Work in progress. I'm slightly obsessed with turn-of-the-(19th)century theatre/pantomime/circus playbills at the moment, so I'm re-creating posters and ads for more recent productions (and products) in that style. #graphics #movies #davidlynch #victorian

Can anyone help me decipher a bit of handwriting from 1852? I'm trying to figure out the cause of death in this record.

This Is Just To Say I have eaten Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, and who you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me he was delicious so sweet and so cold

Prove you’re not a Whig.

The latest issue of @historyextra.bsky.social is out! I’m part of a new monthly feature called ‘Ask the Experts’ — each issue, a group of expert historians all answer the same question. This month, we’re asking who is the most ‘overrated’ figure in history? Who do you think I picked?

I made a video for @wired.com answering questions from the internet about Victorian history! youtu.be/10iYlK7bsJw?...

This week we launch a new programme for early career researchers with @ihr.bsky.social & @chalkefestival.bsky.social 'Pitch my Project' is an opportunity for early career historians to present their research at the 2026 Chalke History Festival bit.ly/44kfUMM Applications now invited #Skystorians

TODAY!

THIS WEEK! Join us!!

19C literary folk - who was Mrs Lawrence? it's all good humour up until this point. she made quite an, erm, impression.

all academic applications should have consolation prizes. doesn’t have to be much, like a mug that says “i applied for leverhulme 2020” or a t-shirt “UKRI reject 2023”

For our next seminar, the wonderful @digivictorian.bsky.social is hosting our just as wondrous PhD researchers, Liam Pope, Laura Grande Mateu, Emily Hayes, & Emma Butler, for our #19thCFlashTalks. Join us for a pre-Christmas treat on Wednesday 10th December from 6 pm. Free, online, all welcome!

This is a wonderful thread. Scholarship, creativity, a portrait of a generation.

I appear as an expert historian in a new documentary film about the trials of Oscar Wilde. Check it out on History Hit from today! access.historyhit.com/videos/a-ver...

NEXT WEEK - join us!

Our next #RSVPDigiEvent is coming up on Friday, 21 November! We'll hear from the editors of 3 top Victorian studies journals (including VPR's own kmalonephd.bsky.social) on "How to Get Published in an Academic Journal." Come one, come all! buff.ly/ydJkKAK

This is one of three cartoons I have in the current Private Eye.

It’s lovely to see our BAVS CFP out. If you research/teach any aspect of the Victorian period (broadly defined) do consider joining us! You can submit a paper, roundtable, creative workshops/ pedagogical paper. We really are open to a wide range of talks! victorianist.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/c...

Our @ehunineteen.bsky.social seminar series starts next week with @drreznicek.bsky.social talking to me about care in Romantic novels - register in skeet below! Free, online, all welcome!

19th century writers love describing all the different compartments of a woman's face. "Vaulting eyebrows. Rose petal lips. Eyes like a gelid pond." I'm not a police sketch artist. Just say "brown hair".

“Copyright growing pains” is one hell of a euphemism for the biggest IP theft in history

Funeral Invitation, 1688. Funeral invitations first appeared in the 17th century, and acted as an admission ticket to both the church and the funeral feast. Pallbearers were often assigned a number on the ticket to signify their position in carrying the coffin.

Well don't I feel stupid

With science falling under increasing attack, this medical historian is here to remind people of the power of #vaccines. THREAD🧵 Hard-hitting polio advert from 1958. In the first half of the 20th century, polio was the leading cause of death in children and young adults. 1/7

So @digivictorian.bsky.social encouraged me to do this

the quaint world of Victorian porn advertisements

We don’t all share the same internet. The personalised algorithm has siloed us into parallel worlds

I’m on TV tonight! Check out the first episode of Britain’s Railway Empire at 8pm on Channel 4. It’s a new, two part series about the history of the railways, starting with the Victorian Era. It’s not just a story about tech and engineering, but covers the social and cultural impact too.

