“Experts say it’s identical to the first edition gifted to Jennifer Lopez”

Dickens Day 2026 - ‘Dickens and Family’

The CFP for Dickens Day 2026 is live! We warmly invite proposals linked to this year’s theme of “Dickens and family” (both in his life and work). The deadline is 15 June, and the day itsef will be on Saturday 10 October at Senate House, London. All are welcome!
www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit

Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here

Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse

Media and universities: AI is here to stay

Shakespeare's 'missing' Blackfriars home mapped with discovery A Shakespeare expert identifies the location and size of the property the playwright bought in1613.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... #shakespeare

Happy to help - let me know what gets picked (and the subsequent verdict on it!)

Hmm. Barnaby Rudge has an uneven structure but as a historical sweeping epic it deserves a lot more attention (not to mention political relevance today). For something lighter, Martin Chuzzlewit has a great rogue’s gallery. And of course Dombey is amazing, but little known to the general reader

raise your hand if wikipedia has higher standards than your own university

A slide of imperative verbs (addressed to himself? Or to the narrative?) gleaned from Dickens’s memoranda and notes as part of www.dickensnotes.com project and a session with the manuscripts themselves in the V&A National Art Library. Thanks to Anna Gibson and Adam Grener for a great workshop!

What a wonderful day at the V&A / National Art Library talking about Dickens's Compostional Process and ways of engaging wide audiences with his material archive. @dickensnotes.bsky.social is on Bluesky now too 😀

Lovely to see so many familiar faces in the audience! Glad you enjoyed it

Lovely evening at @peteorford.bsky.social’s talk on Dickens and his plays at Warwick. Really great to learn things about Dickens I never knew.

Alas, no Snoops selfie as we were too busy chatting with pals in the English dept. Then Snoops and I went to the pub to catch up more with them.

Tonight I’m off to @warwickuni.bsky.social to talk about Mr Nightingale’s Diary, Dickens’s 1851 farce which he co-authored and starred in alongside Mark Lemon, editor of Punch magazine. The result was two bravura performances with ad libbing and numerous costume changes.

This is why in higher education you should not let your curriculum be driven by 'demand.' You need give students the precious opportunity to discover the things they don't already know they will be excited about.

🎙️ Life & Language explores how language shapes the way we see the world.

Hosted by Prof. @michamahlberg.bsky.social. Now in its 5th season with 28 episodes and brilliant guests across disciplines.

Curious about how words shape life?

🎧 Join the conversation.

I think the greatest gift college professors in the humanities can give to students right now is a seminar room where, for 80 minutes twice a week, nothing that happens to them is a sales pitch for an AI product.

You’d think that teaching and writing about books wouldn’t be that high risk a profession… and yet!!

Excerpt from TLS review of Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens, edited by Pete Orford. The introductory essay is described as "engrossingly readable, reflecting an enormous amount of detective work" as well as "scrupulous in guiding readers through the location of sources, editorial choices and chronological conundrums" and "a labour of love". This was definitely not written by Reviewer No. 2

Today I discovered that my edition of "Pictures from Italy" for @academic.oup.com has been reviewed - very positively I might add - in @thetls.bsky.social . You can be damn sure that "engrossingly readable" will be making a prominent appearance in my next performance review...

Innnnnnteresting.

PhD students in the UK with a Victorianist bent will want to take particular note of the placement titled "Illustrated Newspapers: Beyond the Illustrated London News": cdn.sanity.io/files/v5dwki...
@rs4vp.org #Victorian

A table from the Pall Mall Gazette showing the list of votes for 'Best Living novelist'

Best novelist in PMG's 1885 '10 Greatest Living Englishmen' poll throws up more surprises, for a paper of the London clubland. Wilkie Collins on top (346), only just ahead of William Black, & Walter Besant. Hardy a distant 9th (a mere 20 votes), Meredith (9). 5 in desperation for the dead Trollope.

Novel Beginnings: Charles Dickens Birthday Virtual Conference — The Dickens Society Following the success of the virtual memorial conference, ‘Dickens and Death’, the Dickens Society is pleased to announce another virtual conference; ‘Novel Beginnings; Charles Dickens Birthday Virtua...

This Saturday, join us for a wonderful free online conference celebrating Dickens's birthday: www.dickenssociety.org/the-cricket/...

a polar bear wearing a helmet with the words his dark materials written below it ALT: a polar bear wearing a helmet with the words his dark materials written below it

So I'm guessing this is likely the inspiration for Lee Scoresby's name in Northern Lights, aka the guy who is old friends with a polar bear...

Illustration of a giant toad studded with arrows beside a dead body.

The early twentieth century is about the last time a professional illustrator might not have a dinosaur reference at hand and instead relied on the author's similes. Thus this Megalosaurus/Allosaurus in the Je Sais Tout serial of The Lost World. Conan Doyle says the dinosaur resembled a toad.

My latest paper with Hugo Bowles and Claire Wood examines a Dickens mystery: did he author the recently decoded story “The Two Brothers”? The answer is complicated. The paper showcases our new method, LambdaG (forthcoming!).

Calling all the PhDs I know to make monumental annoyances of themselves (and honestly, who better)

UK drops target for international student recruitment Government to encourage education providers to open campuses overseas as it focuses on reducing migration

In any other context, requiring a high-productivity sector to offshore the production of its highest value-added exports would be seen as the economic illiteracy it so obviously is...

www.ft.com/content/a23c...

‘We want people to sit, pause, relax’: National Trust to open its libraries for public use Charity plans to make stately homes more welcoming by inviting visitors to use furniture and reading rooms

"Bibliophiles will be able to read in libraries at Wightwick Manor, Powis Castle, mid Wales, and Kingston Lacy, Dorset."
#books #reading #heritage #library
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

My three-hour university commute is worth the £7,000 saving on halls Over a third of students choose not to live at university, latest figures suggest - but is it worth it?

'With the Ucas application deadline around the corner on Wednesday 14 January, thousands more will be considering whether doing the same might be worth it for them, too.

More than 700,000 "commuter students" are at universities across the UK.' 1/2

Dickens's works have a long history of being presented in a myriad of forms: serialised instalments, novels, weekly journals, plays, cigarette cards, radio dramas, films, television, computer games...

...and hot dog stands?!?

How universities can cultivate arts and humanities in practical, affordable ways Are the arts and humanities still needed as universities retrench staff and cut costs? Patty Raun explains why curtailing or eliminating these disciplines is an egregious mistake

'Despite persistent myths, employment rates for humanities graduates are comparable to those of STEM graduates, as Humanities Indicators data shows. Early earnings differ but the salary gap narrows significantly mid-career, particularly for graduates who pursue further study'. 1/2