Alice Wickenden
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awickenden.bsky.social
Alice Wickenden
@awickenden.bsky.social
2.2K followers 2.1K following 990 posts
Early modern book provenance, libraries, ethics of ownership, names, &c.

Volunteer for Abortion Support Network.

Book: Hans Sloane’s Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge (CUP)
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awickenden.bsky.social
Alice Wickenden @awickenden.bsky.social · Nov 28
Now available online! www.cambridge.org/core/books/h... 🌿📚💚🪲
awickenden.bsky.social
I actually do think Wuthering Heights is a great love story 😔 I think Romeo and Juliet is too 😔
February 9, 2026 at 8:27 PM
awickenden.bsky.social
it's wild that you can spend months trying to make a piece of writing work and failing, and then suddenly you just realise: oh no, I need to move this bit to the start! and then all at once the shape of the whole thing unravels itself to you!
February 7, 2026 at 1:35 PM
awickenden.bsky.social
‘So, really quickly, what is this about?’
February 6, 2026 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
marshslibrary.bsky.social
Hidden in the binding of this 16th century French herbal, a book describing the uses of plants, are sheets of printed 'waste' used by the binder to bulk up the cover. This seems to be a frame for something never printed #fragments #bindings
Photo showing the inside of a book binding
February 5, 2026 at 11:42 AM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
duncanweldon.bsky.social
Hearing it might be Ben Swain.
February 5, 2026 at 9:44 AM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
tomoshea.org
Trying to read the text in this print-on-demand book.
Marge Simpson distorted face t-shirt
February 4, 2026 at 9:07 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
asls.org.uk
Sssnnnwhuffffll?
Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnfl hfl?
Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g glbgl.
Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl fl fl…

—Edwin Morgan, “The Loch Ness Monster’s Song”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS, @carcanet.bsky.social 2020
#WyrdWednesday #poem #poetry
www.carcanet.co.uk/978178410996...
The Loch Ness Monster’s Song by Edwin Morgan Sssnnnwhuffffll? Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnfl hfl? Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g glbgl. Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl fl fl – gm grawwwww grf grawf awfgm graw gm. Hovoplodok – doplodovok – plovodokot-doplodokosh? Splgraw fok fok splgrafhatchgabrlgabrl fok splfok! Zgra kra gka fok! Grof grawff gahf? Gombl mbl bl – blm plm, blm plm, blm plm, blp.
February 4, 2026 at 12:58 PM
awickenden.bsky.social
The cruelty of making this decision the way that the did, without even the decency of telling people. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Radek Hanus, a mature student in his second year of a nursing course, has lived in Southend for four years. He only found out that the university was closing when he saw an article in the local paper during a shift on his nursing work placement. "It's a joke," Hanus says. "I've lost two years of time and money and education. People are devastated." Hanus is registered disabled due to his Crohn's disease. "Commuting to Colchester will cost me something like £800 a month in petrol. How can I possibly afford that?"
February 4, 2026 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
soupmuse.bsky.social
holy shit.

extremely proud of Omar and his team for taking this stand.

what a stain on HRW's reputation.

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...
Human Rights Watch researchers resign after report on Palestinian right of return blocked
The organization claims the report, which finds Israel’s denial of the right of return is a crime against humanity, is ‘paused pending further analysis and research’
www.theguardian.com
February 3, 2026 at 6:22 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
visithmml.bsky.social
We often think of book censorship as denying access to texts. Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman consider cases where censorship of information was used as a way to preserve access to books, altered to hide their affiliation with Martin Luther: hmml.org/stories/series-books-sandwiching-a-forbidden-text
Sandwiching a Forbidden Text
“The advent of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century led to...”
hmml.org
February 1, 2026 at 2:44 PM
awickenden.bsky.social
huge if true!
February 3, 2026 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
dbellingradt.bsky.social
It doesn’t matter if this accessibility problem is only temporarily. We should not rely on a US-based big tech player when it comes to digitized cultural heritage. Full point. #GoogleBooks
February 3, 2026 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
dbellingradt.bsky.social
The unwritten Handbook of Digital Instability will have a chapter on the broken dream of the Google Books project.
February 3, 2026 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
laurajcleaver.bsky.social
Coming soonish…
February 3, 2026 at 2:44 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
earlymodernjohn.bsky.social
My new article, 'Selling Education in England, 1650-1715' is now out (open access) in the English Historical Review! academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-...
Selling Education in England, 1650–1715*
Abstract. In the period 1650–1715, a growing consensus emerged that educational culture in England did not meet the needs of the population, and that chang
academic.oup.com
February 3, 2026 at 11:27 AM
awickenden.bsky.social
Been rewatching Seinfeld, which is fine. Except now all my thoughts come in Seinfeld cadence, and also the article I’m trying to write,
February 3, 2026 at 12:11 PM
awickenden.bsky.social
Milton tangent complete, I am returning to my work on erased/struck out/obliterated inscriptions.