It was such a joy this morning to see Lela Harris’s extraordinary portrait of Miss Lambe, Jane Austen’s only character explicitly of African heritage, from the last novel she worked on. She died at age 41 without being able to finish Miss Lambe’s story. 1/

Hello UK friends - please, please could you sign this petition against the job cuts at my place of work - 1 in 4 us will be out of a job by August next year if we don't stop the cuts. And once you've signed it, please share. We need your help! www.change.org/p/stop-mass-...

does anyone know of any research on the history of the 'family newspaper' - by which I mean a 'newspaper' produced usually by children, about daily goings-on in the household? think Gad's Hill Gazette, Hyde Park Gate News, etc...

Talk about The Wire, Sopranos, Game of Thrones all you want, but the greatest US television program ever made is Sesame Street. It's not even close. 50+ years of treating kids across class, ethnicity, religion not as mini-consumers...but as citizens with a stake in this world.

Of use to those working on 1852-1879, it includes a chronological index of open-access copies of the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, a widely read (affordable) secular early women’s monthly miscellany. jmsw.github.io/edm-index/ Now updated with a searchable spreadsheet of contents by category!

Speaking of the Illustrated London News, a paper whose pages I never tire of turning, here's an account of its (mainly 19th-c.) history I put together some years back for the publisher Gale, which has made the essay free to access. It was fun to write. www.gale.com/intl/essays/... #C19th

IT'S ALIVE!!!!! I had the best time working with Annemarie to edit our fabulous contributions - huge thanks to our authors for sharing their research, and for being polite when I suggested revisions. Huge thanks also to VPR ed Kathy Malone for her patience and making the editorial process so smooth.

Job alert! We're advertising for a full-time, permanent Lecturer or Senior Lecturer in 20thC American History at Edge Hill. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNX206/l...

This is terrifying, and happening right now. My university is about to reduce the curriculum from 6 20-credit modules per year to 4 30-credit ones, one assessment per module. Explicitly designed to reduce subject richness in favour of skills (and save on teacher numbers). Students will hate it.

I'm on the TV! 'Jack the Ripper: Written in Blood' is a new docudrama about the journalists who reported on the killings and helped to mythologise the figure of the Ripper. I'm one of the talking-head historians. Part one premiers tonight at 9pm on Sky History & NOW TV. #WritteninBlood

Got weekend plans? Cancel them to read my chapter, 'Working-Class Writing in Victorian Britain' in the absolutely stellar Routledge Companion to Working-Class Literature!

Matthew Stephens @c19thnewshound.bsky.social argues that short-lived newspapers, often overlooked as the expected casualties of a developing industry, were actually a significant proportion of the 19th century’s press. Read it in VPR 57.1-2: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl... @rs4vp.bsky.social

🚀📈 Making Victorian visual culture searchable: Introducing an open-access and AI-powered dataset of 72,000 illustrations from the Illustrated London News (1842-1890). (w. Bethany Warner, @pfyfe.bsky.social and @bcgl.bsky.social) openhumanitiesdata.metajnl.com/articles/10....

So pleased my article on geo-coding addresses of 121 million + people in British censuses 1851-1911 is now out with Historical Methods! #openaccess - map any census info (ages, occupations, birthplaces etc) by address - link census to other spatial datasets Get the code and data 👇

This is both an incredibly niche thing but I think it should be more of a thing. Caffè Nero subscribes to the British Newspaper Archive so it’s all free on their wifi. There. I said it.

Disco was discovered in 18th century Wales by Erthwynn Dann-Fyre

Hi everyone, can you help one of my students with her MA dissertation? Amy is exploring the motivations, influences & ambitions of those who practice history (from professionals to amateurs, paid to hobbyist). Fill in her survey to add your experience (& please share): forms.office.com/e/mFNv6tAqxn

Oxford University Press will be awarding as many as 10 ECRs the opportunity to publish their first book in fully open access as well as in hardback. Today the website was revised to make clear that independent/unaffiliated scholars are eligible. Deadline March 3. academic.oup.com/pages/early-...

‼️NEW EPISODE ALERT!🚨 You’re Dead To Me tackles the Arts & Crafts Movement, featuring the wonderful Cariad Lloyd & needlework expert Dr Isabella Rosner. It’s a very fun, big vibes one! Listen first on BBC Sounds! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Just found out that as of today that History as a whole is being notified that we’re at risk of redundancy. This’ll be the second time I’ve had to reapply for my own job in under 5 years! Our sector is at breaking point.