Anna Alma-Tadema, teenaged daughter of the more famous Lawrence, shows her prodigious talent in these paintings of the Drawing Room at 1A Holland Park and her father’s library at Townsend House (1880s),
“Of aal the fish there iss in the sea,” said Para Handy, “nothing bates the herrin’; it’s a providence they’re plentiful and them so cheap!”
Neil Munro (1863–1930) – journalist, novelist, short-story writer, & poet – was born #OTD, 3 June. Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of Herring discusses Munro’s PARA HANDY stories, as well as giving the full text of the tale “The Herring – A Gossip”
David Robb discusses James Hogg’s short stories “Mary Burnet”, “The Brownie of the Black Haggs”, & “Strange Letter of a Lunatic” at our 2017 Schools Conference
During the Peninsular War a wounded soldier recuperates in a remote location. He falls in love with the daughter of the house, but her family hides a terrible secret…
“Widely respected – & regularly attacked (once physically) – in her lifetime, she is now largely neglected; an intriguing aside to feminism or to agnosticism. Dixie deserves better.”
Florence Dixie – novelist, poet, dramatist, war correspondent, campaigning journalist, suffragist, & more – was born #OTD, 25 May. Valentina Bold explores Dixie’s roving life
According to the Guinness Book of Records, Sherlock Holmes has been portrayed on screen more than any other literary character. Olivia Rutigliano ranks the 100 best, worst, & strangest screen portrayals of the great detective…
In 1912, “Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the world’s most celebrated fictional detective, had turned detective himself in an actual murder case – in the process liberating a man who had spent nearly twenty years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“THE DYNAMITER is a hugely inventive & brilliant book, at once a political thriller, a blackly comic satire, & a female adventure”
Robert Louis Stevenson & Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne married #OTD, 19 May, 1880. In this article, Prof Penny Fielding explores the dangerous #collaboration between RLS & his wife: granting female agency on the page & in life
CFP: ‘We Are Amused’: Victorian Humour & the Digital
7–8 Nov, Université Caen Normandie
Exploring intersections between #19thcentury#humour & the digital, & investigating the migration of jokes, squibs, spoofs & parodies, verbal & visual, from the pages of #Victorian comic periodicals to 21st-century screens
The Scottish Novel in 1824
1 July, University of Edinburgh – free
This one-day in-person symposium marks the bicentenary of 1824, an ‘annus mirabilis’ in the history of Scottish fiction that saw the publication of two experimental masterpieces: James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs & Confessions of a Justified Sinner, & Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet.
Save the date! The next 19th Century Dress and Textiles Reframed "At Home" online talks will be on Sunday, June 30, "focused on photography and its connections to 19th century fashion".
Programme:
📸 Robyne Calvert: Artists & Photographic Fantasies
📸 Erika Lederman: 'Counterfeit Specimens'. Isabel Agnes Cowper's Needlework Photographs for the South Kensington Museum
📸 Beatrice Behlen: Mrs Broom's photographs of suffragettes
A SCANDALOUS 1865 DIVORCE case offers a window into New York high society—the defendant was a cousin of Edith Wharton, no less—and the time’s changing attitudes about marriage, women’s rights, and sexuality. Great balance of gossip and context. B PLUS
Addendum: we should address the 🐘 in the room… in case of confusion, there is of course a FICTIONAL “John Galt”, created by a very famous American author, whose towering influence on literature still resonates today…
…of course I speak of the late, great Robert E. Howard, whose character “John Galt” appears in the short story “Black Talons”, published in STRANGE DETECTIVE STORIES, Dec 1933 (it’s not one of his best, though—stick to #Conan the Barbarian)
The Doings of Doyle podcast
Episode 50: The Surgeon of Gaster Fell (1890)
A close look at a deeply personal story that draws on the sad case of Arthur Conan Doyle’s father. Featuring redactions, dreamy rooms, the Foreign Legion, fairy art, & dodgy lodgers …
Finally, on Sunday April 28, there'll be another "At Home with c19th Dress and Textiles Reframed" event!
Programme:
🧵 Linda McShannock - A Living for the Earnest, A Fortune for the Capable: Dressmaking in Minneapolis, 1880-1920
🧵 Cecilia Soares - A transatlantic wardrobe: an analysis of the Belle Époque sartorial goods from the Ivy House Museum, in Vassouras, Brazil (1870-1910)
🧵 Alden O'Brien - TBD