Truly honored and deeply grateful to have been awarded the Greta Depledge Prize for best postgraduate paper, given by @vpfa.bsky.social at its 18th annual conference for my paper on Arthur Machen’s manipulative storytelling. This award means more to me than I can put into words. Thank you ❤️

Our 18th Annual Conference is now over, and some of you may be staving off the post-VPFA conference depression. Not to worry, because we have JUST the cure: Volume 8, issue 1 of Victorian Popular Fictions Journal 🤩💫 Read it online here: victorianpopularfiction.org/publications...

A *fantastic* time at #VPFAPublics the last few days. Fascinating papers, fruitful discussions (Some fun things on the horizon)... Caught up with old pals, made some new ones - every year I'm blown away by the incredible warmth of @vpfa.bsky.social. All the thanks to Jo and Janine for organising!

This is SO GOOD! Julia Kuehn and Diane Eveline Van den Brink open the latest issue of @vpfa.bsky.social journal with a polemical article that includes a case study featuring Wilkie Collins and Marie Corelli.

What a fantastic three days at #VPFAPublics in Liverpool! I had an amazing time in one of the most beautiful venues I’ve ever seen. Such a joy to learn more about Victorian popular fiction while catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. Can’t wait for next year!

The Bodies panel was certainly one of my favourites too. Fascinating research presented at #VPFAPublics day 2.

@andrewkingc19.bsky.social talking about how Victorians marketed Pop Fiction - and I’m very excited to learn more about Victorian marketing, particularly design and product placement! Makes me think of my trawling through Punch for crumbs of context! #VPFAPublics

Can you imagine trying to de-anonymise 22 Victorian sensation novels? Because Janine Hatter can! What an amazing project 😱 #VPFAPublics

very pleased to have signed the advance contract for my first monograph, Ecogothic America and the Twenty-First-Century Novel, with @edinburghup.bsky.social !

Helena Ifill discussing Charlotte Riddell's direct addresses to the reader, arguing that they were used as part of her campaign to become "the" novelist of London. city. Though she was interested in the lives of city women, her USP was the lives and hearts of city businessmen #VPFAPublics

Bodies - WHAT A PANEL at #vpfapublics It was absolutely brilliant! I loved hearing from Megan Nash, Anna-Maria Grill, and @ebutler-way.bsky.social about their fascinating research! @vpfa.bsky.social

Jo’s fantastic Corelli book will be out in August!

Order up Bowie's guitar to hold and strum? Byzantine glass shards to hold to the light? Beatrix Potter watercolours to peer at closely? This is so very very cool. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/a...

Thanks @vpfa.bsky.social for having me at #vpfapublics I loved being in the company of Beniko Inamura and my wonderful PhD supervisor @braddonite.bsky.social

#VPFAPublics Theatricalities panel. @braddonite.bsky.social (Anne-Marie Beller): For Braddon, theatre = metaphor for social performance. "Acting" explores social performativity. Complex, shifting reps of actresses reflect changing ideas about acting.

"Deerstalker" hats are dangerously genderqueer fashion for women, thought Marie Corelli? Sherlock's hat? @coppertapestry.bsky.social #VPFAPublics

Jo Turner @coppertapestry.bsky.social : Marie Corelli gave public speeches to "my public" of 1000s. Literary celebrity-> "platform poetry." Inconsistent, as Corelli bashed women for unfeminine public speech? Check out Jo's biography of Corelli from the VPWW Series. #VPFAPublics

Delightful that as we gear up for #VPFAPublics, the new issue of VPFJ is out, featuring yours truly in some great company! Have I been wanting to write this since my MA? Quite possibly. Alcott, sensation, Genette, Goethe ... What more could you want? doi.org/10.46911/YER... @vpfa.bsky.social

Get to know our Web Manager, Emma Butler-Way ✨ @ebutler-way.bsky.social Here are her answers to our 5 questions: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... Read her blog post about joining VPFA here: victorianpopularfiction.org/in-which-emm...

