Mine, as will come as absolutely zero surprise, was on bae and biblical typology. Things from it ended up in the book, and it was nice seeing how much I still agreed with!

And thanks ❤️❤️

Oooh. I wonder if that’s a Canterbury thing… Otago does 20k. The Scots knew what they were doing with the four-year degree!

And thanks. I’m… yeah 🙃
But excited about Arden 4 and you making me think better of #2Dudes1Dog ❤️

I do feel bad for English undergrads: they always look so horrified when I explain our undergrad dissertations are 20,000 words long. And it always amazes people how easy, really, I found the 80k of the PhD. Going from 20k to 40k for Master’s to PhD is so much more scaffolded.

I am delighted to hear that! It’s so hard to know if people are getting anything from it, so thanks. 🥰

Thanks ❤️

I am genuinely surprised at how chill I am, really—but I am very aware that plenty of people wouldn’t be, so that’s what this is about.

Thankfully, this hasn’t upset me as it once might have. But review editors, please do think more carefully about what you allow to be published: book reviews are not soapboxes (go write for the TLS or LRB if that’s what you want to do!).

And @emwjournal.bsky.social? Do better.

19/19

Scholars constantly disagree with each other: that’s totally normal—and fine! But disguising disgruntlement and sexism through asking ‘questions’ and hoping no one will notice is just not on.

I showed all my working, so you need to show yours.

18/19

Perhaps most telling, the reviewer doesn’t mention the source that mentions “the innocent, pious, and chaste Joseph”: that a man was described as such does not accord with the reviewer’s preconceived ideas, despite that text representing a fifth of the references to chastity in the book!

17/19

...given the other adjectives used in the same sentence? (You aren’t going to call both Esther and Susanna "virtuous", for instance.) As I consistently say in the book, there is a big difference between The Virgin Queen™ and a queen who is a virgin, which is what's happening here.

16/19

If we take one example from my book, from 1582, Elizabeth is described as “a gracious Queene, a godly Judith, a chast Susanna, a vertuous Hester, a discreete Debora”.

The story of Susanna is literally about her chastity: what other adjective would you use to describe her, especially...

15/19

A good chunk of the review is devoted to my apparent failure to focus on the analogies that include references to chastity (of which there are only 5 across the whole book). There is perhaps some personal preference here, but it also is a great example of the reviewer’s cherry-picking.

14/19

...while accepting the rule of women. I think it’s really reductive for scholars to amplify such unimportant pronouncements: male monarchs were also slandered in sexually suggestive ways, yet we do not focus on those comments as we do for women rulers.

13/19

Screenshot from the review, stating: however, as Carole Levin has shown in The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), rumors that Elizabeth was an unmarried pregnant woman persisted, a sign that some Elizabethans continued to see their queen as a weak and fallible woman.

As part of this, I do not understand how “rumors that Elizabeth was an unmarried pregnant woman persisted, a sign that some Elizabethans continued to see their queen as a weak and fallible woman” is relevant. As I make clear in the introduction, people can—and do—say sexist things...

12/19

it is hard not to read this and think the reviewer is dismissing my argument simply because they think I’m a “man” and am thus not qualified to talk about gender and prejudice. How else can you read a chapter where I discuss bae’s own words and come to this conclusion?

11/19

I deliberately started the book with a chapter on Elizabeth’s own words to ensure her voice was not lost.

But most upsettingly, I am convinced there is a less-than-subtle swipe here at my (incorrectly?) assumed gender:

10/19

The comment that was the most hurtful concluded this section: “Or is Norrie, like so many Elizabethan scholars, more interested in what a select group of men had to say about their queen than in what she herself had to say?” Again, this is factually wrong:

9/19

There are 2 answers to this: a) I don’t disregard other forms and b) I would love to find evidence of bae comparing herself to Deborah in a random letter, but I have never found such evidence, and the reviewer seems unable to produce such evidence either.

8/19

Screenshot from the review, stating: Why, I wonder, does Norrie focus on prayers Elizabeth may or may not have writ- ten while disregarding her other writing? Did Elizabeth use biblical analogies as rarely as this brief twenty-page chapter seems to suggest, and, if so, what might that tell us? Or is Norrie, like so many Elizabethan scholars, more interested in what a select group of men had to say about their queen than in what she herself had to say?

