Grateful for a very positive review of this volume in the newest _Studies in the Age of Chaucer_. Indebted to our fantastic contributors and to editor supreme Clare Litt @livunipress.bsky.social! Remember the paperback is imminent and can be preordered now with a good discount.

This is sad news. I only met Carey once, when his Little History of Poetry was due out with Yale UP. I remember him joking that after so many books with Faber, having something peer-reviewed was a fresh experience(!).

As we come towards the close of the year we at the Guild of Medievalist Makers wanted to share our 'Year in Review: 2025', written by Guild co-founder @hellomizk.bsky.social. Thank you to all of the Guild members who have made 2025 an excellent inaugural year🎉

Today it's been ten years, fifteen journal articles, four chapters, two editions, and two books since I submitted my doctoral thesis.

Attention creative medievalists! Eleanor Barraclough & I are co-editing a special issue of Public Humanities entitled CREATING THE MEDIEVAL NOW! See the cfp for details: essays of 2,000-3,000 words due 1 May 2026. (Amazing artwork by @hellomizk.bsky.social). 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

Learned recently: Osbern Bokenham tells us he wore glasses (or at least used some kind of reading lens?).

Call For Papers: Teaching With Ovid. Any aspect of teaching Ovid in the classroom, for a 2-day symposium on 12-13 June 2026. Classicist teaching Ovid? Medievalist teaching the Ovide moralise? Librarian/archivist with historic copies of Ovid to share? Take a look: shorturl.at/RiviU Deadline 16 Jan.

Poking through a chunk that [poem title redacted] formally highlights in several ways, I find it's also the first known use of a significant word. Which is satisfying.

MLGB is back!! Delighted that Medieval Libraries of Great Britain @bodleian.ox.ac.uk is now back online. We are also working had on plans for the next phase of the resource, enhancing & adding data & functionality. HUGE thanks to my colleagues for their hard & clever work mlgb.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Those who teach and research Sir Gawain and the Green Knight will be interested in this fantastic research hub concerned with historic and contemporary creative responses to the late medieval poem. They're also looking for contributors, so do get in contact with @michaeledenart.bsky.social! 👇

Interested in letter-writing in early medieval Britain? A three-year postdoc on @francescatinti.bsky.social’s and my project is now available. Apps close on 17th Oct. Let me know if you have any questions and please circulate! 🙂 jobs.kent.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Happy to see one of the old wooden chairs from the English Faculty Library quietly occupying a corner in Oxford's new Humanities Library.

This came out earlier this week! Thank you so much to Yale University Press for all their efforts getting it to publication.

🚨🐳We’re putting together a panel on #whales in medieval #literature for #IMC2026! Two papers are already confirmed: Icelandic sagas and English poetry. We’re looking for one more speaker to join us. If your research touches literary traditions too, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please DM.

Really enjoying @danielsawyer.bsky.social’s How To Read Middle English Poetry! I bought a copy to supplement my knowledge of ME (working on only limited romances, I don’t come across lots of the potential forms) and it is doing an amazing job of recolouring poems familiar and new!

A Midnight Treasury of Macabre & Weird Poems, ed Ana Sampson, featuring the poems of (amongst others) Percy Bysshe Shelley and yours truly (!), out in Sept! (Pictured here with the Shelley Memorial at University College, Oxford) 🥀🪾👻🖤

Mary has kindly shared a 20% discount code for her @reaktionbooks.bsky.social biography of Chaucer, Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard, when purchasing direct from the Reaktion Books website! You can find the discount code at the bottom of the blogpost.

My book is out! Medieval Responses to Ovid's Exile, with Cambridge UP @universitypress.cambridge.org. I am so grateful to the friends, family, colleagues, librarians and archivists who helped along the way. Nervous and excited to see it in the world! www.cambridge.org/core/books/m...

Glad to see another generous review of the book, this time in SELIM's journal: reunido.uniovi.es/index.php/SE...

Can attest that this is an excellent teaching book (and useful for those teaching, too!)

If you're someone planning to teach Middle English next year please consider my book, which might be helpful for your students!

Absolutely delighted that my article on the textual transmission of Aldhelm's Carmen de virginitate is now out in the most recent volume of Mittellateinische Jahrbuch!

After six months ill and writing slowly at best, I'm trying to get back into the saddle with my third book. (I'm not recovered, just starting to learn to live with it.)

