Valerie Sanders is Professor of English and Director of the Graduate School at the University of Hull. Her research interests include Victorian fatherhood and sibling groups, as well as individual author studies. With Gaby Weiner she has recently edited a collection of essays, Harriet Martineau and the Birth of Disciplines (Routledge 2016). So, Victoria has ended in the U.K., and so has its arch-rival Poldark, briefly leaving Tutankhamun in sole possession of the prime historical drama spot on Sunday evenings. By all accounts
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Hila Shachar, ‘Walking New Myths: Sally Wainwright’s Brontë Biopic’
Hila Shachar is a Lecturer in English Literature at De Montfort University, Leicester, and a member of the Centre for Adaptations who specialises in the adaptation of literary works and authors in various media including film, television, and ballet. Her book, Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), was featured in The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, as well as nominated for the 2012 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. She also works as
Read moreMartin Johnes, ‘A Christmas Carol: A Tale for All Times’
Martin Johnes teaches history at Swansea University and is the author of Christmas and the British: A Modern History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). In 1943 the centenary of the publication of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol appears to have passed with little comment. However, one man did write to The Times to remind people of the occasion, calling it ‘this most delightful of all Christmas ghost stories’. He thought this worth doing because ‘of the influence which Dickens has had on
Read moreLaura Foster, ‘Merry Christmas in the Workhouse’
Laura Foster completed her PhD at Cardiff University in 2014. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the representation of the workhouse in nineteenth-century culture, with a particular focus upon periodical publications and visual material. Her most recently published article, ‘Dirt, Dust and Devilment: Uncovering Filth in the Workhouse and Casual Wards’, is available to read online at Victorian Network. A perusal of the December issues of the Illustrated London News or the Graphic is a gratifying pastime for anyone indulging a
Read moreMaria Quick, ‘Convent Embroidery Workrooms’
Embroidery and needlework agencies run by women, for women, are an under-researched sub-set of the nineteenth-century British art world. I explore these organisations and their complicated relationship with professionalism, commerce and philanthropy in my article ‘Stitching Professionalism’, published in the Journal of Victorian Culture 21, no.2 (2016). One group of female embroiderers that did not fit within the scope of that article, but which deserve further attention, are those that worked in convent workrooms. Religious women living in communities such
Read moreAlison Moulds,Review: The ‘Heart’ and ‘Science’ of Wilkie Collins and his Contemporaries 24 September 2016, Barts Pathology Museum
Alison Moulds is a third-year DPhil candidate at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford working on the construction of professional identities and the doctor-patient relationship in nineteenth-century medical writing and fiction by doctors. She is part of the AHRC-funded project Constructing Scientific Communities. For a conference to get me out of bed and into central London for 9am registration on a Saturday, the theme has to be good. To get me up and out less than 24 hours after moving
Read moreRohan McWilliam, On Reviewing
Rohan McWilliam is Professor of Modern British History at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and reviews editor of the Journal of Victorian Culture. He is a past president of the British Association for Victorian Studies. His comments are made in a personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the views of the JVC editorial board. My thanks to the editors of JVC and my colleagues in the History pathway at Anglia Ruskin for feedback on this blog. Reviewing, it’s fair to
Read moreHannah Field, Tennyson Fan Art: Some Deviations
Hannah Field is a lecturer in Victorian literature at the University of Sussex, where her research spans book history, material culture, and children’s literature. Her first monograph, provisionally titled Novelty Value: The Child Reader and the Victorian Material Book, grows out of her doctoral work with the Opie Collection of Children’s Literature at the Bodleian Library, and will be published by the University of Minnesota Press. Her Twitter handle is @arcane_project. Fan art: ‘art of any form, usually electronic or
Read moreHelen Kingstone, ‘Noiseless revolutions? The Victorian roots of Theresa May’s rhetoric’
Helen Kingstone is co-Deputy Director of the Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies, and Postdoctoral Research Associate at Leeds Trinity University. Her book Victorian Narratives of the Recent Past: memory, history, fiction is forthcoming with Palgrave If you were tuning in to the UK news in early October, you would probably have heard snippets from Theresa May’s first Conservative Party conference speech as leader and Prime Minister. What might – or might not – have surprised you was how steeped it was
Read moreMichael Nott, Developing Photopoetry
Michael Nott received his PhD from the University of St Andrews. He provides commentaries for the Developing Photopoetry project, and is currently working on his first monograph, a critical history of photopoetry. He tweets, occasionally, @michaeljnott Among the treasures of the Photographically Illustrated Poetry Collection at the University of St Andrews is Eleanora (1860), an anonymous poem about the courtship of the titular heroine by a knight called Raymond during the Hundred Years’ War. The St Andrews copy is
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