Just entered the 26,001st novel into the ATCL database! Update coming soon…

The #2025MVSA is off to a great start this morning with the opening plenary panel!

Getting ready to welcome everyone to the #2025MVSA conference at @purduefw.bsky.social starting today! midwestvictorian.org/conference/

The great historian of the early 19th-c. comic press, Brian Maidment, died last week. He was as deeply appreciated for his personal kindness as for his brilliant work, and I treasured his friendship. @pritijoshi.bsky.social has written a lovely tribute: rs4vp.org/in-memoriam-... #C19

Not at MLA because dialysis stops me travelling (urgh) but chuffed that @kfitz.info sent me this picture from the event :)

That… is not a very good title.

For any scholar working on the 19th-c. press, a Curran Fellowship can be a big help. Everybody is eligible, and the application is blessedly straightforward. This year's deadline is next week: Wednesday, January 15. Recommendation letters due Jan 22. rs4vp.org/awards/curra... #19th-c

My book, Fiction on the Page in Nineteenth-Century Magazines, is out now with Oxford University Press! academic.oup.com/book/58989 It’s a book about page fillers, product placement, and strange hybrid fiction. It asks how the page of the magazine became a spur for new, odd genres.

PLEASE APPLY to Midwest Victorian Studies conference seminars. Three options: Lit History/Genealogies; Plant Humanities; Work-in-Progress, led respectively by Alison Booth, Lindsay Wells, and me. Apps due Jan 5; conference April 3-6 @ Purdue U Ft Wayne. Full CFP & app details (easy process!) below.

Announcing our winter special issue: "Nobody Cares but Everybody Should: Toward a Shared History of the Novel." 12 short essays engage with truisms in novel studies. Thanks to Sarah Allison & Megan Ward (@sarahdallison.bsky.social, @megaplex.bsky.social) for guest editing & to all the contributors!

6 Days to MLA! 12 Truisms About the Novel Debunked. Day 7: Freytag's plot pyramid is the deep structure underlying all narrative. To find out what's NOT true, read @dallasliddle.bsky.social in Studies in the Novel: muse-jhu-edu.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/issue/54034 w/ @sarahdallison.bsky.social

New update to ATCL! We are now up to: • 25,221 titles (+1,221 for the year) • 5,970 authors (+391 for the year) • 250+ new author bios • new setting and genre tags • new downloadable datasets This year, we finished English Catalogue v3 (1872-80) and began v4 (1881-89) #victorianstudies

8 Days to MLA! 12 Truisms About the Novel Debunked. Day 5: The Victorian novel is an English novel. To find out what's NOT true, read Sierra Eckert in Studies in the Novel: muse-jhu-edu.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/issue/54034 w/ @sarahdallison.bsky.social + @studiesinthenovel.bsky.social

9 Days to MLA! 12 Truisms About the Novel Debunked. Day 4: The bound commercial novel is a Victorian phenomenon. To find out what's NOT true, read Lindsey Eckert in Studies in the Novel: muse-jhu-edu.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/issue/54034 w/ @sarahdallison.bsky.social + @studiesinthenovel.bsky.social

11 Days to MLA; 12 Truisms About the Novel Debunked. Day Two: The typical Victorian novel was published serially. To find out what's not true, read @3volumenovel.bsky.social in a special issue of Studies in the Novel: muse-jhu-edu.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/issue/54034

Attn, attn: The very special issue of Studies in the Novel Nobody Cares but Everybody Should: Toward a Shared History of the Novel is OUT! so lovely to co-edit w @megaplex.bsky.social and big thanks to @noragilbert.bsky.social & Tim Boswell @studiesinthenovel.bsky.social

The beautiful Pictorial Times is this week's #MastheadMonday. Founded in 1843 by Henry Vizetelly & Andrew Spottiswoode, in reaction to the success of the ILN, in 1848 it merged with the Lady's Newspaper. Digitised by the BL & free-to-view here: www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/picto...

