Troy J. Bassett
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3volumenovel.bsky.social
Troy J. Bassett
@3volumenovel.bsky.social
Professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne. I have a database of >25k Victorian novels: www.victorianresearch.org/atcl
Pinned
Do you have questions about the publishing history of the Victorian novel? Just ask!

Also:
• datasets of titles and authors
• statistics and graphs
• largest set of Victorian serial novels

Available for class or research presentations via zoom
Just entered the 26,001st novel into the ATCL database! Update coming soon…
October 20, 2025 at 7:48 PM
The #2025MVSA is off to a great start this morning with the opening plenary panel!
April 4, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
The great historian of the early 19th-c. comic press, Brian Maidment, died last week. He was as deeply appreciated for his personal kindness as for his brilliant work, and I treasured his friendship. @pritijoshi.bsky.social has written a lovely tribute: rs4vp.org/in-memoriam-... #C19
In Memoriam: Remembering Brian Maidment – RSVP
A tribute from RSVP president Priti Joshi to past president and long-time member, Brian Maidment, who passed away January 28, 2025.
rs4vp.org
February 4, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
Not at MLA because dialysis stops me travelling (urgh) but chuffed that @kfitz.info sent me this picture from the event :)
January 11, 2025 at 8:58 AM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
That… is not a very good title.
January 8, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
For any scholar working on the 19th-c. press, a Curran Fellowship can be a big help. Everybody is eligible, and the application is blessedly straightforward. This year's deadline is next week: Wednesday, January 15. Recommendation letters due Jan 22. rs4vp.org/awards/curra... #19th-c
The Curran Fellowships – RSVP
The Curran Fellowships are travel and research grants intended to aid scholars studying British magazines and newspapers from the long nineteenth century in making use of primary print and archival so...
rs4vp.org
January 8, 2025 at 5:00 AM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
My book, Fiction on the Page in Nineteenth-Century Magazines, is out now with Oxford University Press!

academic.oup.com/book/58989

It’s a book about page fillers, product placement, and strange hybrid fiction. It asks how the page of the magazine became a spur for new, odd genres.
January 6, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
PLEASE APPLY to Midwest Victorian Studies conference seminars. Three options: Lit History/Genealogies; Plant Humanities; Work-in-Progress, led respectively by Alison Booth, Lindsay Wells, and me. Apps due Jan 5; conference April 3-6 @ Purdue U Ft Wayne. Full CFP & app details (easy process!) below.
Conference Seminars 2025
MVSA Conference Seminars are small, with eight to ten participants each. Participants exchange work to read ahead of the 2025 conference and meet in a closed, collaborative session to discuss overl…
midwestvictorian.org
December 18, 2024 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
Announcing our winter special issue: "Nobody Cares but Everybody Should: Toward a Shared History of the Novel." 12 short essays engage with truisms in novel studies. Thanks to Sarah Allison & Megan Ward (@sarahdallison.bsky.social, @megaplex.bsky.social) for guest editing & to all the contributors!
January 2, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
6 Days to MLA! 12 Truisms About the Novel Debunked. Day 7: Freytag's plot pyramid is the deep structure underlying all narrative. To find out what's NOT true, read
@dallasliddle.bsky.social
in Studies in the Novel: muse-jhu-edu.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/issue/54034 w/ @sarahdallison.bsky.social
January 3, 2025 at 8:20 PM
New update to ATCL! We are now up to:

• 25,221 titles (+1,221 for the year)
• 5,970 authors (+391 for the year)
• 250+ new author bios
• new setting and genre tags
• new downloadable datasets

This year, we finished English Catalogue v3 (1872-80) and began v4 (1881-89)

#victorianstudies
January 3, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
8 Days to MLA! 12 Truisms About the Novel Debunked. Day 5: The Victorian novel is an English novel. To find out what's NOT true, read Sierra Eckert in Studies in the Novel: muse-jhu-edu.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/issue/54034 w/
@sarahdallison.bsky.social
+
@studiesinthenovel.bsky.social
January 1, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
9 Days to MLA! 12 Truisms About the Novel Debunked. Day 4: The bound commercial novel is a Victorian phenomenon. To find out what's NOT true, read Lindsey Eckert in Studies in the Novel: muse-jhu-edu.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/issue/54034 w/ @sarahdallison.bsky.social + @studiesinthenovel.bsky.social
January 1, 2025 at 12:44 AM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
11 Days to MLA; 12 Truisms About the Novel Debunked. Day Two: The typical Victorian novel was published serially. To find out what's not true, read
@3volumenovel.bsky.social
in a special issue of Studies in the Novel: muse-jhu-edu.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/issue/54034
December 30, 2024 at 12:31 AM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
Attn, attn: The very special issue of Studies in the Novel

