by Rachel Cross Rachel Cross is a PhD candidate at Cardiff University whose area of research is Victorian illustrated songs. Her work investigates how the intersections between the three media of illustration, text and music reveal new insight into key issues of the Victorian period. She started her journey to this fascinating topic through music; initially studying piano, strings, and the theory of music, she gained diplomas in piano teaching and in the theory and criticism of music. Going on to study English at undergraduate and master’s levels, she focused particularly on the interrelations ..read more

by Kate Holterhoff Kate Holterhoff received her doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University and is currently an Affiliated Researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her new monograph, Illustration in Fin-de-Siècle Transatlantic Romance Fiction (Routledge, 2022) is available now. This post contains excerpts from the Introduction of Kate’s monograph. Figure 1. (Left) E. K. Johnson, “I took this cold fragment of mortality in my hand, and looked at it in the light of the lamp with feelings which I cannot describe” from She, A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard in ..read more

by Miriam Al Jamil Miriam Al Jamil is an independent researcher, with interests in eighteenth-century sculpture, material culture, and women’s history. She has published reviews and essays on online platforms and in academic journals including the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Studies in Religion and Enlightenment, and Early Modern Women. Her chapter on a Zoffany painting appeared in Antiquity and Enlightenment Culture: New Approaches and Perspectives (Brill, 2020). She is the Fine Arts review editor for BSECS Criticks, chair of the Burney Soci ..read more

Hello and a very happy New Year to all members of the Romantic Illustration Network! My name is Katie Snow and I’m pleased to be the new web lead for the RIN. Lots has been happening behind the scenes at RIN, and in this post I’ll introduce myself, share our new Twitter account, and encourage submissions to the blog. My work is best described as a mix of medical and art history; I use visual sources to explore attitudes towards bodies, gender and sexuality. At present, my research is focused on how the body – and especially its intimate parts – are politicised in British caricature. I’m writin ..read more

Caroline’s Death and an Unpublished George Cruikshank Image Ian Haywood, University of Roehampton, London Figure 1. George Cruikshank, Vox Populi, Vox Dei. Unpublished design for a caricature on the violence at Queen Caroline’s funeral. Berg Collection, New York Public Library. Author’s photograph. Queen Caroline’s death was as controversial as her life. After more than a year of political upheaval and unprecedented media attention, Caroline passed away on 7 August 1821, aged 53. The medical cause of death was a digestive blockage, but Caroline’s followers saw things differently. In their eyes ..read more

Dear Members of the Romantic Illustration Network (RIN): Greetings! You are invited to submit a paper proposal for the 28th Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR). The NASSR conference, which will take place at the University of Toronto, Ontario on August 6-9, 2020, will bring together 300-400 scholars to discuss literature, philosophy, politics, art, and culture c. 1770-1840. CONFERENCE WEBSITE: http://sites.utoronto.ca/wincs/nassr2020 Keynote Speakers: Elizabeth Maddock Dillon (Northeastern University) Martin Myrone (Tate Britain ..read more

AAH2017  43rd Annual Conference and Art Book Fair Loughborough University 6 – 8 April 2017 Deadline for Proposals: 7 November 2016   AAH2017’s Call for Papers includes two sessions of interest to RIN’s members, readers and followers:   Prints in Books: the materiality, art history and collection of illustrations Convenor: Elizabeth Savage, Cambridge University, leu21@cam.ac.uk   Speculative Libraries Convenor: Nick Thurston, University of Leeds, n.thurston@leeds.ac.uk   Please email your paper proposals straight  to the session convenor(s). Provide a title and abs ..read more

Amy P. Goldman Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite Studies Deadline to apply November 1, 2016 The University of Delaware Library, in Newark, Delaware, and the Delaware Art Museum are pleased to offer a joint Fellowship in Pre-Raphaelite studies, funded by the Amy P. Goldman Foundation. This one-month Fellowship, awarded annually, is intended for scholars conducting significant research in the lives and works of the Pre-Raphaelites and their friends, associates, and followers.  Research of a wider scope, which considers the Pre-Raphaelite movement and related topics in relation to Victorian art a ..read more

RIN’s summer event took place on one of the hottest evenings of the year, but a great crowd turned out to hear Frederick Burwick’s public lecture ‘Staging Shakespeare: picturing Shakespeare’s plays in the 18th and 21st centuries’. A renowned expert on the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, Burwick’s starting point was the question: what relevance are the Boydell prints to the staging of Shakespeare? His answer, in contrast to Richard Altick’s (in Painting From Books, 1985) is: quite a lot. Burwick picked out 27 images which showed that many (not all) of the Boydell prints in fact have a cl ..read more

The Centre for Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Kent is pleased to announce the launch of its website for display of the Sherborne House Macready-Dickens screen at https://www.kent.ac.uk/macready/index.html The Macready-Dickens screen is a four-leaf, folding scrap-work screen that was created at Sherborne House, Dorset, by William Macready and Charles Dickens (according to family report) in the 1850s. The screen was donated to the Trustees of Sherborne House by Sir Nevil Macready. It has just been restored and conserved and will shortly go on display at the Sherborne Museu ..read more