Prepare to be Corellied @vpfa.bsky.social conference-goers! In the pack there’s a special offer for delegates to pre-order this beauty (is she winking? I like to think so!), and I’ll be speaking in panel two on Monday. The book can be ordered from EER next month www.eerpublishing.com/turner-marie...

Prepare to be Corellied @vpfa.bsky.social conference-goers! In the pack there’s a special offer for delegates to pre-order this beauty (is she winking? I like to think so!), and I’ll be speaking in panel two on Monday. The book can be ordered from EER next month www.eerpublishing.com/turner-marie...

Come and study English and History with us on our new joint honours degree at @lborouniversity.bsky.social. Or better yet: tell all the 17-year olds you know. www.lboro.ac.uk/study/underg... #Loughborough #HE #undergraduate #BA #English #History

Been thinking about #critical #creativity/ #creative #criticism recently as alternatives to literary critical essays and decided to set extracts from #Ouida novels to music, and then music video. Here's the first. How successful is it at clarifying her argument here? youtu.be/JSDkZsMKjS4

Bestselling novelist Marie Corelli was born today in 1854 as Caroline Cody. It’s a great day to perform a cover reveal for my volume of the @vpfa.bsky.social Key Popular Women Writers series on Corelli—out VERY soon. I am incredibly excited for it to be out in the world! @lboroenglish.bsky.social

#EnglishCreates: Futures Today, Prof Jennifer Cooke (Loughborough University) discusses the profound value of reading in the age of social media: 'Just as smart phones and social media sites train us in one way, proper reading trains us in another...' universityenglish.ac.uk/really-readi...

Invited to write this short piece for The Conversation on the dark, poetic origins of Wuthering Heights. Her Gothic imagination was nothing short of electrifying. #books #gothicliterature #wutheringheights #bronte #bookstagram

I am so pleased to share that I passed my viva yesterday!! Working on my PhD thesis (‘Abortion in Nineteenth-Century British Literature’) at @lboroenglish.bsky.social has been a wonderful experience thanks to my incredible supervisory team @drclaireocall.bsky.social @braddonite.bsky.social 💕🦋🫀

Registration is now live for my VPFA Study Day on 'Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities'. It's free to attend, thanks to funding from the VPFA and the Health Humanities Hub at Loughborough University. The programme and the link to register here: victorianpopularfiction.org/sensation-fi...

Happy Shrove Tuesday! Want to know how to make pancakes the way the Elizabethans ate them? And what boozy ingredients have been used in pancakes and fritters throughout history? Our own @saralread.bsky.social has written for @theconversation.com about the curious history of pancakes 🥞

Our Head of Department @sadiseshiah.bsky.social has published a new book chapter - 'Staging Utopian Subjects: Contemporary British Theatre Beyond the Barriers' - in The Cambridge Companion to British Utopian Literature and Culture Since 1945.

PhD students in the UK with a Victorianist bent will want to take particular note of the placement titled "Illustrated Newspapers: Beyond the Illustrated London News": cdn.sanity.io/files/v5dwki... @rs4vp.org #Victorian

New #EnglishCreates post. @ies-sas.bsky.social @englishassociation.bsky.social

My new article was published earlier this week!! It focuses on the gynaecological health of Mrs Glover, the subject of several letters in Elizabeth Gaskell's correspondence between 1853–54, and reveals Glover's original patient record that I found at the wonderful @bharchives.bsky.social. ✨

Did you read or review a great new book on #19thC periodical studies? Was it published in the last year? If yes, nominate it for a Colby Book Prize! We're still accepting nominations through 31 January. [NB: For tax reasons, authors *cannot* self-nominate.] More info here:

I was going through some old files and found these scans from Lewis Carroll's handwritten manuscript "Alice’s Adventures Underground" (1862). He originally gave it to Alice Liddell as a Christmas gift. The full text was available at the BL before the infamous hack.

