Welcome!

I’m a historian by training, and a Victorianist by practice. I’m especially interested in the bits of culture that don’t fall neatly into the conventional domains of History, Art and Theatre History, or Literature, including public lecturing, periodicals and newspapers, ‘talk’ and cultural identities. I’ve recently take up the role of President of the British Association for Victorian Studies

News

The Curran Index.

I’m delighted to have been selected to be the incoming Editor of the Research Society for Victorian Periodical’s Curran Index. The Index supplements and extends the attribution work of the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals. It already contains 170,000 attributions across more than 80 periodicals. But of course there’s so much more to be done. Looking forward to this challenge. Contact me if you would like to help!

Recent Blogs

  • Sarah Lewis, author of Woman’s Mission (1839)

    Sarah Lewis must have strong claims to be most widely-known unknown person in Victorian Britain. Her book Woman’s Mission, first published in 1839 and reprinted 16 times in the next 15 years was enormously influential. Along with the contemporaneous works of Sarah Stickney Ellis (1799-1872), including the Women of England (1839), Lewis’ book formed the…

  • Darwinism’s Generations: an ‘autoreview’

    Preliminary note. This is an unusual text. Authors do not generally review their own works (although it is a practice not without its shady Victorian antecedents). And for the obvious reasons: assessments of significance and merit are best sought from expert third parties. And yet there are other things which readers of reviews seek, not…