Martin Hewitt

So I was expecting copies of Darwinism's Generations to arrive this week, but they came early. So we had to have a celebration! It's been a long time in the making, but we can now say for sure that it's properly published. If you have an insitutional subscription, it's available on Oxford Academic.

Some really brilliant work here, and a fantastic selection overall. Can't quite believe it's 30 years. Must confess, and not just because of the Manchester connection, I do have a particular soft spot for Simon Gunn's piece on the Halle Orchestra.

If you want a free access link to our piece on Age and Generations in Victorian Periodicals, now published in JVC, please DM me.

Delighted to announce this new JVC article, written in conjuction with @helenkingstone.bsky.social @pieterfrancois.bsky.social and @emilyjlm.bsky.social. First fruits of our collaborative generational analysis of periodicals. With graphs and even a reworked version of a Lexis diagram.

Announcement of next year's Rosemary Mitchell Book Prize for a second monograph in Victorian Studies now live! Please note the slight change in eligibility window for next year, and the accelerated timetable for nominations and supply of copies to the judges. If you are eligible, please apply!

Another BAVS announcement. In conjuction with COVE, we've launched a research internship for PGRs/ECRs. A chance to get experience working with the COVE team, and potentially to develop your own project. If you're eligible and interested in improving your digital skills, do apply! Deadline 9th Nov.

Another BAVS announcement. In conjuction with COVE, we've launched a research internship for PGRs/ECRs. A chance to get experience working with the COVE team, and potentially to develop your own project. If you're eligible and interested in improving your digital skills, do apply! Deadline 9th Nov.

Announcement of next year's Rosemary Mitchell Book Prize for a second monograph in Victorian Studies now live! Please note the slight change in eligibility window for next year, and the accelerated timetable for nominations and supply of copies to the judges. If you are eligible, please apply!

BAVS at Home alert! Please join us online tomorrow (Wed 30th September) at 12noon BST for a session on Victorian Connections to Contemporary Japan, convened by Rieko Suzuki. Waseda University, Tokyo. Pre-register below. Free to all!

New ECR opportunity, courtesy of JVC and BAVS. Please spread the word as widely as you can!

Stumbled across Maurice Baring's *Lost Lectures* (1932). Fascinating little essay on 'The Nineties' which should be more widely known. More clearly than his autobiography reflects the tightly limited cultural shifts of the 1890s: yes Ibsen, and briefly Meredith; but the Yellow Book an irrelevance.

We're thrilled to be able to support six new early-career research Fellowships thanks to funding from the Wolfson Foundation. Applications open 21 October. Find out more: https://bit.ly/47fu2b0

@bavs-uk.bsky.social Calling all BAVS members! This year's AGM is tomorrow (23rd Sept) at 1.30pm BST. You'll have received a meeting link via the BAVS Newsletter email. If you can, please do come along. As well as the formal business, there is an Open Forum to discuss future activities.

It's a great thing to see that Chartism remains a vibrant area of research. Some really interesting sounding papers here.

Always good to have an excuse for reposting.

Ok, we've had time to reminisce. It's time to look forward. We are thrilled to announce our CFP for #RSVP2027 is now live! We'll consider the theme of 'Structures' at our next annual gathering. The applications portal opens next week on 1 Sept. More details on our website: rs4vp.org/rsvp-confere...

David Stack reviews 'Darwinism’s Generations: The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859–1909', by Martin Hewitt @vicmanch.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-... @academic.oup.com

1 Mar 1912: My wife to Mr Bramwell’s in the afn, to tea. They wanted me to accompany her. But I am not an outside tea & muffin person. For a man to go out to tea seems an awfully foolish thing to me. I went to Mr B’s after tea. Hewitson Diaries vol. 2 www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

Thought my 2nd hand ex-library copy off Cross's The Common Writer might come with some interesting marginalia. Wasn't expecting an ex-House of Lord's copy. Sadly, peers too well-behaved for scribblings. But it does beg the question- when did parliamentarians lose interest in the lot of authors?

Looking forward to reading this!

The latest verdict on Darwinism's Generations from David Stack (Reading): 'a book to admire', 'certainly the most nuanced account we have of the first fifty years of the reception of Darwinism', albeit one which Stack suspects 'will not herald a new dawn for generational studies among historians'.

I'm reading the new book on Marie Corelli by @coppertapestry.bsky.social and it's BRILLIANT! So readable, entertaining & field-transforming. Whether you are a Corelli nut or not, I urge you to treat yourself to a copy: www.eerpublishing.com/turner-marie...

I mean how many village greens are still, well, .... green??

Last few hours to complete the Curran Index Survey before it closes. If you haven't, please do!

BNA III. The new feature which allows users to broaden out keyword phrase searches to include degrees of separation between the words is a great addition. My early trials suggest a surprisingly small degree of increase in hits when moving across the 0 (no gap) to 8 (up to 8 intervening words) scale.

