Tiny reindeer from a map of Norway in vol.1 of Joan Blaeu's 11 volume Atlas Major, 1662 #Christmas #Maps

To be fair, this poem was read by my dear friend and officiant at my wedding. But I’m rather biased toward Emily Dickison just in general having come into contact with her poetry as an angsty pre-teen.

It’s all I have to bring today— This, and my heart beside—

Well this is exciting! Book News klaxon & I am so thrilled to share this beautiful cover of my new book Dressing the Queen: 200 Years of Makers & Monarchy which will be published in April 2026. A huge thank you to #ChattoBooks for this most lovely volume. #aitkenalexander

Bookish Holiday Fun and Games For... YOU! Now in its sixth year, for this #NewberryLibrary Advent Calendar, we'll play around with the collection! Cards, Board Games, Puzzles, Gambling... What's up first? CHESS! December 1 (1/24) Here's last year's extra-shiny offering: bsky.app/profile/drka...

Thinking of the student Mary Young who 106 years ago today 'said "shan't" under [her] breath when told to repeat poor work'.

“Have Yourself A Merriam Little Christmas” Merriam, a career-oriented lexicographer from the city, returns to her small town for the holidays and meets Webster, a ruggedly handsome librarian, who shows her the true DEFINITION of Christmas.

When a bound volume of #1920s newspapers got wet, we froze it to prevent mould developing until we had the time and space to dry it out properly. As the wet pages felt slightly tacky we had to interleave them with dry sheets, so they wouldn’t all stick together in the freezer. #EYAConservation

I feel you, ancient Mongolian ceramic hedgehog. I feel you.

Part 218 of 200 in historically interesting things to inspire your ttrpg dnd Ceramic hedgehog dated to the Neolithic period found at the Hamin archaeological site near Shebotu Town in Inner Mongolia, China

Incredible cover (definitely looking forward to the publication just in general)

Baby names aren’t just personal choices; they reflect culture, geography, gender, identity, and as i've been investigating, politics too. I’ve been analyzing 50 years of U.S. baby naming to see how they map onto political polarization in the U.S. Here’s what I found 🧵

I don't make the medieval philosophy; I just translate it.

Armed Britannia Surveying Her Navies [reverse of a medal of Charles II], 1667 by Jan Roettiers (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

can't believe jurgen habermas is alive. when i read that guy in college i just sort of assumed he was dead because everyone else i read in college was, too

Big news! The groundhog is back at my sister's and she gave him a plum

November 25, 1818: While Mary Shelley draws sketches of the Colosseum within the amphitheater during their Rome trip, Percy begins to pen his prose fragment, "The Coliseum." It is a romantic look at the ruins, overgrowth of plants & human hands that made the arena. Story: archive.org/details/essa...

Doing all I could this morning to keep the few undergrads who even turned up awake, & even this ghastly but interesting image, a prop to my discussion of the female Gothic & "Get Out" didn't quite do the job. So I'll try with YOU. It's an illustration to Bluebeard by Winslow Homer, of all people.

📽️ The recording from our widely popular #RSVPDigiEvent "How to Get Published in an Academic Journal" is now live. We had a record-breaking 101 registrants for this panel! Since we did not quite hit that number in attendance, we know many will be interested to watch/re-watch: youtu.be/sP5Y1iicKJ0

THATS RIGHT!!!! AND I UNLEASH MY FURY AT THE WORST THING PETARCH EVER DID (to me).

There is a post circulating on Bluesky encouraging the moving of a frozen turkey straight into a pot of hot oil. We are combating this misinformation the best way we know how - through the power of dance music.

the multi-year lack of a truly functional manuscripts catalog at the BL is finally over!!!!

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight www.cityam.com/the-british-...

Woke up to the news that my first article has cleared the reviewing stage and is going to be published next year!!!

My latest cartoon for @theguardian.com books pages.

She was always THE woman. Looking right at you from 1590: Infanta Catalina Micaela (almost surely), painted by Sofonisba Anguissola (probably). Surely one of the greatest renaissance portraits.

Gustav Klimt, Beech Grove I, 1902, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 100 cm (Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)

In 1582, a papal bull introduced the Gregorian calendar, still used today by most of the world. Because it’s 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, countries introducing it simply skipped a third of October, and if you scroll back far enough in the iPhone calendar app you can see it change

Once upon a time in a university near you, in-person teaching was a thing, as you can see in this image of 1612. Young people with hats came together, regularly and voluntarily, prepared for classes, and enjoying a lively learning situation of *checks notes*, a 90 minutes monolog of someone else ...

preparing a class on animal histories

The central chapter, 'Inky cloak', considers cloaks, mourning dress & funerals, prologues & paratexts, black pages, black wrappers, & the inky traffic between page & stage. Mostly Hamlet, but framed with Middleton's Black Book, with cameo appearances by the Field brothers (Nathan & Theophilus) 6/10

Today is the OFFICIAL publication day for TEXTILE SHAKESPEARE! Please indulge me: I want to say a little (perhaps rather a lot) about it and share my acknowledgements - and a discount code! Appropriately,🧵1/10

9/ "So, there we were. A group of Black Americans confronted with all these dead white Americans… When they were alive, we couldn’t sit in the same room."

1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️

My theory about Joyce Carol Oates is that all her bad posts are her charging up like Godzilla's spines until she lets loose with a radioactive blast that leaves the world's richest Nazi a pile of ash

Loving today's news that the mysterious "fedora man" outside the Louvre heist was actually a 15-year-old museum visitor who dresses like a 1940s French detective all the time, just because. apnews.com/article/louv...

Wonder why this scene looks so familiar... #WildlifeWednesday 🐦🐕

Omg Ben Jonson told William Drummond that Donne should be hanged for this poem and Drummond wrote that shit down and published it???? 💀💀💀💀💀 Thank god Ben and Bill did not have social media??

I am thrilled to share my new open-access article on John Evelyn, his wife Mary, eldest daughter Mall and their complex, multifaceted relationship with clothing has been published in @historicaljnl.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I’ve seen enough: this is the best and most hopeful night of 2025, by far. The bar—which is admittedly on the floor—has been mercifully cleared.

Meet our newest patient here at the Alaska Raptor Center, a Northern Pygmy Owl named King Owlbert by his rescuers. Owlbert arrived with a drooping wing, making flight difficult. We’ve given him a supportive wing wrap, plenty of tasty mice, and time to heal. #small #owls #adorable

New episode coming tomorrow! Catch up with the first episode of UPRISING: THE CIVIL WARS now… play.megaphone.fm/quvuyhkqs66t...

Exciting Halloween news for scholars of things that go bump in the night: Our new interdisciplinary series is here from @manchesterup.bsky.social! The series seeks proposals that examine the supernatural (broadly conceived) in innovative ways. Please get in touch if you have ideas or questions!

The whole thread is hilarious, but this is the one that got me 😂

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

Today’s the day! So excited to talk about two great and vastly different manuscript poems 📜

I can't decide whose head in early modern England would explode the most watching this video.

Do the Jacobites get points for this or…?