Nobody Cares but Everybody Should: Toward a Shared History of the Novel

is OUT!

so lovely to co-edit w @megaplex.bsky.social and big thanks to @noragilbert.bsky.social & Tim Boswell @studiesinthenovel.bsky.social
December 28, 2024 at 11:44 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
The beautiful Pictorial Times is this week's #MastheadMonday. Founded in 1843 by Henry Vizetelly & Andrew Spottiswoode, in reaction to the success of the ILN, in 1848 it merged with the Lady's Newspaper. Digitised by the BL & free-to-view here: www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/picto...
December 23, 2024 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
Curran Fellowships are now open for applications (due Jan 15, letters Jan 22), and they can be a big help to anyone researching any aspect of the 19th-c. British press. Topics pursued by past winners have ranged far and wide: rs4vp.org/awards/curra...
Details here: rs4vp.org/awards/curra... #19th
The Curran Fellowships – RSVP
The Curran Fellowships are travel and research grants intended to aid scholars studying British magazines and newspapers from the long nineteenth century in making use of primary print and archival so...
rs4vp.org
December 12, 2024 at 4:36 AM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
Important lessons from old books: "Victorian novels chronicle the terrible grief of losing children. Depicting the cruelty of diseases largely unfamiliar today, they also warn against being lulled into thinking that child deaths can never be inevitable again." theconversation.com/infectious-d...
Infectious diseases killed Victorian children at alarming rates — their novels highlight the fragility of public health today
Between 40% and 50% of children didn’t live past 5 in the US during the 19th century. Popular authors like Charles Dickens documented the common but no less gutting grief of losing a child.
theconversation.com
December 11, 2024 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
In the 1840s, Albert Smith and Angus B Reach teamed with David Bogue to create a small craze for pocket-sized illustrated comic booklets. An old friend, knowing how much I like them, just gave me some that were bound together. Starting with Reach's "A Natural History of Bores," cuts by HG Hine.
December 11, 2024 at 1:32 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
If you're in New Orleans #MLA25, join us at the RSVP roundtable on "The Challenge of Periodical Studies" with Maria Damkjær, Fionnuala Dillane, Katherine Malone, Jim Mussell, and your truly. Session #350, Friday, Jan 10, 3:30pm
December 10, 2024 at 5:56 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
It’s #MastheadMonday. Here’s the Evening Star (1842-43), Feargus O'Connor's attempt to establish a daily London Chartist newspaper after the success of the weekly Northern Star (1837-52). It lasted less than a year. Digitised by the BL & free to view www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/eveni...
December 9, 2024 at 11:27 AM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
F. E. M. Notley's supernatural story “Striking Midnight” was published in The Argosy in December 1881. When the candle flame burns blue, a ghost approaches…

#BookWormSat
December 7, 2024 at 6:24 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
Wanna come to my party? Having a convo with @ryancordell.bsky.social about *Digital Victorians* in a series about new books in critical bibliography. Thurs 12/12 12:00p EST. Details and register here: rarebookschool.org/all-programs...
Digital Victorians: Author Paul Fyfe and Ryan Cordell on Nineteenth-Century Media and the Digital Humanities | Rare Book School
Join author and SoFCB Senior Fellow Paul Fyfe and interviewer Ryan Cordell for a conversation about Fyfe’s book Digital Victorians: From Nineteenth-Century Media to Digital Humanities (Stanford Univer...
rarebookschool.org
December 4, 2024 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Troy J. Bassett
We experience Victorian novels now as Culture™️ Objects with heft and capital "L" Literary Significance, but for a large part of the century they were sliced up into small chapter fragments and illustrated in ways likely closer to how we think about comic books today!
December 5, 2024 at 12:24 AM