BNA II. The great news is that searching on specific phrases does produce much more refined results than before. But note that in contrast to names, if typing directly into the search box single quotation marks will not work: here you do need to designate your phrase with double quotation marks.

First piece of learning about the new British Newspaper Archive interface: do not use double quotation marks around names when searching. It generates a huge mishmash of irrelevant results with apparently random ordering. Single quotes or just the name without marks seem to produce specific results.

All fiction titles from the English Catalogue, Volume 4 have now been added! That means 1862–1889 are complete. Next up: the 1890s... • 27,471 title entries • 6,770 author entries (most with bios) Big thank you to my students from last semester who assisted me to this milestone.

Are you interested in developing genuinely interdisciplinary piece of research? Applications for the International Interdisciplinary Research Projects, focused on the theme of ‘Mobilities’ are now open. Apply now: https://bit.ly/4y9wiwJ

Applications are now open for Round 3 of our Microgrants! We’re funding innovative research in #19thC periodicals by providing seed grants for archival travel, digital access to subscriptions or repositories, or digital tools to support your research. Apply by 1 September here: buff.ly/7r9cM50

Still plugging the short survey on the future of the Curran Index. Interestingly, have had almost as many retweets of my original post as there have been actual completions of the survey. Closes on the 10th, so if your work touches at all on nineteenth century periodicals please have your say!

I'm thinking that it probably is time that someone did write a satisfactory account of the history of Victorian Studies. I'm sorely tempted to try, but know I have far too many axes to grind...

I have yet to read the essays McDonagh responds to but her article in Volume 141 - Issue 2 - March 2026 of PMLA is extremely interesting to those who like me, are less familiar with the evolutionary history of "Victorian Studies" and want to interrogate it more

Indeed. And tho this isn't the place for the close reading these pieces deserve, in preliminary, while the collapsing of VS into literary studies is an enduring frustration, here it is compounded by efforts to historize the field vitiated by recourse to a wafer-thin pastiche of its actual history.

Been fully occupied by #BAVS2026 so not yet tried out the new BNA interface. So much anticipation that at least some of the frustrations of the previous UI will be sorted, but also the fear that some things may be worse. Will get to it later today. Wish me luck!

Splurging #BAVS2026 messages this morning, lamentably after the event. But it was a hectic 3 days. @amymatthewson.bsky.social's final plenary on Aladdin and so much more was just the sort of eye-opening tour de force all conferences should end on. Conference fatigue dispelled. Here's to #BAVS2027!

We were treated to a fantastic fly-through of the book from @sorourke25.bsky.social , including a generous name check for @nathankhensley.bsky.social, whose own book was one of the runners up for the prize. I like the RSVP Colby Lecture model, but this was a great send off for #BAVS2026.

DVPP is already the most amazing resource for anyone interested in Victorian authorship, but the Beta version in development will clearly take things to a whole new level. Can't wait to see it live! Thanks to Alison Chapman for a fantastic opening keynote to #BAVS2026.

It's a great topic, and I'll be fascinated to see how it evolves to escape from the 'tyranny' of the archival survivals!

John Plunkett and Joe Kember brilliantly modelling scholarly collaboration and interdisciplinary methodologies in work on 'picture-going' in Victorian Britain at #bavs2026.

Darwin’s life story is one of the great scientific narratives of our time. Read more from Janet Browne, author of Darwin: A Biography. press.princeton.edu/ideas/a-new-... #darwin #evolution

Already into #BAVS2026 at Liverpool. Great to see so many people at the lunchtime session to hear about plans for closer collaborations between BAVS and JVC from Julia Kuehn, and on COVE Studio and Editions and planned collaborations with BAVS from @felluga.bsky.social.

Now I am back on home turf, a huge thanks to @rs4vp.org for accepting my abstract for #RSVP2026 in Dublin for my first in-person rsvp. Everyone was extremely generous & kind, great panels, and I also got to catch up with familiar faces from other networks. Well done to all the organisers!

And what a great conference it was.

'Performing magnetism' is still on tour, we (the green man and I) have arrived in Liverpool for @bavs-uk.bsky.social

We're running a short online survey to inform development of the Curran Index. If you're interested in Victorian periodicals, whether or not you've used the Curran recently, please complete the survey! Survey closes 10th August. Please retweet. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

British Library's EThOS platform for its online database of 650,000 doctoral theses back online. Hooray!

We're running a short online survey to inform development of the Curran Index. If you're interested in Victorian periodicals, whether or not you've used the Curran recently, please complete the survey! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

An important book, and a required reference for anyone interested in Victorian society.

Delighted to see my essay on the early decades of the Gifford Trust lectures finally published. Tinged with great sadness that Chris Brewer, the mastermind of the project and editor, did not live to see the book in print. Thanks to Garrick Allen and everyone else involved.