We held a fantastic @rhul-cvs.bsky.social colloquium yesterday, led by Bonnie Liu. Our keynote from Jacob Jewusiak considered how a lens of 'generational warfare' can illuminate the debates on age of consent in colonial India. Such a rich joining together of ideas and arenas!

Could not have been a more beautiful day for the @rhul-cvs.bsky.social 19thC Studies Colloquium yesterday! Loved sharing my research on the transatlantic repatriation of Brontë and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ #manuscripts, hearing the panel on global and decolonial pedagogy, & exploring RHUL archives! 1/3

‘This has always been an outward-facing city’. Amazing welcome from reps of #Glasgow City Council, to the beautiful Glasgow City Chambers, for the first evening reception of #BAAS2026! @officialbaas.bsky.social conference committee: wow - and thank you, for this and a great first day of papers!

En route to @officialbaas.bsky.social conference 2026 @glasgow.ac.uk! Looking forward to presenting my @leverhulme.ac.uk funded research on how the US repatriation of 19thC literary #manuscripts to Britain intersects with 20thC political histories #BAAS2026

Loved designing a seminar around the resources of the Roy Waters Theatre Collection @royalholloway.bsky.social - historic programmes and newspaper cuttings, including from the very first production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ in 1895! #Wilde #archives

‼️ BAAS and the Journal of American Studies are pleased to announce that they will be recruiting for the following roles at JAS in Summer 2026, for start dates of 2 January 2027. Learn more about the roles here:

Teaching ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ might actually be the best thing in the world. Loved students’ close-reading of Lady Bracknell’s interrogation of Jack

Please signal boost 🙏 Neurodivergent PhD students: What reasonable adjustments and accommodations do you have for your studies? My PhD is in English Literature, I have ADHD (combined type), and I’m struggling. I would like to make changes, but I don’t know what might help.

Items in the ‘Extra/Ordinary Women’ exhib @ Charles #Dickens Museum work to make their female subjects vivid beyond his shadow. I found the audio reel especially effective - also Katey’s curatorial poem about her mother’s calling card case, and Mamey as Clara Benham in ‘The Frozen Deep’.

Loving these twentieth-century Nelson’s Classics Dickenses in the window of Save the Children Woodstock

Who is ‘really’ British? @rachelkbright.bsky.social's project @keeleuniversity.bsky.social is the first meta-analysis of the peoples, places, and processes of how legal Britons were identified, made, or denied across Britain and its empire. media.leverhulme.ac.uk/feature/rbri...

Tally Ho on an 1830s stage coach @ Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum

Our call for papers closes on 13 Feb. Theme is Authenticity: When archives are used within other systems of governance and authority, what does this mean for authentic narratives of major events? Full info openingdoors-ara2026.eventsair.site/call-for-pap...

Great talk this eve by Bridget Bennett @raioxford.bsky.social on 'The Dissenting Atlantic: Archives and Unquiet Libraries, 1776-1865'. Discussing items incl samplers & handmade dolls that can make the archive speak even in the face of huge absences (appropriately, an audience member was knitting...)

Nice to see this research, supported by my @leverhulme.ac.uk Early Career Research Fellowship, reach the most read spot in arts this week #AChristmasCarol #Dickens

#AChristmasCarol by #Dickens was first published #OTD in 1843. I wrote about my archival finding at the Houghton Library @harvard.edu which casts new light on the meanings Dickens may have seen in the story: theconversation.com/did-charles-...

The 2026 Sandars Lectures on 'What will survive of us', by Joan Winterkorn MBE are now available to watch online ▶️https://loom.ly/5bkd50k

One of my highlights of 2025 was a two-week trip to the Brontë Parsonage Museum to research the role of American collecting in shaping the Brontë archive - kindly funded by a @officialbaas.bsky.social Research Assistance Award. Would definitely recommend applying for these!

Today seems like a good day to post a picture of this beautifully-bound edition of 'Pride and Prejudice' I spotted in @blackwellrare.bsky.social a few months back. I wonder who it was reserved for - I imagine they are now enjoying it! #JaneAusten #JaneAusten250

Loved being on this great panel at #NAVSA2025!

Gathered in London tonight with John Drew and assorted Dickensians to do a private reading of a never-performed play of Great Expectations, commissioned by Dickens himself to thwart the would-be pirates who made full use of the lax copyright laws of the time. Geek heaven!

