How well I remember the excitement accompanying the appearance of The Naked Ape in 1967. He was on all the talk shows, and the book itself was captivating.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

Mudie's Select Circulating Library lay at the heart of the Victorian publishing system. Karen Wade's site, now at a new URL, makes it possible to explore the library's catalogues as never before, with an index of 22,000 novels by 6000 authors. curatr.ucd.ie/mudies/
#victorian #bookhistory

Love that record.

For more on the status of open access online collections of Victorian letters see www.victorianresearch.org/other.html#l...

Equally helpful is this spreadsheet, which Paul created with the help of the Charles Dickens Letters Project, that allows one to sort over 14,000 letters by date and correspondent: victorianresearch.org/DICKENS%20LE...

Many thanks to Paul Lewis for making available the unannotated texts of all of the letters included in the magisterial Pilgrim edition of Dickens's correspondence. As that edition is paywalled, this will be very handy for scholars everywhere: victorianresearch.org/Dickens%20le...
#Victorian

North Shore Line - Electroliners to Milwaukee 1955-1961 YouTube video by Dynamo Productions

Old-timers in Wilmette and elsewhere along its route have never ceased to mourn the loss of the North Shore Line, which was so much a part of everyday life. Gone over 60 years ago now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=T50g...

"oh but of course we can"

Congratulations! And thanks to Wiley for making this free to access (for now). Some fascinating material here. #victorian #19th-c

Good teaching is never easy, but has it ever been this hard? Since the COVID-19 pandemic, educators have been asked to pivot and reimagine their pedagogical practices again and again. Six years later, the "new normal" has yet to arrive. Instead of a return to business as usual, culty are facing a barrage of legislative attacks on academic freedom and the dizzyingly rapid adoption of AI by universities and students alike. As teachers, we are being tasked with simultaneously revolutionizing our approach to assignment design and assessment, while ridding our curriculum and lesson plans of material associated with DEI initiatives or deemed "divisive" by politicians. This roundtable series, organized by the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States (VISAWUS), is dedicated to the problem and practice of teaching, Victorian studies in an era marked by retrograde policies and techno-optimistic imperatives. It asks, how do we teach nineteenth-century literature and culture, while remaining present to the challenges of the twenty-first century university? And what might we gain by employing Victorian modes of embodied Icarning-such as object lessons and recitation assignments—in the contemporary classroom? This series will take place over several dates in Fall 2026 and will be geared toward resource sharing and community building. Participants will be invited to share a 6-8 minute presentation, as well as a tangible part of their classroom practice: an assignment, exercise or activity. We invite proposals from contingent faculty, graduate students, early career scholars, and senior faculty alike. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: • Teaching reading and writing in the age of I.L.Ms and Al • Navigating contemporary politics in the Victorian classroom • Forms of attention and distraction and/or strategies for cultivating focus • Object lessons, especially models for hands-on engagement and approaches to teaching material cult…

CFP for VISAWUS 2026 online series on teaching. Please apply and share!

TIME FOE TEACHING!

A roundtable series to address the crisis in teaching Victorian Studies. Literary scholars, historians, art historians please join us!

#VictorianStudies
#19thCentury
#AcademicSky

There has not been nearly enough said in public about the Trumpt admin's deliberate destruction of cancer research in this country. This is a crime that touches everyone, and Democrats need to put restoring cancer research at the very top of their campaign pledges.

First and foremost, we have all got to stop saying or writing "first and foremost." Under any circumstances.

Or more precisely, in this case, the venerable email “listserv,” which pre-dated the web. Here’s one whose archives go back 33 years and is still in operation 24/7. list.iu.edu/sympa/info/v...

Amazingly, some of these primitive social media coelacanths can still be found roaming the inky depths of scholarly discourse—eg in 19th-c. Studies (VICTORIA) and Book History (SHARP-L).

Y'know, that True-Coat, they put that on at the factory...

Belatedly enjoying the TRIH duo's series on Samuel Johnson, an author especially dear to my heart. The offhand comparison to David Bowie's early career almost made me spill my coffee! therestishistory.com/episodes/the...

Every day.

Including another rumpled, Columbo-esque performance from Mark Ruffalo.

I honestly think that his governing principle is to hurt as many people as he can. He likes it. It makes him feel powerful.

Thanks! And I'm not even a collector, just a casual serendipitous accumulator...which is why I'll put this one back in circ soon after I've enjoyed it for awhile longer.

A better shot of the cover…

A curious bookshop find: a 1915 edition of Alice in Wonderland with a promotional tie-in to the silent movie starring Viola Savoy. It’s illustrated with stills from the film.

It turned up in an online group devoted mainly to mid-20th-century illustration. There are copies for sale on eBay, etc.

Right! It sort of gothicizes the book, as if renaming it to Jane Eyre; Or, The Madwoman in the Attic.

The shamelessness of it is always breathtaking. On a par with yesterday’s “spiritual advisor” comparing him to Jesus Christ.

Classics Illustrated Jane Eyre shows madwoman Bertha Mason Rochester, violently restrained as she attempts to disrupt a marriage ceremony.

Jane Eyre reimagined in Classics Illustrated #39 (1947), cover by Harley Griffiths. There's just something about these 1940s-50s pulp and comic-book remediations of 19th-c. texts...

The perfect spot for a Chicago Museum of Journalism! This city, with its fabulously storied newspaper past, needs and deserves a museum like that.

You're very welcome -- chapter 2, on the stages of proofing, is a real eye-opener.

Allan Dooley's Author and Printer in Victorian England is very useful on these questions in general, but it might not be as specific about markup as you need.