Anne-Marie Beller
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braddonite.bsky.social
Anne-Marie Beller
@braddonite.bsky.social
220 followers 250 following 12 posts
Senior Lecturer Victorian Lit and Culture at Loughborough Uni. Mental health in the 19th century; Victorian asylums; sensation and gothic fiction; Neo-Victorian-dabbler; dog-parent; Dahl-maker. (She/Her)
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braddonite.bsky.social
Send me your abstracts for Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities #VPFA #HealthHumsLboro
vpfa.bsky.social Victorian Popular Fiction Association @vpfa.bsky.social · 9d
A reminder to get your abstracts in for VPFA's next upcoming Study Day, organised by Anne-Marie Beller: 'Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities: A VPFA Study Day'.
Email a.m.beller@lboro.ac.uk for any additional information.
vpfa.bsky.social Victorian Popular Fiction Association @vpfa.bsky.social · Oct 2
🚨Call for Papers!
❓Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities: A VPFA Study Day
🗺️Loughborough University
📅27 March 2026
💷 FREE
For full CfP: victorianpopularfiction.org/studyday/for...
Contact the organiser Anne-Marie Beller (@braddonite.bsky.social) at a.m.beller@lboro.ac.uk for more information
November 5, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
culturalcurrents.bsky.social
On Wed 29 Oct, 16.15, join us for our first event of 2025-26, feat. two @lboroenglish.bsky.social legends:

1/1 Dr Anne-Marie Beller @braddonite.bsky.social
"We regret to learn that Miss Braddon is out of her mind": Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Life and Fiction
October 6, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
healthhumslboro.bsky.social
CFP 📣 Join us in Loughborough 📍 for a day of Sensation fiction and health humanities organised by our very own @braddonite.bsky.social. ✨ See post below for details 👇
vpfa.bsky.social Victorian Popular Fiction Association @vpfa.bsky.social · Oct 2
🚨Call for Papers!
❓Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities: A VPFA Study Day
🗺️Loughborough University
📅27 March 2026
💷 FREE
For full CfP: victorianpopularfiction.org/studyday/for...
Contact the organiser Anne-Marie Beller (@braddonite.bsky.social) at a.m.beller@lboro.ac.uk for more information
Mentally ill patients dancing at a ball at Somerset County Asylum. Process print after a lithograph by K. Drake, ca. 1850/1855. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xswz3swa CFP: Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities A VPFA Study Day Loughborough University, 27 March 2026 The Health Humanities and Victorian popular fiction intersect in revealing ways, offering insights into how 19th-century literature shaped and reflected contemporary understandings of health, illness, and the body. Popular narratives not only mirrored anxieties surrounding public health and medical progress but also contributed to shaping public perceptions of health and healing. Health Humanities approaches re-examine these texts to uncover how cultural narratives and literary representations influenced attitudes toward physical and mental well-being, gendered experiences of illness, and the ethics of care in an age of rapid scientific change. Health Humanities is a particularly useful approach to sensation fiction because it illuminates the ways in which these emotionally charged, often morally ambiguous narratives explore and interrogate concepts of the body, illness, and mental health. Sensation fiction, with its focus on secrets, trauma, nervous disorders, and abnormal psychological states, frequently dramatizes the anxieties of Victorian society surrounding health, gender, and identity. By applying the lens of Health Humanities, scholars can uncover how these texts reflect and shape contemporary medical discourse. Interdisciplinary approaches also highlight how sensation fiction critiques institutional medicine, domestic care practices, and the pathologization of women’s experiences. Ultimately, Health Humanities allows us to see sensation fiction not just as entertainment, but as a culturally significant form that negotiates the meanings of illness, morality, and human vulnerability in a rapidly changing world. 20-minute papers are invited on any aspect of the health humanities and sensation fiction. Topics may include, but are not limited to the following: • Madness, Hysteria, and the Sensation Heroine • The Role of Doctors and Medical Authority in Se…
October 2, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
vpfa.bsky.social
🚨Call for Papers!
❓Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities: A VPFA Study Day
🗺️Loughborough University
📅27 March 2026
💷 FREE
For full CfP: victorianpopularfiction.org/studyday/for...