For many reasons they aren't the easiest things to locate in online catalogues. So if you come across any fun ones (esp. in books published prior to ~1750), here is a public request to think of me.
February 2, 2026 at 12:11 PM
awickenden.bsky.social
incredible bookmark discovery here
January 31, 2026 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
awickenden.bsky.social
re-sharing my brother’s boyfriend’s top surgery link again, sorry! This time with a photo of us at the Magnetic Fields! www.gofundme.com/f/isaac-top-...
January 26, 2026 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
hagenilda.bsky.social
SO SO GLAD to see a PROPER rebuttal against Silvia Federici's very wrong scholarship in the latest Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft! Thank you, Rita Voltmer!

muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
In the 1970s, an invention of tradition connected the fight for women’s liberation with the figure of the witch. However, this narrative grounded in male fantasies of the 19th century (Bachofen, Grimm, Michelet, and many others). The German “völkisch” feminism followed this pattern, as did Second Wave feminism after the Second World War, especially in its esoteric, spiritual, and ecological branch. The narrative gained ground in the European, the transatlantic and the postcolonial Women’s Movements. Modern witchcraft research has unmasked the “witchcraft narrative” as a mere invention of tradition. However, the “witch narrative” remains alive in the work of the Autonomist Marxist feminist Silvia Federici. The spirit of Grimm and Michelet, which had been conveyed via Gage, Murray and her epigones of spiritual feminism and eco-feminism, still breathes in Federici's books. This article deconstructs Federici’s witches. They are not the granddaughters of the witches who had not been burned, but simply the epigones of the witches invented by males during the 19th century.
January 31, 2026 at 3:51 PM
awickenden.bsky.social
Really enjoyed this LRB piece by Rachel Armitage on brass band competitions. I love the insights into all the hobbies & obsessions that make up other people’s lives & only sometimes coincide with our own www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Rachel Armitage · Diary: Brass Bands
Many brass bands were started by factory owners in the belief that music would give their workers purpose, strengthen...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 31, 2026 at 12:43 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
eleanormaybaker.bsky.social
Outside the Level 2 Reading Room in @bodleian.ox.ac.uk there is a wellbeing display. Here are some it's little zines that genuinely made me smile.
January 30, 2026 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
annagirling.bsky.social
In June 1937 Nancy Cunard, on behalf of various left-wing thinkers, asked 'writers and poets' to state where they stood on the Spanish Civil War. Although the focus was on Spain, the question was framed in terms of anti-fascist internationalism and commitment: 'ironic detachment will no longer do'.
SPAIN. THE QUESTION. WRITERS and POETS of ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, IRELAND and WALES. It is clear to many of us throughout the whole world that now, as certainly never before, we are determined, or compelled, to take sides. The equivocal attitude, the Ivory Tower, the paradoxical, the ironic detachment, will no longer do. We have seen murder and destruction by Fascism in Italy, in Germany --- the organisation there of social injustice and cultural death --. and how revived, imperial Rome, abetted by international treachery, has conquered her place in the Abyssinian sun. The dark millions in the colonies are unavenged. Today, the struggle is in Spain. To-morrow it may be in other countries-- our own. But there are some who, despite the martyrdom of Durango and Guernica, the enduring agony of Madrid, of Bilbao, and Germany's shelling of Almeria, are still in doubt, or who aver that it is possible that Fascism may be what it proclaims it is: “the saviour of civilisation”. This is the question we are asking you: Are you for, or against, the legal Government and the People of Republican Spain? Are you for, or against, Franco and Fascism? For it is impossible any longer to take no side. Writers and Poets, we wish to print your answers. We wish the world to know what you, writers and poets, who are amongst the most sensitive instruments of a nation, feel.
January 30, 2026 at 4:20 PM
awickenden.bsky.social
At Kings Cross, a protestor has climbed up onto the tower with a banner, there are police and fire engines everywhere. Unfortunately it’s too windy and the banner keeps turning over so nobody can read what it says
January 30, 2026 at 11:11 AM
awickenden.bsky.social
perfect ratio of tracks to total album time, no notes
January 30, 2026 at 10:34 AM