VPFAExtremes

Otto’s notion of the demonic helps to explain how Machen uses the numinous to evoke horror. The numinous becomes a site of terror and collapse as characters seek out otherworldly forces through transgressive means #VPFAExtremes

First on the gothic hauntings and true crime panel this morning we have Bart Mulderij examining depictions of the numinous in Arthur Machen’s fiction through the theories of German philosopher and theologian Rudolph Otto #VPFAExtremes

Unfortunately, the other presenters on this panel (Kailey Pire and Rida Leonard) have been unable to attend, so we are now having a Brontë-themed chat instead. Currently wondering, why DID Jane marry Rochester?? #VPFAExtremes

On our Brontës and Relationships panel, we have Kiera Clark discussing the extreme consequences of restricting female autonomy, focussing on Bertha Mason. Various forms of the gothic are central to this analysis #VPFAExtremes

Victorian discourses about the voice and its changes and diseases were entangled with morality and sexuality, something Lee drew on in her portrayal of the castrato and his monstrous corporality #VPFAExtremes

And finishing off this panel is @emilieslaurent.bsky.social with her exploration of the monstrous extremes of gender in the figure of the castrato in Vernon Lee’s ‘A Wicked Voice’ #VPFAExtremes

Syrett placed the female experience of decadence centre stage, depicting decadence as a liberatory force for female writers and their female protagonists. Syrett is an example of the critically neglected female decadent #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

First on the Aesthetes and Decadents panel this morning we have Christina Hafner joining us online to discuss art v. life in Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Hardy’s The Well-Beloved #VPFAExtremes

Love at first sight between ‘Sappho 1900’ Renee Vivien and American heiress Natalie Barney #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

Bantock was a champion of the popular and the new in music, and his (and his wife’s) Sappho was a composite of popular and elite cultures, a middlebrow, aspirational piece. This reflects Bantock’s own complex relationship to cultural authority #VPFAExtremes

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

On the Sappho and Swinburne panel, first we’ve got V J Rene joining us online to discuss extremity in Swinburne’s work, including masochism, erotic transgression and political radicalism #VPFAExtremes

A fascinating exploration of how reading both popular and highbrow Victorian fiction initiates the main character into eroticism, including rewriting the relationship between Jane Eyre and Helen Burns as an explicit infatuation #VPFAExtremes

Now we have Crescent Rainwater talking about Netta Syrett’s novel The Victorians and its debt to a wide spectrum of Victorian fiction in its representation of sexual liberated modern women, as well as lesbian desire #VPFAExtremes

Next we’ve got @ebutler-way.bsky.social talking about the legacies of Jane Eyre in A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott, particularly the role of fate #VPFAExtremes

The Sorrows of Satan was a massive success, but not all critics approved. Here’s Arnold Bennett being snide about it: ‘I found it amusing, even grammatical. Perhaps I found it more amusing than its author intended, but that is another matter.’ #VPFAExtremes

Starting the Intertextuality and Adaptation panel, we've got Julia Kuehn joining us online to talk about Marie Carelli's novel The Sorrows of Satan and its stage adaptations #VPFAExtremes

VPFA conference soon! I'll be presenting on Arthur Machen on the first day, and livetweeting for the conference on here and X throughout the three days (#VPFAExtremes)