Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

A wonderful afternoon at Whitworth Art Gallery seeing the Turner: In Light and Shade exhibition. I still have a thousand things to learn about prints and engravings for my PhD, but this was a fantastic exploration of print as an art form in dialogue with Turner's paintings

September 6, 2025 at 5:01 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

PhDing and conferencing in and around Bath this week, starting with a visit to the fab Wilton House.

Richard Fitzwilliam, whose collections are the subject of my PhD, was cousin to the Earls of Pembroke and this was (and still is) their family seat.

July 29, 2025 at 6:52 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

A lovely sunset from the hottest train in the world while attempting to write an abstract for a conference

Photo of a lovely orange sunset that has cast itself through the clouds. In the window reflection you can see train seats and my laptop on my lap

March 19, 2025 at 7:02 PM

Reposted by Emma Mason

The Georgian Lords

@georgianlords.bsky.social

In case you missed it, earlier this week Robin Eagles of the Georgian Lords posted on the career of Henry Benedict, Cardinal York, Bonnie Prince Charlie's more diplomatic younger brother...
#HistParl #skystorians
historyofparliament.com/2025/03/06/h...

The Last of the Jacobites: Henry Benedict - The History of Parliament

Henry Benedict, Cardinal York (1725-1807), born 300 years ago this March, was the last member of the royal family to take an active role in a papal Conclave,

historyofparliament.com

March 8, 2025 at 2:31 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

Goodness Emanuel, what a very large... family tree you have 😳

Image taken from a book on the Revolutions of Portugal of an engraving of the royal family tree. The figure of Emanuel is dressed in royal regalia and laid down with his head coquettishly propped in his hand. The rest of the family tree, drawn as a tree with branches emerges from the middle of his robes in an unsubtle and very phallic way

March 7, 2025 at 12:09 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

Having a wonderful week properly immersed in the Fitzwilliam Museum collection at the heart of my PhD. And as an [adopted] Manc, the idea that I could pick up free bay leaves from someone's garden wall and they would actually be bay leaves is just lovely.

#18thc

Photo of a selection of 18th century books on a table with a red cloth. In the top left are some that are unbound and in the original blue paper covers. Most are bound in light brown mottled calfskin.

Front cover of a book with a green cover, a gilt copy of Louis XVIII's coat of arms (3 fleur de lys in the centre, with a crown above), and gilt edges

A close up of marbled paper. The centre of the marbling is beige, with purple, blue and yellow around it

A picture of a small wooden box with fresh bay leaves in, sat on a garden wall and with a sign in saying 'help yourself to bay leaves'

March 6, 2025 at 7:55 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

PhD life really does seem to be sitting in a variety of venues with a variety of beverages and a laptop.

(Back in Cambridge, pretty pictures of books coming soon)

Photo of my laptop on a pub table with a large glass of red wine next to it. The laptop screen shows the time as 17.26, the weather in Cambridge as 13 degrees, and the picture is of some 18th century committee meeting minutes, with 'Adjourned' written in a beautiful hand.

March 5, 2025 at 6:24 PM

Reposted by Emma Mason

Royal Historical Society

@royalhistsoc.org

We've created a new Starter Pack of #History institutes and research centres in the UK & Ireland bit.ly/3F3Eo2M

Please do share. There will be gaps and recommendations are welcome.

We hope this pack helps you keep in touch with work by and for historians in the UK & Ireland #Skystorians.

UK institutes and research centres for historians

Join the conversation

bit.ly

February 23, 2025 at 10:05 AM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

16.02.25 💚

Black and white image of my wedding dress, which had a fitted bodice with lace detailing, full tuile sleeves ending in cuffs tied with small white buttons, and a full a-line tuile skirt with a layer of glitter tuile

Quote on black and white background, reading
"If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange And be all to me?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portugese 35"

February 23, 2025 at 12:43 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

A eulogy with a brew, who could ask for more

Photo of my set up in a coffee shop, with a half drunk cup of loose leaf tea, notebooks and pink headphones, and my silver laptop. On the laptop is the website Gallica with the funerary oration for Queen Marie-Joséphine of France

February 4, 2025 at 3:08 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

Lovely day of research at @britishlibrary.bsky.social which has turned up the wonderful news that in 1800 Fleet Street had a Nandos

Image of a book published in 1800. The page shown is an alphabetical list of coffee houses in London and their location. One line says "Nandoes, fleet-street"

January 22, 2025 at 5:28 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

Dear hive mind, does anyone know what the word underlined in black might be?
Context of the sentence: follows a request to dedicate work to the King ('Elle' referring to 'sa Majesté'), and is broadly saying I hope he will have the goodness to hear a request from me, a stranger devoted to his cause

Cropped photo of an 18th century letter in French

December 17, 2024 at 2:17 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

I thought threatening women you don't know on the internet was frowned upon

Screengrab from my Duolingo 2024 in review. The cartoon green owl has sparkles in its eyes and looks angelic as it leaps from a blue and pastel background. Underneath the text says "Yes! You're a top 3% learner this year. You're safe from Duo. For now. One misstep and you'll be sorry."

I'm sorry, what?

