Here's an interesting document that just came into my possession: it's a memorandum between Emily Sarah Holt and the publisher John F. Shaw for the sale of copyright to her novel Sister Rose: The witnesses are Holt's brother James Maden Holt, MP and his fiancee, Anna Haworth.  Holt sold the copyright for forty-two pounds. One of the problems with writing the history of nineteenth-century religious fiction from the nuts-and-bolts angle--copyrights, royalties, correspondence with publishers, recruiting authors, in-house readers, etc.--is that virtually all of the publishers' archives have ..read more

Favorite historical novels: Naivo, Beyond the Rice Fields; Mirandi Riwoe, Stone Sky Gold Mountain; Julie Janson, Benevolence; Stevie Davies, Awakening; Rose Tremain, Lily: A Tale of Revenge. Favorite genre anthologies: Jess Walter, ed., The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022; Mark Morris, ed., Close to Midnight. Favorite single-author short story genre collection: Lisa Tuttle, The Dead Hours of Night. Favorite genre deconstructions: John Darnielle, Devil House (true crime); J. W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House (haunted house). Favorite horror novel: Alison Rumfit ..read more

Well, technically,  the Christmas Annual edition! As all good Victorianists know, the proper season for ghost stories was Christmas, so this year, I bring ghost stories published in Victorian periodicals' Christmas numbers. Anon., "Catherine's Quest" (Tinsley's Magazine, 1868).  A young woman has a very detailed dream about the intrigues (and murders) committed by her ancestors.  Also, there's a chest with human remains.   ---, "Experiences of Farthing Lodge" (Chambers' Journal, 1864).  Renters discover that on the fifteenth of each month, they share their lodgin ..read more

(Like rather a lot of other people, or so Twitter tells me, I found myself unable to read for anything except work for much of 2021.  More recently, I've found myself getting fully back into the swing of things.) Best postcolonial rewrite of Adam and Eve: Michael Crummey, The Innocents.   Best historical novels: Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet; Mudrooroo, Master of the Ghost Dreaming. Best postapocalyptic novel: Paul Kingsnorth, Alexandria.   Neo-Victorian fiction will be immensely improved by forgetting this personage ever existed: Jack the Ripper.   "Well, that's ..read more

This blog arises from the dead for its annual cavalcade of horror stories.  This year, we feature...haunted professors, students, and academics of all stripes, somewhat loosely construed.  OK, very loosely construed.  In a number of cases, the horror is also somewhat loosely construed... "The Harvard College Ghost" (Ghost Stories: Collected with a Particular View to Counteract the Vulgar Beliefs in Ghost and Apparitions, 1846).  A prank goes off script.   "The College Ghost.  A Legend of Old South Middle" (Yale Literary Magazine, 1856).  A young man is ..read more

This turned out to be a really bad year for reading, what with pandemics, morphing into a department chair several months earlier than anticipated, and, er, various other sources of stress.  But still-- If I have no access to a research library to do this project, I'd better buckle down and do some investing: Yes, I buy many books, but I don't buy books with $200 pricetags.  Or, at least, I didn't until I picked up the first two volumes of Oxford's edition of Charlotte Bronte's letters. Favorite monographs: Tony Ballantyne, Entanglements of Empire; Christopher D. Phillips, The Hymnal ..read more

Yes, I disappeared off the face of the planet, but not into any haunted houses (if my own house is haunted, it hasn't let on).  Nevertheless, I have returned, zombie-like, with this year's Halloween reading list--namely, the Gothic and horror stories on the syllabus for the nineteenth-century short fiction course I'm teaching this semester.  (I should note that these are not "Gothic greatest hits," but "Gothic suiting other themes in this course, which is not primarily about the Gothic.") Mary Shelley, "The Mortal Immortal": Shelley's self-parody of Frankenstein, featuring jealousy ..read more

Yes, still here, being department chair from my house.   The Royal National Theatre is one of many arts organizations uploading streaming content, and given that I'm teaching a "revisions of Jane Eyre" seminar this semester, I was intrigued to see that their Jane Eyre (a collaboration with the Bristol Old Vic) was one of the plays on the agenda.  In terms of plot, the adaptation sticks closely to the original text, although there are some striking thematic deviations (and the occasional omission) that I'll discuss below.  All of the action takes place on a single abstract a ..read more

My lecture notes have disappeared. By which I mean: my older notes (from, say, a decade or so ago and more) tend to be extremely full.  They lay out all my projected comments, often in complete sentences--in other words, the notes are intended to be read.  As I've stuck around, though, I have stopped reading notes; instead, the notes are clusters of page numbers, with brief comments on what I want to highlight, arranged according to projected discussion topic.  I know what I want to say and where I want to go, but I've found that I prefer to lecture in collaborative mode--workin ..read more

What sound do I hear? The sound of readers wondering where on earth I went, I imagine.  The physical "where" has to do with House the Trilogy, which had various, uh, issues that left me without furniture until (checks notes) mid-October and without unpacked books until (checks notes again) now.  As in, I finished unpacking them on Tuesday (proper shelving has now commenced).  The mental "where" followed on from the physical one, as I was admittedly rather depressed for a good chunk of the semester--and also really, really behind.  Who would possibly have thought that finish ..read more