"Alternate Histories of the Body" is next week! I'm highlighting our workshop, "Experiencing Academia Through the Body" by Francesca Young Kaufman (11:15 AM GMT). Join us if you're interested in neuroscience-based tools for managing academic stress. The workshop is free and online. #AcademicSky 1/4

Patrick Morgan on Contesting Earth's History in the Review of English Studies: 'beautifully detailed, intricately researched, and compelling'. What more could you wish for? The review, for those with access: academic.oup.com/res/advance-...

'Few feelings are more thrilling for a literature scholar than unearthing an archival gem ...' Our own Jade French writes for @theconversation.com about three newly discovered Virginia Woolf stories:

Very much looking forward to sharing my work on pregnancy and motherhood following gynaecological surgery in the mid-19th century as part of this fantastic programme! It is online and free - links in posts below about how to register. Thank you for including me @voicesofmotherhood.bsky.social !! 🫀💫

Day 5: Diversity & Inclusion An archivist and museum specialist from @shakespearebtrust.bsky.social collaborated to review their approaches to cataloguing, access and descriptive practice: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-sec... #Archives #EYAInclusion #Diversity 📷Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Other updates include finishing a book chapter in an edited collection on Marie Corelli. My chapter is “Marie Corelli: Bestselling Decadent Author” and the edited collection is Marie Corelli in Context: Cultural Currency, Popular Fiction and the Literary Marketplace. Excited for it!

It was, quite honestly, the high point of the summer getting to put together this podcast with @nathankhensley.bsky.social for Studies in the Novel on his book ‘Action without Hope’ www.studiesinthenovel.org/interact/pod...

An exciting conclusion to my time as Research Fellow on the @mediaandepidemics.bsky.social project! Dr Melissa Dickson & I are co-writing a book ‘A British Literary Contagion: ‘Russian Flu’ and Popular Culture at the Fin de Siècle’ for the @manchesterup.bsky.social @sshmedicine.bsky.social series🦠

Excellent start to 6 months of showing how and why English Studies matters so much to all of us #EnglishCreates from @univeng.bsky.social and lots of our brilliant colleagues

The deadline to apply for BAMS/ MSA in Loughborough, July 1-4, 2026, is now exactly 1 week away!

New Special Issue of Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, edited by @helenaesser.bsky.social and @drclaireocall.bsky.social alert ‼️ The issue explores Victorian popular fiction and culture as key sites for negotiating gender and sexual non-conformity, with a focus on the concept of the ‘third sex’.

I’m bursting with pride to say I passed my viva @lboroenglish.bsky.social last week! Thank you to my examiners @andrewkingc19.bsky.social & @drclaireocall.bsky.social for such a positive experience and my supervisors @profsarahparker.bsky.social & @braddonite.bsky.social for a truly memorable day!

If you like #Victorian popular fiction, #Egyptomania or #19thCentury Art, I hope you'll like my article! I loved my editors! @vpfa.bsky.social @bavs-uk.bsky.social @19birkbeck.bsky.social @ncsascholars.bsky.social @issegyptomania.bsky.social @mariecorelli.bsky.social @edinburghup.bsky.social

‘Marie’ Christmas, Victorianists! Eleanor Dobson and I have co-edited ‘Marie Corelli Reconsidered’, a special issue of Victoriographies. It features @janetteleaf.bsky.social Adam Lewis Smith, Keiko Kiriyama, Stephen Edwards, and our own detective work into the authorship of The Twin Soul (1887) 🔍

‘Marie’ Christmas, Victorianists! Eleanor Dobson and I have co-edited ‘Marie Corelli Reconsidered’, a special issue of Victoriographies. It features @janetteleaf.bsky.social Adam Lewis Smith, Keiko Kiriyama, Stephen Edwards, and our own detective work into the authorship of The Twin Soul (1887) 🔍