So interesting - I'd heard about this archive, held privately, and wondered which institution would acquire it. Congratulations @uniofcam.bsky.social!

Some of our Reading Rooms will be closed between 27 October and 9 November due to planned strike action at our St Pancras site, and there may be other short notice disruption. To check what’s impacted, please visit our website: bit.ly/StrikeAction...

stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness (bonus if you can tell me who these two are and who drawn by…)

Great news! JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month www.jstor.org/action/showL...

I'm really proud of this: the latest issue of #VictorianStudies has an article of mine in it! It's on #ageing and #generations, & the insightful ways that Victorian novelist Margaret Oliphant approaches these issues, with takeaways for us now. doi.org/10.2979/vic.... 1/

Really enjoyed this - thank you @britishacademy.bsky.social #ECR Network for organising it! Loved hearing about everyone’s writing projects across a range of disciplines.

When you get really excited about an archival holding, and then realise that access is restricted until 2095

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.

As a bit of a toy collector myself this one has extra appeal. Thanks Julia. mainlymuseums.com/post/695//po... #museums #museumfromhome #toys #london

Book news! I’m pleased to say that Railway Infrastructure and the Victoria Novel is now in circulation www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

I'll be running a workshop on 'thinking about impact' at the EC Festival in Derby on 18 Sept. Join us to explore how #EcologicalCitizenship is practised through creativity, community, and collaboration. 📣 Register now - attendance is free & incs lunch! ecologicalcitizens.co.uk/upcoming-eve...

It makes me think of that Victorian exhib ‘Colour Revolution’ @ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social a couple of years ago, that warned us off imagining the Victorian world in black and white just because of the photography. Point extravagantly made here!

Really enjoying the colourful Victorian station at Great Malvern. @victorianlondon.bsky.social I thought of you!

Happy 25th birthday @bavs-uk.bsky.social! Thank you for the beautiful conference dinner and the fiendishly difficult quiz! Glorious Victorian architecture provided by Oxford Town Hall… it felt a bit like dining inside a wedding cake… #BAVS2025

There's a 50% discount on the audiobook of DICKENSLAND at the moment, if you're so minded, and can ignore the slightly odd cover www.audiobooks.co.uk/promotions/p...

You can now read most of the introduction (co-written by me and @johannawinant.bsky.social) to CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, out in October from Princeton UP press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Really enjoyed giving my second public lecture on my research into Dickens biographies yesterday, this time at the beautiful Charterhouse! Thank you @dickensfellowhq.bsky.social for the invitation and the warm welcome!

When English literature had a different place in society @j-amesmarriott.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

Looking forward to this @rhul-cvs.bsky.social!

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Reposting because why not

Proofs are in! 'Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel' should find its way into circulation later this year with CUP 👀🚂 Too many folk to thank here but those acknowledgements are full! www.cambridge.org/core/books/r...

👏 Congratulations to Dr Michael Collins from @kingsenglish.bsky.social for being elected as the new Chair of @officialbaas.bsky.social. 'I will be using my tenure to ensure we make American Studies in Britain as joyous an undertaking as it can be,' said Dr Collins 🎉 🔗 Read more 👇

The Victorian novel: where someone tries to shoot you, and your biggest problem is that you can’t possibly leave the house without your hat (Trollope, Phineas Redux, 1873)

Do you learn by doing? @ies-sas.bsky.social has a new summer school course that explores medieval manuscripts by making them. You’ll learn how inks and pigments were made and used and get to experiment for yourself! 📖📚🎨 @ies-sas.bsky.social book 👇 ies.sas.ac.uk/london-rare-...

Due to a power outage in central Oxford some Bodleian libraries (The Weston Library, Radcliffe Camera, and the Old Bodleian) will close at 5pm today. SSE hope to restore power by 9.30pm.

Meanwhile the illustrations from the 2016 Bratislavan version of both ‘Alice’ books are enough to haunt your dreams #AliceInWonderland

My personal highlight from the newly-donated Jon A. Lindseth #LewisCarroll collection at Christ Church College Oxford, currently on display till April 17, is this beautiful edition of ‘The Hunting of the Snark’. Victorian weirdness shaped my childhood…

Update: cookies have arrived, they are so tasty, and I’m looking forward to presenting on them at conferences this summer (might be stretching this metaphor past sense…)