The reviewer then employs what is clearly a deliberate ploy to undermine the book by posing their comments as innocent questions: “Why, I wonder, does Norrie focus on prayers Elizabeth may or may not have written while disregarding her other writing?”

7/19

Screenshot from the review, stating: The book begins with a chapter on Elizabeth’s prayers, which demonstrate that she understood the potency of biblical analogies and used them to establish her authority from the get-go.

More specifically, I feel like the reviewer failed to even pay attention to the book. For instance, they claim, “The book begins with a chapter on Elizabeth’s prayers”. The first chapter does indeed discuss Elizabeth’s prayers, but also speeches—so the statement is just factually incorrect.

6/19

I disagree, because the work was published before Elizabeth became queen, and there aren’t similar tracts published during her reign (and Knox even claimed it was not about her #SureJan). If Knox were indeed representative, then his views would reappear in other tracts, which they do not.

5/19

the widespread typological use of male and female biblical figures, I argue, is key evidence for my argument. Many of the people (the reviewer included) who argue that Elizabeth struggled with sexism use Knox’s famous First Blast of the Trumpet as evidence of their argument.

4/19

Screenshot of a footnote from my book: As Victoria Smith has noted, “it was easy to resort to gendered slander in order to voice disapproval ... of a queen’s rule or behaviour.” Likewise, as Mary Beth Rose has observed: “Existing scholarship has demonstrated the seemingly (but not actually) obvious fact that Elizabeth’s gender was a problem.” Victoria Smith, “For Ye, Young Men, Show a Womanish Soul, Yon Maiden a Man’s’: Perspectives on Female Monarchy in Elizabeth’s First Decade,” in Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1400–1800, ed. James Daybell and Svante Norrhem (London: Routledge, 2017), 153; Mary Beth Rose, Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 30. For examples that rely on Knox, or conflate criticisms of Elizabeth with criticisms of female kingship, see Constance Jordan, “Woman’s Rule in Sixteenth-Century British Political Thought,” Renaissance Quarterly 40, no. 3 (Autumn 1987): 421–51; A. N. McLaren, “Delineating the Elizabethan Body Politic: Knox, Aylmer and the Definition of Counsel, 1558–88,” History of Political Thought 17, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 224–52; and Ilona Bell, Elizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 49, 60, 95–96, 123.

I was trying to work out why the reviewer had taken such a stance, and then I realised it was because it offered a (gentle!) critique of their work. One of the key arguments of my book is that we have overplayed the sexism Elizabeth I (bae) faced as a female king:

3/19

Reading the whole review reveals a barely disguised statement of the reviewer’s own opinions: you learn plenty about the reviewer and almost nothing about my book. It’s also a clear example of a senior academic punching down. Given this might end up being my book's only review, it sucks.

2/19

Screenshot from the review, saying: While the book leaves us with some important questions, Elizabeth I and the Old Testament: Biblical Analogies and Providential Rule is an impressively learned study that adds a fresh voice and a provocative point of view to the ongoing scholarly debate about whether Elizabeth’s female kingship was or was not a vital component of the Elizabethans’ own religiopolitical debate. ILONA BELL WILLIAMS COLLEGE

It has taken three years, but the first review of my monograph has been published. In some ways, it’s what you want: it concludes by describing the book as “an impressively learned study that adds a fresh voice and a provocative point of view”.

Nice, right?

Nope.

Buckle in. 🧵

1/19

The Grit in the Oyster: Deptford, Enslavement, and the Challenges of Memorialisation London was the first slaving port in Britain, although it was subsequently overshadowed by Bristol and Liverpool. It still lags behind the western ports in its attempts to memorialise Britain’s rol...

Time for another 🧵 about one of the articles from our landmark 50th anniversary special issue, 'London's Past Today'. On this occasion, we're taking a deeper dive into @helenjuliapaul.bsky.social's 'The Grit in the Oyster: Deptford, Enslavement, and the Challenges of Memorialisation' (available OA).

Understandably.

😱😱

Not a serious question.

The reason to boycott the Harry Potter series is not just because of J.K. Rowling’s heinous views. Any money she makes from the show will be used to terrorize trans people. She has made this abundantly clear. This is not a theoretical.

A bumper issue of @thelondonjournal.bsky.social is now available for your reading pleasure!

I learned so much from all these articles, so I am really pleased they’re officially out in the world 🥰