Curran Fellowships are now open for applications (due Jan 15, letters Jan 22), and they can be a big help to anyone researching any aspect of the 19th-c. British press. Topics pursued by past winners have ranged far and wide: rs4vp.org/awards/curra... Details here: rs4vp.org/awards/curra... #19th

Important lessons from old books: "Victorian novels chronicle the terrible grief of losing children. Depicting the cruelty of diseases largely unfamiliar today, they also warn against being lulled into thinking that child deaths can never be inevitable again." theconversation.com/infectious-d...

In the 1840s, Albert Smith and Angus B Reach teamed with David Bogue to create a small craze for pocket-sized illustrated comic booklets. An old friend, knowing how much I like them, just gave me some that were bound together. Starting with Reach's "A Natural History of Bores," cuts by HG Hine.

If you're in New Orleans #MLA25, join us at the RSVP roundtable on "The Challenge of Periodical Studies" with Maria Damkjær, Fionnuala Dillane, Katherine Malone, Jim Mussell, and your truly. Session #350, Friday, Jan 10, 3:30pm

It’s #MastheadMonday. Here’s the Evening Star (1842-43), Feargus O'Connor's attempt to establish a daily London Chartist newspaper after the success of the weekly Northern Star (1837-52). It lasted less than a year. Digitised by the BL & free to view www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/eveni...

F. E. M. Notley's supernatural story “Striking Midnight” was published in The Argosy in December 1881. When the candle flame burns blue, a ghost approaches… #BookWormSat

Wanna come to my party? Having a convo with @ryancordell.bsky.social about *Digital Victorians* in a series about new books in critical bibliography. Thurs 12/12 12:00p EST. Details and register here: rarebookschool.org/all-programs...

We experience Victorian novels now as Culture™️ Objects with heft and capital "L" Literary Significance, but for a large part of the century they were sliced up into small chapter fragments and illustrated in ways likely closer to how we think about comic books today!

This such an excellent CFP. @navsa2025.bsky.social navsa.georgetown.edu

Today's #MastheadMonday is The Ballot (1831-1832). It was edited by Thomas Wakley, founder of The Lancet (1823-), & advocated Chartist principles including the secret ballot. Digitised by the BL’s Heritage Made Digital: Newspapers and free to view here www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/ballot

I'm running a workshop for the Victoria Genealogical Society, on strategies for getting from data to story. We'll talk about researching history and about finding the plot. December 7, 10am-noon Pacific time. Registration fee ~$20. Register here: www.victoriags.org/content.aspx...

Ahhh! The chapter @kandicedarcia.bsky.social and I wrote in 2021 is almost available! We analyze how British publishers use language of social difference to market books in Britain. We notice trends with ability, race, class, and age. One of my fav pieces I have worked on. brill.com/edcollbook/t...

Today's #MastheadMonday features the Railway Bell (1844-1846), one of a number of short-lived newspapers launched at the height of the 'Railway Mania' of the mid-1840s. This was digitised by the British Library and is free to view on the BNA: www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/railw...

Happy that my article "Living on Pea-nuts: Gissing, Fiction, Subsistence" is out in Novel!

I agree! Her "Ought We to Visit Her?" and "A Girton Girl" are also pretty good

Do you have questions about the publishing history of the Victorian novel? Just ask! Also: • datasets of titles and authors • statistics and graphs • largest set of Victorian serial novels Available for class or research presentations via zoom

Hi again Victorianist peeps! It's lovely to follow so many folks doing such fascinating work. Also to see lots of old friends. I'm re-upping this because VIC has been so quiet lately, and yet it's a great place for longer-form C19 queries, answers, and discussions than can easily be posted here.

The new deadline for MVSA in April 2025 in Fort Wayne, IN, is Dec. 1! Attendees wishing to workshop a written project can apply for seminar spot by Jan. 5. Grad students doing dissertation research may apply for the Arnstein Prize, deadline Jan. 2. Visit our website for info: midwestvictorian.org

Fantastic 19c studies conference. You don't have to live in the Midwest to join us! This year's theme is Genealogies. Plus thematic seminars led by Alison Booth and Lindsay Wells, and a works-in-progress one led by me. Please consider applying. (And pass it on!)