Contact the organiser Anne-Marie Beller (@braddonite.bsky.social) at a.m.beller@lboro.ac.uk for more information
Mentally ill patients dancing at a ball at Somerset County Asylum. Process print after a lithograph by K. Drake, ca. 1850/1855. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xswz3swa CFP: Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities A VPFA Study Day Loughborough University, 27 March 2026 The Health Humanities and Victorian popular fiction intersect in revealing ways, offering insights into how 19th-century literature shaped and reflected contemporary understandings of health, illness, and the body. Popular narratives not only mirrored anxieties surrounding public health and medical progress but also contributed to shaping public perceptions of health and healing. Health Humanities approaches re-examine these texts to uncover how cultural narratives and literary representations influenced attitudes toward physical and mental well-being, gendered experiences of illness, and the ethics of care in an age of rapid scientific change. Health Humanities is a particularly useful approach to sensation fiction because it illuminates the ways in which these emotionally charged, often morally ambiguous narratives explore and interrogate concepts of the body, illness, and mental health. Sensation fiction, with its focus on secrets, trauma, nervous disorders, and abnormal psychological states, frequently dramatizes the anxieties of Victorian society surrounding health, gender, and identity. By applying the lens of Health Humanities, scholars can uncover how these texts reflect and shape contemporary medical discourse. Interdisciplinary approaches also highlight how sensation fiction critiques institutional medicine, domestic care practices, and the pathologization of women’s experiences. Ultimately, Health Humanities allows us to see sensation fiction not just as entertainment, but as a culturally significant form that negotiates the meanings of illness, morality, and human vulnerability in a rapidly changing world. 20-minute papers are invited on any aspect of the health humanities and sensation fiction. Topics may include, but are not limited to the following: • Madness, Hysteria, and the Sensation Heroine • The Role of Doctors and Medical Authority in Se…
October 2, 2025 at 11:03 AM
braddonite.bsky.social
Proofs arrived! @kerryfeatherstone.bsky.social and I translated and edited #MaryElizabethBraddon’s only serial written for the French press 🇫🇷 and her only published fiction written in French.
Contents page of a book
September 7, 2025 at 10:53 AM
braddonite.bsky.social
Such a great keynote. #VPFAExtremes
beccalham.bsky.social Becca @beccalham.bsky.social · Jul 16
Now for our final keynote of the conference, Corinne Fowler with her talk 'The Impact of Empire on the Countryside, 1837-1901' #VPFAExtremes
July 16, 2025 at 12:29 PM
braddonite.bsky.social
First panel of the day is Mental Illness in Braddon, which couldn’t be more up my street! #VPFAExtremes
July 15, 2025 at 8:19 AM
braddonite.bsky.social
Lovely #VPFA peeps ♥️
helenaifill.bsky.social Helena Ifill @helenaifill.bsky.social · Jul 14
It's been a lovely 1st day at VPFA 2025! @vpfa.bsky.social #VPFAextremes
July 14, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
tara-macdonald.bsky.social
THRILLED to share that my book has won the VPFA Second Book Prize! 🎉
vpfa.bsky.social Victorian Popular Fiction Association @vpfa.bsky.social · Jul 11
We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2024 VPFA Second Book Prize:
Tara MacDonald, Narrative, Affect, and Victorian Sensation: Wilful Bodies (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Prof. MacDonald will receive a £200 cash prize and be honoured at the Annual Conference AGM.
July 11, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
ebutler-way.bsky.social
Exciting new issue of VPFJ is now out in the world, featuring my review for Helena Esser's fantastic Steampunk London: Neo-Victorian Urban Space and Popular Transmedia Memory. I'm a big fan. Get your libraries on it.
@vpfa.bsky.social @helenaesser.bsky.social
doi.org/10.46911/TWO...
Victorian Popular Fictions 7.1 8 Butler-Way
Helena Esser, Steampunk London: Neo-Victorian Urban Space and Popular Transmedia Memory. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024, 248 pp. HB £85.00. ISBN: 9781350433908 Reviewed by Emma Butler-Way Downlo…
doi.org
July 11, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
helenaesser.bsky.social
Just chaired an excellent first panel of #VPFAExtremes with fellow #Birkbeck Victorianists @janetteleaf.bsky.social, Jeremy Newton, & Gordon Bates on Hypnotic Gothic Fictions!