An exhibition of medieval manuscripts at Cambridge's @parkerlibcccc.bsky.social! Curated by Timothy Glover (Richard Rolle specialist and current Parker Library Early-Career Research Fellow). Do pop in/book a tour if you are in Cambridge - July only!

A fantastic 2nd day at @themamoconf.bsky.social 🎉 Gorgeous performance of Yde & Olive by @daisyeblack.bsky.social. I really enjoyed @danielsawyer.bsky.social paper- buy his excellent book! Fantastic energising workshop wi @menysnoweballes.bsky.social & I enjoyed repping @guildmedmak.bsky.social

Come to my paper tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon to find out why it has such a curiously uninformative title. I promise a unique answer.

Come and say hi in the Council Room during the breaks! We have examples of our work and also merch! (Postcards & pins!) @guildmedmak.bsky.social

The AND's own transcriptions of 13 unpublished Anglo-Norman texts (including religious narratives, a legal treatise and language manuals) are now also accessible through the Oxford Text Archive. hdl.handle.net/20.500.14106...

Looking forward to @themamoconf.bsky.social tomorrow.

Over the year I've been collecting new medieval publications and reading suggestions to add to summer reading lists, and the time has come for updating. Some highlights in this thread, mostly found by word of mouth recommendations or social media. Please add other recent publications you've enjoyed!

If you would like to know what all your friends are talking about, you can now pre-order the paperback edition of SPECULATIVE POETRY AND THE MODERN ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL for just a measly $31! @sfpoetry.bsky.social www.bloomsbury.com/us/speculati...

Connoisseurship and Medieval Manuscripts: A Roundtable, will take place this Friday, 6 June, at 4 pm. Join us at the Weston Library for a lively discussion with Emily Guerry, Peter Kidd and Michael Michael! Image: Sydney Cockerell, The Gorleston Psalter (London, 1907), pl. IX. #OMMG #medievalsky

Somehow I'd missed that the Anglo-Norman Dictionary was here in the skies! This is slightly old but still thrilling news about their new cross-dictionary search feature. #medievalsky

Beautiful new medieval-themed issue of our UoM undergrad English Literature journal, with a foreword by me (doing my best to explain why medieval literature is worth studying): www.polyphonyjournal.com

New article: 'The Counter-Arthurian Piracy of Jack Spicer’s Holy Grail' doi.org/10.1057/s412...

Publication news - it’s been a long time coming, but the monograph is finally here!! I’m so delighted to have it out in the world! So many thanks to the team at @boydellandbrewer.bsky.social and especially the brilliant @canarycaroline.bsky.social for the incredible support and editorial insight!

The only specifically scheduled thing in my diary today involves Osbern Bokenham.

I'm returning to work after a week's leave. Was very sorry to hear of Vincent Gillespie's passing: www.english.ox.ac.uk/article/prof...

Afternoon recirculation. The book has lots of lovely chapters, though I'm afraid it does also contain one by me.

Had a lovely time this evening at the launch for /Books, Readers and Libraries in Fiction/, out now (inc. open access) from UoL Press!

On calculating the number of female scribes and their manuscript output in medieval Europe. sonja-drimmer.squarespace.com/blog-1/2025/...

Cartoonist-friends! Interested in learning about medieval studies and meeting academics for potential collaborations? Apply to join us in Chicago from 5-6 June 2025 for a crossover workshop at the Newberry Library entitled “Cartooning the Medieval”!! www.newberry.org/calendar/car...

Today my dictation software transcribed 'medieval manuscripts' as 'many evil manuscripts'.

The final week of Hilary Term is upon us.

Teaching with manuscripts for the last time this term tomorrow afternoon! (A small bonus class for some undergraduates.)

It's the later part of Hilary Term. As ever, the start of term feels like it stands both about two days ago and about two centuries ago.

A day of teaching preparation. Prepared to teach with some manuscripts containing OE next week. Prepared to teach ME romances in two weeks' time. Prepared to teach with lots of manuscripts next term. Poked around some transcriptional mysteries.

Lecture yesterday was the last in our series on early Middle English. Loved getting to spend concentrated time on things like Lawman's Brut, Ancrene Wisse, and Havelok.

Palaeography test day. A very committed MSt cohort have been preparing for this since October. I've been very impressed, as I am every year, by their hard work and their developing skills.