Truly honored and deeply grateful to have been awarded the Greta Depledge Prize for best postgraduate paper, given by @vpfa.bsky.social at its 18th annual conference for my paper on Arthur Machen’s manipulative storytelling. This award means more to me than I can put into words. Thank you ❤️

Our 18th Annual Conference is now over, and some of you may be staving off the post-VPFA conference depression. Not to worry, because we have JUST the cure: Volume 8, issue 1 of Victorian Popular Fictions Journal 🤩💫 Read it online here: victorianpopularfiction.org/publications...

Victorian Popular Fictions volume 8 issue 1 (Spring 2026)

Table of Contents ArticlesJulia Kuehn and Diane Eveline van den Brink. The Good, the Bad, and the Popular: The Question of a Popular Canon and Other Methodological ContemplationsLinda K. Hughes. Cr…

victorianpopularfiction.org

A *fantastic* time at #VPFAPublics the last few days. Fascinating papers, fruitful discussions (Some fun things on the horizon)... Caught up with old pals, made some new ones - every year I'm blown away by the incredible warmth of @vpfa.bsky.social. All the thanks to Jo and Janine for organising!

This is SO GOOD! Julia Kuehn and Diane Eveline Van den Brink open the latest issue of @vpfa.bsky.social journal with a polemical article that includes a case study featuring Wilkie Collins and Marie Corelli.

Victorian Popular Fictions 8.1 1 Kuehn and van den Brink

The Good, the Bad, and the Popular: The Question of a Popular Canon and Other Methodological ContemplationsJulia Kuehn and Diane Eveline van den BrinkDownload PDF hereAbstractThis article challenge…

victorianpopularfiction.org

What a fantastic three days at #VPFAPublics in Liverpool! I had an amazing time in one of the most beautiful venues I’ve ever seen. Such a joy to learn more about Victorian popular fiction while catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. Can’t wait for next year!

The Bodies panel was certainly one of my favourites too. Fascinating research presented at #VPFAPublics day 2.

Dr Joanna Turner@coppertapestry.bsky.social · 4w ago

Bodies - WHAT A PANEL at #vpfapublics It was absolutely brilliant! I loved hearing from Megan Nash, Anna-Maria Grill, and @ebutler-way.bsky.social about their fascinating research! @vpfa.bsky.social

@andrewkingc19.bsky.social talking about how Victorians marketed Pop Fiction - and I’m very excited to learn more about Victorian marketing, particularly design and product placement! Makes me think of my trawling through Punch for crumbs of context! #VPFAPublics

Can you imagine trying to de-anonymise 22 Victorian sensation novels? Because Janine Hatter can! What an amazing project 😱 #VPFAPublics

very pleased to have signed the advance contract for my first monograph, Ecogothic America and the Twenty-First-Century Novel, with @edinburghup.bsky.social !

Helena Ifill discussing Charlotte Riddell's direct addresses to the reader, arguing that they were used as part of her campaign to become "the" novelist of London. city. Though she was interested in the lives of city women, her USP was the lives and hearts of city businessmen #VPFAPublics

Bodies - WHAT A PANEL at #vpfapublics It was absolutely brilliant! I loved hearing from Megan Nash, Anna-Maria Grill, and @ebutler-way.bsky.social about their fascinating research! @vpfa.bsky.social

Jo’s fantastic Corelli book will be out in August!

Dr Joanna Turner@coppertapestry.bsky.social · last mo.

Prepare to be Corellied @vpfa.bsky.social conference-goers! In the pack there’s a special offer for delegates to pre-order this beauty (is she winking? I like to think so!), and I’ll be speaking in panel two on Monday. The book can be ordered from EER next month www.eerpublishing.com/turner-marie...

Order up Bowie's guitar to hold and strum? Byzantine glass shards to hold to the light? Beatrix Potter watercolours to peer at closely? This is so very very cool. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/a...

A One-on-One Date With a Museum’s Treasures

nytimes.com

Thanks @vpfa.bsky.social for having me at #vpfapublics I loved being in the company of Beniko Inamura and my wonderful PhD supervisor @braddonite.bsky.social

#VPFAPublics Theatricalities panel. @braddonite.bsky.social (Anne-Marie Beller): For Braddon, theatre = metaphor for social performance. "Acting" explores social performativity. Complex, shifting reps of actresses reflect changing ideas about acting.