July 14, 2025 at 10:40 AM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
bmi1854.bsky.social
We are delighted to welcome the @VPFA1 for day 1 of their 3 day conference "Heights, Depths and Extremes."

#VPFAExtremes #VPFA #bmi1854 #birmingham #victorian
July 14, 2025 at 11:36 AM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
annas1891.bsky.social
Starting the Intertextuality and Adaptation panel, we've got Julia Kuehn joining us online to talk about Marie Carelli's novel The Sorrows of Satan and its stage adaptations #VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 1:08 PM
braddonite.bsky.social
‘Even grammatical’! 😂
annas1891.bsky.social Anna Shane @annas1891.bsky.social · Jul 14
The Sorrows of Satan was a massive success, but not all critics approved. Here’s Arnold Bennett being snide about it: ‘I found it amusing, even grammatical. Perhaps I found it more amusing than its author intended, but that is another matter.’ #VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 6:13 PM
braddonite.bsky.social
My favourite fact of the first day! #VPFAExtremes
annaulrika75.bsky.social Anna @annaulrika75.bsky.social · Jul 14
The 1911 Prison Library Committee report names Ellen Wood as the most popular author read in prisons, especially with female inmates.
#VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 6:12 PM
braddonite.bsky.social
Great paper on vivisection and dehumanisation by Brandi Burns. Some quite horrible details though 😢
beccalham.bsky.social Becca @beccalham.bsky.social · Jul 14
Brandi Burns is talking about medical school and vivisection. Throughout the 19th century, many became concerned about the dehumanisation and desensitisation process of experimentation #VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
annas1891.bsky.social
Now we have Crescent Rainwater talking about Netta Syrett’s novel The Victorians and its debt to a wide spectrum of Victorian fiction in its representation of sexual liberated modern women, as well as lesbian desire #VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
ebutler-way.bsky.social
I had the best time presenting this paper! It was such a great panel to be on - by a *wild* coincidence, we had two separate papers, featuring two separate books that both just so happened to have a character with the last name of Tempest, and someone accidentally selling their soul...
#VPFAExtremes
annas1891.bsky.social Anna Shane @annas1891.bsky.social · Jul 14
Next we’ve got @ebutler-way.bsky.social talking about the legacies of Jane Eyre in A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott, particularly the role of fate #VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
annas1891.bsky.social
On the Sappho and Swinburne panel, first we’ve got V J Rene joining us online to discuss extremity in Swinburne’s work, including masochism, erotic transgression and political radicalism #VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
annas1891.bsky.social
Next we have Professor Andrew King very appositely discussing the ‘Brummagem popularity’ of Granville Bantock’s song cycle Sappho #VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
annaulrika75.bsky.social
Cecilia Fabaro is now speaking about George Egerton's last short story collection 'Fantasias' and the "extreme experiments will allegory" in these stories.
#VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 3:29 PM
braddonite.bsky.social
The Sappho panel today was excellent. #VPFAExtremes
annas1891.bsky.social Anna Shane @annas1891.bsky.social · Jul 14
Bantock was a champion of the popular and the new in music, and his (and his wife’s) Sappho was a composite of popular and elite cultures, a middlebrow, aspirational piece. This reflects Bantock’s own complex relationship to cultural authority #VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
annas1891.bsky.social
We now have Casey Reeves discussing Renee Vivien and Natalie Burney’s poetry and their use of Sappho to signal to the queer community #VPFAExtremes
July 14, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
histfest.bsky.social
📣 EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

To mark the release of her eagerly anticipated new book, VICTORIA’S SECRET: THE PRIVATE PASSION OF A QUEEN, we’re thrilled to announce an exciting new event with historian and author Dr Fern Riddell

7pm, Thurs 24 July | British Library
Book now: histfest.org/victorias-se...
Event poster. Headshot to author Fern Riddell (left) and her new book cover (right), Victoria’s Secret: The Private Passion of a Queen.
June 11, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Anne-Marie Beller
culturalcurrents.bsky.social
Here's the programme for our free hybrid Symposium on
Periodisation, Generations, and the Gaps Between, Wed 7 May, 1-5pm - register here: www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias...
March 19, 2025 at 5:11 PM