George Buchanan’s Afterlives: Borrowings of Buchanan’s Works in Scottish Libraries, c.1750–1840 14 May, Stirling – free (suggested donation £5) Prof Katie Halsey traces how George Buchanan’s works were borrowed & read in Scotland across the #C18th & early #C19th www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/evening-ta...

Check out Blazing Blade of Frankenstein Volume 1 by FRIED Comics on @kickstarter.com A little bit Mary Shelley... a little bit Edgar Rice Burroughs... www.kickstarter.com/projects/900...

The @bars.bsky.social Conference programme at Birmingham has been announced and we're all getting ridiculously excited about the panels and papers. As @drbeard79.bsky.social said, "So many people! So many friends!" Organisers have done a great job.

Trailer for Backrooms, an eerie concept one of my PhD students told me about and which continues to haunt the back of my mind, with an impossibly starry cast in Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve

As if getting married 3 days ago wasn't enough excitement, I'm beyond honoured and thrilled to announce that THE UNLIKELY PURSUIT OF MARY BENNET—a tender, heartfelt book I wrote for my now-wife—is a finalist for the Debut award at the #ronas26 What a wild week. I must be dreaming ❤️

Happy International day of Transgender Visibility! All my homies say Trans Rights are Human Rights / anyone who's cool knows it too. We see you out there. Choose to be yourself and know that we have your back. Much love and respect today (and every day)! 🏳️‍⚧️ #transrights #transdayofvisibility

Oooh it’s like a Korean Fight Club with a female protagonist - she even has an imaginary (boy)friend called Mr Jeong-Jin [Mr Really-Real] 🤣

New Milton Studies Special Issue (68.1) highlighting the impact of precarity on the field & Milton himself. To cope 🫣 I ended up combining 3 of my favourite things: John Milton, Jane Austen, & roses 🌹 scholarlypublishingcollective-org.uoelibrary.idm.oclc.org/psup/milton-...

FUN CFP on Poetry in Games / Games in Poetry for Multiplatform at MMU Deadline: 10 April Event: 11-12 June (This chimes with my thinking about the Brontës’ juvenilia / table-top role playing games and their poetry!)

Never mind judging a book by its cover, I bought Won-Pyung Sohn’s Counterattacks at Thirty for its dinky size - flat white for scale 😂

Trans Day of Act Now to Stop Labour's Section 28! Tell all your cis friends and colleagues. They have until 20 April.

🦇 #BatsInArt #PreciousBats #BillyMissi #Australian #AboriginalArt #Contemporary Billy Missi (1970 - 2012) SAPUR AU KUBI (DARK FLOCK OF BATS), 2006 Linocut print on Arches paper

Designed to look like books, these ceramic objects are actually flasks or hand warmers. They are thought to have been filled with hot water or coal to warm the hands of the wearer on a cold winter's day. They functioned as a sort of ceramic hot water bottle. The perfect gift for book lovers!

for #transdayofvisibility here's a print I made a few years back. just a couple left. shop.frankduffy.co.uk/product/tran...

Today: QMCECS Seminar 31 March Rebecca Tierney-Hynes (Edinburgh) 'Richard Steele and the Corps of Comedy' More info: tinyurl.com/2uy8668m 31 March 2026 Time: 17:15. UK Time. Location: QMUL Mile End Campus ArtsOne, Room 1.36 (entrance from the rear of the building).

Is there anything cuter than bat peek-a-boo? Please ignore the little human squeak you hear, it was very hard not to laugh. 🦇 #bats #arizona #wildanimals #cuteanimals #peekaboo

Employers should cover work-related travel and other expenses directly rather than require employees to float their employer an interest-free loan while subjecting them to a byzantine reimbursement process that will take at least a month and entail multiple rounds of paperwork.

Call for Papers: Politics, Place and Print Culture: The 14th International Walter Scott Conference The University of Edinburgh, Scotland 28 to 30 June 2027, with an optional trip to Scott’s home, Abbotsford House, on 1 July More information: www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=6395

Abolish Ofsted. www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

The future of Rydal Mount, the final home of world-renowned poet William Wordsworth, has been secured thanks to a landmark acquisition by the Wordsworth Trust, working in partnership with The Julia Rausing Trust and the Charlotte Aitken Trust. www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=6397

BARS | BAVS Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship 2026 Call for Applications @ Liverpool John Moores University offers unaffiliated ECRs a platform from which to pursue their research, while also organising an academic event or a workshop. More info and how to apply: www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=6399

Fully-funded three-year PhD Scholarship: Living with Print in the Eighteenth Century Based at @sydney.edu.au (with Nicola Parsons) and @glasgow.ac.uk (with me), working with collections in Australia and Scotland. Deadline April 21st - please circulate! www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships...

