Back to the joys of lecture writing this weekend (& dog cuddling) ... today I'm on the high seas with Edward Coxere ... #seafever ⚓⚓⚓

Hillary Taylor. Language and Social Relations in Early Modern England. In her monograph Language and Social Relations in Early Modern England, Hillary Taylor unpacks both contested and idealized social relations in early moder

I reviewed Hillary Taylor's "Language and Social Relations in early modern England" for the AHR. An excellent book and one where the thesis is one that all us early modern UK historians should sit with.

Just out in 17th Century - my new article on Leonard Wheatcroft, the bard of Ashover, ”Poetry and the Politics of the Parish”. Featuring weathercocks, a non-elite manuscript miscellany, and lots of bellringing!
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Just out in 17th Century - my new article on Leonard Wheatcroft, the bard of Ashover, ”Poetry and the Politics of the Parish”. Featuring weathercocks, a non-elite manuscript miscellany, and lots of bellringing!
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A very zoomed out view of four rainbow-colored columns. The pair on the left shows colors in a continuous gradation from red to blue, next to the same colors rearranged so that the colors are mixed up: several red and orange lines appear among the blue and green, and vice-versa. The pair on the right shows the poems sorted according to the second edition, with variations of color appearing to the left. The large impression from both is that it is not that a few poems get relocated, but that significant clusters get moved around across the two editions.

I am learning a lot at the Cal Tech Bacon conference--including that it is possible to program in gradations of color in Excel. I immediately used to to map how poems move around between the two main variants of Cavendish's Poems and Fancies. Look how beautiful and complicated!

Government to lift paywall from large parts of the Land Registry Exclusive: finding out who owns land will become simpler under plans to make the best use of green spaces and hit net zero targets

VICTORY! Government to open up the Land Registry - bringing to an end a thousand years of secrecy shrouding who owns England.

I’ve been campaigning for this for ten years: the new Land Use Framework, published later today, makes it government policy. 1/

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

'Shakespeare and the Restoration Repertory shows how Shakespeare contributed to one of the most vibrant and innovative chapters of English theatre culture not as an isolated entity, but as a productive part of a much more diverse repertory.'

Nice review of my book 😊
hdl.handle.net/11222.digili...

Hi Andrew love the show, first time bothering you on hear but I was literally wondering the other day— what role if any does George Martin’s sped up piano on “In My Life” play in the harpsichord fad?

Sent revisions this morning so not imminent but shouldn’t be too long (sorry to be mysterious for now!)

an interesting Derbyshire one mentioned in something I have coming out fairly shortly in 17th C…

The Dr Williams’s Trust Library Bursaries for Mid-Career Researchers The Dr Williams’s Trust has generously provided funds to support the work of mid-career historians researching the British Protestant dissenting traditions.

Are you a mid-career historian researching 17th & 18th-century British Protestant dissenting traditions? 🏛️ Apply for the Dr Williams's Trust Library Bursaries at the IHR! Three awards of £3,500 are available to support your research in London libraries and archives www.history.ac.uk/fellowships-...

Restoration Reshaping An Interdisciplinary study of British theater between 1660 and 1737. Restoration Reshaping explores English theater between the reopening of the playhouses in 1660 and the Licensing Act of 1737, exami...

Exciting to see this volume - with an essay by yours truly on Restoration theatrical rivalries - will be available imminently. It also has a very fun cover! press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

This only works if someone invented a device that can identify marginalia just by scanning along the shelves. But another man can just weirdly detect their presence just by the lumpy shapes of the spines

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

This is a really useful guide if you're marking student submitted work that you suspect is at least partly AI generated - those ones that feel wrong but you can't put your finger on anything specific:

Two men on stage playing guitars, one sings into a microphone.

'What a brilliant night! Wills: dry, formal, boring? This was story telling at its best: intriguing, engaging, human!’

In this new blog post, find out what happened when Chris Hoban and his band, The Executors, played to a packed house in Topsham

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

#EarlyModern 🗃️

constructivist-inspired banner in red and cream with black lettering bearing the legend STOP FORCING AI INTO FUCKING EVERYTHING - nobody asked for it everyone hates it

(from www.instagram.com/nobodyssweet...)

Herrick for coinages with circum: “circumflankt”, “circumspangle“, “circumgyrate”

A Peasant Calling Out: "it's very cold", 1634.
Rembrandt van Rijn

(The Cleveland Museum of Art)

A frosty churchyard

Kick started the new work year with another installment of my 'research walk', retracing the parish boundaries of 17thC Portishead for my book on 'Everyday Life in the 17thC Village'. Got a taste of the 'Little Ice Age' - a period of colder temperatures that impacted the 17thC - by going out in -1!

A black and white printed frontispiece from an early modern book. The text in the centre reads 'Four Choice Carols for Christmas Holidays.' Carol I. On Christmas Day. Carol II. On St. Stephen's Day. Carol III. On St. John's-Day. Carol IV. On Innocent's Day. Being very necessary and proper to be had in all Christian Families. There are three woodcut images underneath - of St Matthew on the left, the Virgin and child in the centre, and St John on the right. Detail from FOUR Choice CAROLS for CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS (London, 1700-1).

🎄A FESTIVE TREAT: BONUS CHRISTMAS BLOG POST🎄

🎁As we approach the holidays, @lsangha.bsky.social has collected some of the best 'Christmassy' names in The National Archives' will registers.

🎅Featuring Mr Christmas, Christopher Pudding, John Turkey & many more 👇

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

You will be visited by three spirits.

A Provincial Market in Second-Hand Books: Book Sales in Devon, 1688–1725 Abstract. Comparatively little is known about England’s early book-auction trade outside of London and the university towns, with few catalogues surviving

*small embarrassed voice*
A little plug for my article on Devon book sales c. 1700, which has gone online open access. tl;dr book auctions weren't just a London/Oxbridge thing: a flourishing second-hand book market centred on Exeter included auctions from the 1680s.
doi.org/10.1093/libr...

Among other things, great bit of Camberwell history

International students are a key driver of the export sector in Exeter and Leicester Universities as a share of export gross value added Exeter Leicester Newcastle York Nottingham Cardiff Sheffield Coventry Brighton Leeds Respective percentages 15.3% 14% 9% 8.4% 8.4% 7.6% 6.9% 6.9% 5.8% 5.7% Source: Centre for Cities • Data for top 10 cities/towns in England by share of GVA

What’s a big export sector shared by Leicester, Exeter and Newcastle? Award yourself five points if you said higher education

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."

There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

Ozy has a barrow in the marketplace
Mandy is the singer in a band
Ozy has two vast and trunkless legs of stone
And his shattered visage lies in the sand
O bla di o bla da…

hi, wreck expert here! this is not funny, two vast and trunkless legs of stone only do this when they’re in extreme distress.

Ozy has a barrow in the marketplace
Mandy is the singer in a band
Ozy has two vast and trunkless legs of stone
And his shattered visage lies in the sand
O bla di o bla da…