"Deerstalker" hats are dangerously genderqueer fashion for women, thought Marie Corelli? Sherlock's hat? @coppertapestry.bsky.social #VPFAPublics

Jo Turner @coppertapestry.bsky.social : Marie Corelli gave public speeches to "my public" of 1000s. Literary celebrity-> "platform poetry." Inconsistent, as Corelli bashed women for unfeminine public speech? Check out Jo's biography of Corelli from the VPWW Series. #VPFAPublics

Delightful that as we gear up for #VPFAPublics, the new issue of VPFJ is out, featuring yours truly in some great company! Have I been wanting to write this since my MA? Quite possibly. Alcott, sensation, Genette, Goethe ... What more could you want? doi.org/10.46911/YER... @vpfa.bsky.social

Victorian Popular Fictions 8.1 3 Butler-Way

“The omen never fails”: Appropriating Intertexts in Louisa May Alcott’s A Long Fatal Love ChaseEmma Butler-WayDownload PDF hereAbstractNot seeing publication until 130 years after it was written, L…

doi.org

Get to know our Web Manager, Emma Butler-Way ✨ @ebutler-way.bsky.social Here are her answers to our 5 questions: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... Read her blog post about joining VPFA here: victorianpopularfiction.org/in-which-emm...

Prepare to be Corellied @vpfa.bsky.social conference-goers! In the pack there’s a special offer for delegates to pre-order this beauty (is she winking? I like to think so!), and I’ll be speaking in panel two on Monday. The book can be ordered from EER next month www.eerpublishing.com/turner-marie...

Prepare to be Corellied @vpfa.bsky.social conference-goers! In the pack there’s a special offer for delegates to pre-order this beauty (is she winking? I like to think so!), and I’ll be speaking in panel two on Monday. The book can be ordered from EER next month www.eerpublishing.com/turner-marie...

Come and study English and History with us on our new joint honours degree at @lborouniversity.bsky.social. Or better yet: tell all the 17-year olds you know. www.lboro.ac.uk/study/underg... #Loughborough #HE #undergraduate #BA #English #History

Been thinking about #critical #creativity/ #creative #criticism recently as alternatives to literary critical essays and decided to set extracts from #Ouida novels to music, and then music video. Here's the first. How successful is it at clarifying her argument here? youtu.be/JSDkZsMKjS4

Characters from Ouida, for Voice and String Quartet. 1 Bebee and the Sun

YouTube video by Andrew King

youtu.be

Bestselling novelist Marie Corelli was born today in 1854 as Caroline Cody. It’s a great day to perform a cover reveal for my volume of the @vpfa.bsky.social Key Popular Women Writers series on Corelli—out VERY soon. I am incredibly excited for it to be out in the world! @lboroenglish.bsky.social

#EnglishCreates: Futures Today, Prof Jennifer Cooke (Loughborough University) discusses the profound value of reading in the age of social media: 'Just as smart phones and social media sites train us in one way, proper reading trains us in another...' universityenglish.ac.uk/really-readi...

Invited to write this short piece for The Conversation on the dark, poetic origins of Wuthering Heights. Her Gothic imagination was nothing short of electrifying. #books #gothicliterature #wutheringheights #bronte #bookstagram

I am so pleased to share that I passed my viva yesterday!! Working on my PhD thesis (‘Abortion in Nineteenth-Century British Literature’) at @lboroenglish.bsky.social has been a wonderful experience thanks to my incredible supervisory team @drclaireocall.bsky.social @braddonite.bsky.social 💕🦋🫀

Registration is now live for my VPFA Study Day on 'Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities'. It's free to attend, thanks to funding from the VPFA and the Health Humanities Hub at Loughborough University. The programme and the link to register here: victorianpopularfiction.org/sensation-fi...

Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities: 27th March 2026

A VPFA Study DayHosted by Loughborough University Registration now open! Click here to register Scroll down for the Study Day Programme The Health Humanities and Victorian popular fiction intersect…

victorianpopularfiction.org

Happy Shrove Tuesday! Want to know how to make pancakes the way the Elizabethans ate them? And what boozy ingredients have been used in pancakes and fritters throughout history? Our own @saralread.bsky.social has written for @theconversation.com about the curious history of pancakes 🥞

A history of pancake recipes – from Elizabethan ale to the invention of self-raising flour

One recipe suggests using ‘snow’ as a winter alternative to eggs.

theconversation.com

Our Head of Department @sadiseshiah.bsky.social has published a new book chapter - 'Staging Utopian Subjects: Contemporary British Theatre Beyond the Barriers' - in The Cambridge Companion to British Utopian Literature and Culture Since 1945.

The Cambridge Companion to British Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945

Cambridge Core - English Literature after 1945 - The Cambridge Companion to British Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945

cambridge.org