#VPFAPublics Nishtha Trehan: Robert can invade Lady Audley's space, go through her things, and read her letters because she is a woman. :(

#VPFAPublics Nishtha Trehan: Braddon lets us into some *secret* correspondence. It transforms from private matter into public evidence.

#VPFAPublics: Nishtha Trehan: to leave a letter unopened is to censor it! (Me: in the modern British imagination, this also happens in Stoppard's ARCADIA [1990ish?] which I just saw.) 😎

#VPFAPublics Nishtha Trehan (joining us online from Uttarakhand): Victorian women's letters are NOT private-sphere-only, but when they cross into the public they risk "rebounding" against their writers. (Ouch!)

#VPFAPublics: Helen McKenzie: more of the literary labor force: Mr. William Tinsley is "an untiring *****worker**** in the field of literature," said Braddon. His RLF app was rejected. (Emphasis Helen's.)

#VPFAPublics Braddon recommended to the RLF the "praiseworthy life and intellectual labour" of writer Miss Edith Heraud.

#VPFAPublics Helen McKenzie: The RLF and Braddon's letters of recommendation. Wrote about 1/2 for women writers, who "toiled and fought" - breadwinners and a frighteningly modern literary precariat.

#VPFAPublics Debora Sarnelli: Collins commodities himself! ("I may become once more a saleable commodity in the English book-market" (1867)

#VPFAPublics Debora Sarnelli reveals the interactivity of Wilkie Collins's writing process as shown by his interaction with the public in his letters. How do texts reach readers? How do systems that involve readers make circulation possible?

#VPFAPublics Hannah Winspear-Schillings: c19 pre-history of autism & autistic representation. "The Library in the Window." Trying to "read for resonance" with autistic characters.

#VPFAPublics Tyler Clark: Unearthing drag/transfemininity/"effeminacy" in the digital archive. 1846: "A Man in Woman's Clothes." 1850: "Eliza/Elijah Scott the Black Man/Woman." "Her Majesty, Queen of CAMP" (1874 - first ref?!). 1880: "Raid on a Fancy Dress Ball in Manchester." "Fancy Dress"=Drag.

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

@coppertapestry.bsky.social #VFPAPublics: So, was Marie Corelli a Victorian "PickMe-Girl?"

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

#VPFAPublics: Beniko Imamura: Victorian theatrical adaptation was not a one-way street. It was a back-and-forth "process of competition."

#VPFAPublics @braddonite.bsky.social : Lady Audley is the "complete actress." Female performance compelled by external forces, contra Victorian scientific thought.

#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.

Congrats {belatedly} to @ttendthetale.bsky.social on this well-deserved recognition!

Victorian Popular Fiction Association@vpfa.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We are thrilled to announce the winner of VPFA's First Book Prize 2025: Rebecca Nesvet, James Malcom Rymer, Penny Fiction, and the Family! Honourable mentions were Riley McGuire, Dysfluent in Fiction: Vocal Disability & Nineteenth-Century Literature and Jay Sullivan, Egyptian Gothic: 1884-1920.

#VPFAPublics bricolage makerspace with Lucie

A game by one of Lucie's students #VPFAPublucs

#VPFAPublics Time to make a Victorianist zine page.

"If you think students are using AI, what are you doing to make them NOT use AI?" - Lucie #VPFAPublics

"we are able to physically and visually experience aspects of history" in Lucie's creative assessments. #VPFAPublics

#VPFAPublics Lucie's module concludes with a tea party at which students write on the tablecloth. This sounds fun - and increases student engagement and belonging.

#VPFAPublics Lucie Matthews-Jones asks us to think about what "sparks joy" in our teaching.

George Gissing, prophet of Hell. His character who imagines this is a woman writer.