CFP deadline this week for our Brontë Studies special issue on Poetry - the abstracts are starting to flock in - still time to send in yours!

Let sleeping cats lie like one of your French girls

Looking forward to bingeing the conclusion of The Other Bennet Sister: Will she politely destroy Mr Darcy, Mrs Bennet, Charlotte Lucas, others? Will she get together with Tom? Will she fly in the face of the marriage / misery binary and become a radical poet / historian? I have high hopes!

I want the fabergé Gummi bat 🖤

🦇 #BatsInArt #PreciousBats #YoungBatArt: always bold, energetic and vibrant! Today's #YoungBatArtist is Rafael3332, Grade 3, School of The Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, Baltimore, Maryland. School project: "bATS AND tHE mOON." Teacher: Thais Cassel

A remarkable photo from #NoKings in DTLA from Connor Sheets of @latimes.com www.latimes.com/california/l...

Half a million people standing against the far right. Half a million people who care about each other and our communities. Half a million people ready to make hope normal again.

Handsome fellow

Also tried to emphasize, to close, that any institution of higher learning that's genuinely interested in remaining relevant, enduring through volatility, and growing its capacities —that is, leading— should be betting all the chips on reinvestment in the core functions of liberal arts education.

For no reason whatsoever —thinking, “if I were teaching books in 2026, I’d want to teach the long history of portraying self-owns.” “Sensationalizing the self own:” Greek comedy, Narcissus, Swift’s narrator, Mr. Collins, the Underground Man, Gob Bluth. And so many great choices for syllabi images!

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live... #HappyDays

My anti-AI prints arrived and they’re even better in person! I can’t wait to post in my office and give out to fellow refusers (I got 5 to start). Thanks @wolfproofpress.com + @literaturegeek.bsky.social! #DHmakes

Looking forward to the launch of our book "Picturing the Romantic" in Paris on March 31. The editors Elisabeth Ansel, Johannes Grave, @christinebates.bsky.social, & @mira-claire.bsky.social will be discussing the book together with the team from Romanticism across Borders. Please feel free to join.

A little peek into the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre, where they keep Kermit in solitary confinement like Hannibal Lecter. (NB: the Scottish Mask and Puppet centre is actually a pretty cool educational venue with shows and things for families, and you should check it out!)

I have a doctorate in philosophy, I can't save your life but I can tell you you are going to die

Digital publication day! 🎉 I'm very proud of this little book on a difficult subject, one I take very much to heart (as I try to do with all my work, but especially this one). Gothic Dementia is free to download until April 12th! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

If "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" had an analogue in song, what song would that be? Bonus points if you can think of a counterpart to "Sailing to Byzantium"

“In the early ages of the world… there were NO KINGS” Who said that!??? You guessed it! Thomas Paine himself. He wanted to “begin the world over again” Share images of words from COMMON SENSE. Like my poster, which I will drag to the Boston Common yet again

It's nearing 20 years since the last comparable volume on Gaskell was published (2007's Cambridge Companion), & I think in this case a new burst of critical attention to one of the most subtle & enjoyable of Victorian novelists is very much overdue.

Fantastic news for the pub co-operative I'm a part of. Genuinely never thought I'd see the day we'd be free of the pubco that owned the property.

I'll be giving an online talk on Heidi Thomas's BBC adaptations of Gaskell's Cranford (2005) & Return to Cranford (2007) for @eilzabethgaskellsh.bsky.social on Wednesday 3rd June, 7pm-8pm UK time. Sign-up via the link for some noughties nostalgia! (tickets £6)

Good morning from Boston University. Pride flags EVERYWHERE

Romanticists against tyranny. #NoKings

Just to reiterate: Farage followed the playbook of Trump and claimed the election was “stolen” from Reform and most major news organisations led with this. Now his attempt to undermine U.K. democracy has been proven false, will the same organisations give this disproval the same prominence?

🚨 NEW: Greater Manchester Police say they have found "no evidence" of family voting in the Gorton and Denton by-election

Back in the South West for a mo - enjoyed Clifton Suspension Bridge in the sunshine, a walk along the Avon, and spotting wildlife tucking into the traditional cuisine

I suspect their pricing knows... NO LIMITS SORRY. (Not sorry.)