December 2, 2024 at 7:02 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

Such a bumper crop of ancien régime exhibitions in London in the next year 😍 www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/v...

Versailles: Science and Splendour | Science Museum

Discover how the Palace of Versailles used science to project power in this illuminating new exhibition, full of opulent objects and intriguing human stories.

www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

November 30, 2024 at 9:56 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

After a week of something that felt a lot like covid, my brain feels capable of getting back into my French reading practice

Photo of two copies of Émile Zola's "La Terre" ("Earth"), one in French, one in English. The books are laid on my pale blue oodie with cartoon penguins on. The French version is older, and the cover has block colour sections of bright yellow, red, orange and green and a black and white image of a historic French village with a Christian cross visible sticking up from the ground, a cart piled with hay, villagers at work and stone houses. The English version is an Oxford World Classics edition, and the cover has a single white colour block 3/4 of the way down with the title details. The main image is detail from 'The Sower' by Van Gogh (1888) showing the sun on the horizon, and a wheat field with wheat growing in the background and in the foreground a man sowing seeds against a field of blues, whites and oranges.

November 30, 2024 at 7:04 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

It will be fascinating to see if anything more can be uncovered about how these got to England. Nothing is known between 1789 and 1844... 'rescued' by an émigré from the Revolution? Sold to a British collector as plenty of Revolutionary loot was?
www.theguardian.com/world/2024/n...

‘It’s been a lot of detective work’: Madame de Pompadour’s £1m wall lights discovered in Yorkshire hotel

Four gilt-bronze sconces that lit up home of King Louis XV’s mistress are set to go on sale at Sotheby’s in December

www.theguardian.com

November 24, 2024 at 10:57 AM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

Some lovely copies of Mrs Beeton floating around Hay. If nothing else it would be a great weight for a workout, that girl is CHUNKY

Photo of me holding a copy of Mrs Beeton's Houseld Management in a Hay-on-Wye bookshop. In the background are full bookshelves and a terracotta red patterned carpet. The book is leather quarterbound and we're looking at the spine, the width of which is at least the distance between the tip of a thumb and little finger if your palm was fully spread.

Photo of the frontispiece of Mrs Beeton's Household Management. The background is the same. On the left hand page is an illustrated image of 8 dishes from the book on a pale yellow background, none of them looking very appetising. On the right hand page is the frontispiece, advertising among other things that the book has 32 plates in colour and nearly 700 illustrations

Photo of a random double page spread in Mrs Beeton's Household Management. Again the background is the same. The recipes listed are all for different versions of cooking eel, including 'Eels, fried', 'Eels, fried, à la tartare', and 'Eels, stewed'

November 22, 2024 at 9:48 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

Oh Hay there!

Birthday book weekend is off to a very sunny start in Hay-On-Wye

View from the top of Hay castle looking out across the town of Hay-on-Wye and green fields beyond. The sky is blue with very few clouds and the sun is shining down on the creamy houses, trees and fields

November 21, 2024 at 7:02 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

Spending some of this evening typing up scattered notes from my first visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum and into the world of the Viscount.
Love this tidbit of the nerdy nicknames Fitzwilliam and Abbé Vinson gave each other. 18th century rich boy [middle-aged man] geekery.

Photo of my notebook with pencil-written notes which were neat several pages earlier but here are a bit more scrawly. The only full sentence visible reads 'Abbé Vinson - RF's BFF - called each other Cicero and Atticus'

November 19, 2024 at 6:59 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

Yummy little bit of Sunday antiquing to bring home this 1930s cabinet. A perfect house for some* of our overflowing books

*many books remain overflowing

Photo of a 1930s oak cabinet with doors. The doors have glass panes and small gold coloured handles. The back of the cabinet is mirrored. It's looking a little grubby in this picture as we'd just bought it.

The cleaned up cabinet standing on our beige carpeted living room floor and against one of our cream coloured walls. The cabinet now has a selection of science fiction paperbacks and books from the 'Penguin Essentials' series, along with a small purple ceramic sheep on the top shelf and a small globe on the bottom shelf

November 17, 2024 at 7:35 PM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

Hey Bluesky! I've been dormant on here for a little while so by way of re-introduction...

I'm an 18th-century historian and have just started a part-time AHRC funded PhD working with The Courtauld Institute of Art and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge...

Photo of the shelves in the Founder's Library at the Fitztwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Wooden shelving runs from floor to ceiling, each shelf filled with books in eighteenth and nineteenth century bindings (often calf-skin) in shades of brown, black, red, green and gold.

November 17, 2024 at 10:27 AM

Emma Mason

@emmalrmason.bsky.social

First week complete as Knowledge Exchange Manager at Sheffield Uni. I can tell you, giving this little nerd responsibility for the History, English and Music departments is the route to an unreasonable level of enthusiasm on my part.

Sheffield-folk, come chat!

Picture of my University of Sheffield staff card

January 12, 2024 at 4:34 PM

Reposted by Emma Mason

Chris Bertram

@crookedfootball.bsky.social

Good to see an actual expert being given space. Sadly, politicians, journalists and voters will continue recycling the same myths and anyone who insists on the facts will be labelled a denialist by the migration-crisis mongers