Martin Hewitt
@vicmanch.bsky.social
Victorianist. President of the British Association for Victorian Studies. Just published Darwinism's Generations. The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859-1909. https://tinyurl.com/52xkw9rj Check me out at profmartinhewitt.com
Pinned
Martin Hewitt
@vicmanch.bsky.social
· Nov 11
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.
Just been finalising readings etc for my segment of the upcoming Scottish Graduate School Arts and Humanities seminar on 'Thinking Generationally', with Julianne Werlin (Duke). tockify.com/sgsah/detail... Looking forward to seeing everyone who has signed up in St Andrews on the 24th.
University of Glasgow - Events and Training
www.sgsah.ac.uk
November 13, 2025 at 11:43 AM
Just been finalising readings etc for my segment of the upcoming Scottish Graduate School Arts and Humanities seminar on 'Thinking Generationally', with Julianne Werlin (Duke). tockify.com/sgsah/detail... Looking forward to seeing everyone who has signed up in St Andrews on the 24th.
Just notching up my 50th correction to the FindmyPast census records. Still waiting for a really memorable mis-transcription, but I do like the thought of John Armsden of Bognor, 'Stationer and Fancy Seeds'; the actual entry, 'Goods', is so much more prosaic, no matter how 'fancy'.
November 11, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Just notching up my 50th correction to the FindmyPast census records. Still waiting for a really memorable mis-transcription, but I do like the thought of John Armsden of Bognor, 'Stationer and Fancy Seeds'; the actual entry, 'Goods', is so much more prosaic, no matter how 'fancy'.
People are frequently, frustratingly, missing from the census, but how many got to appear twice in the same year? Translator Edward Percy Jacobsen did in 1911; as a single man living with his mother in Bloomsbury, and again as a husband/father in Tooting! All the details match. Were there others?
November 9, 2025 at 5:19 PM
People are frequently, frustratingly, missing from the census, but how many got to appear twice in the same year? Translator Edward Percy Jacobsen did in 1911; as a single man living with his mother in Bloomsbury, and again as a husband/father in Tooting! All the details match. Were there others?
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
"Here is an exciting new way to think about the century that produced Darwinism."
Janet Browne's review of Martin Hewitt's Darwinism's Generations: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@vicmanch.bsky.social
Janet Browne's review of Martin Hewitt's Darwinism's Generations: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@vicmanch.bsky.social
November 6, 2025 at 3:48 PM
"Here is an exciting new way to think about the century that produced Darwinism."
Janet Browne's review of Martin Hewitt's Darwinism's Generations: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@vicmanch.bsky.social
Janet Browne's review of Martin Hewitt's Darwinism's Generations: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@vicmanch.bsky.social
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
ARCHIVAL FUNDING: Ann Ball Bodley Visiting Fellowship in Women’s History, to use Bodleian Libraries collections to advance scholarship in women’s history, of any geographical area and historical period. Deadline 28th Nov. www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/fellowsh...
Bodleian Visiting Fellowships in Special Collections
www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
October 28, 2025 at 3:36 PM
ARCHIVAL FUNDING: Ann Ball Bodley Visiting Fellowship in Women’s History, to use Bodleian Libraries collections to advance scholarship in women’s history, of any geographical area and historical period. Deadline 28th Nov. www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/fellowsh...
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
National Museums Scotland is taking part in the AHRC early career fellowships in cultural and heritage institutions scheme www.ukri.org/opportunity/...
The deadline is 10 Dec, so there's still time to get in touch about an application. Let me know if it's #histSTM related 🗃️📜
The deadline is 10 Dec, so there's still time to get in touch about an application. Let me know if it's #histSTM related 🗃️📜
Early career fellowships in cultural and heritage institutions: 2025
Apply for funding to conduct research at participating cultural and heritage institutions.
www.ukri.org
October 21, 2025 at 3:53 PM
National Museums Scotland is taking part in the AHRC early career fellowships in cultural and heritage institutions scheme www.ukri.org/opportunity/...
The deadline is 10 Dec, so there's still time to get in touch about an application. Let me know if it's #histSTM related 🗃️📜
The deadline is 10 Dec, so there's still time to get in touch about an application. Let me know if it's #histSTM related 🗃️📜
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
The BAVS 2026 Annual Conference CfP is now live: victorianist.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/c...
We hope you can join us in Liverpool next year!
We hope you can join us in Liverpool next year!
CFP: BAVS 2026 Conference Liverpool
BAVS Liverpool 202627 – 29 July 2026 Keynote Speakers: Dr Alison Chapman (University of Victoria, BC), others to be confirmed. The Centre for Modern and Contemporary History (CMCH) at Liverpool Joh…
victorianist.wordpress.com
October 20, 2025 at 11:31 AM
The BAVS 2026 Annual Conference CfP is now live: victorianist.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/c...
We hope you can join us in Liverpool next year!
We hope you can join us in Liverpool next year!
We've a whole week to come up with our own suggestions....
October 21, 2025 at 7:33 PM
We've a whole week to come up with our own suggestions....
Hope to see you there!
The BAVS 2026 Annual Conference CfP is now live: victorianist.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/c...
We hope you can join us in Liverpool next year!
We hope you can join us in Liverpool next year!
CFP: BAVS 2026 Conference Liverpool
BAVS Liverpool 202627 – 29 July 2026 Keynote Speakers: Dr Alison Chapman (University of Victoria, BC), others to be confirmed. The Centre for Modern and Contemporary History (CMCH) at Liverpool Joh…
victorianist.wordpress.com
October 21, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Hope to see you there!
All the best anecdotes packed into 5k words! But even allowing for them having to be there, a sadly snide feel. For all his faults, Asa deserves more of the celebration provided by this extract than is offered by the piece as a whole. Age of Improvement and Victorian Cities a monument in themselves.
‘When Asa Briggs left school, there were only fifty thousand university students in the whole of Britain. Today, to a substantial degree because of Briggs’s campaigns and ideas, there are more than three million in higher education.’
Neal Ascherson on the historian: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Neal Ascherson on the historian: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Neal Ascherson · Professor Heathrow: Asa Briggs says yes
Asa Briggs used sweeping educational change to increase equality in England. He helped to make history, as well as...
www.lrb.co.uk
October 18, 2025 at 11:41 AM
All the best anecdotes packed into 5k words! But even allowing for them having to be there, a sadly snide feel. For all his faults, Asa deserves more of the celebration provided by this extract than is offered by the piece as a whole. Age of Improvement and Victorian Cities a monument in themselves.
Exactly 12 months since Darwinism’s Generations: The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859–1909 academic.oup.com/book/58805 was published online. Not sure if I should be pleased with nearly 500 downloads in that time. But I hope if you haven't yet, and you have access, you will today!
The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859–1909: Darwinism’s Generations
Abstract. Darwinism’s Generations uses the impact of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) in the fifty years after its publication to demonstra
academic.oup.com
October 18, 2025 at 6:52 AM
Exactly 12 months since Darwinism’s Generations: The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859–1909 academic.oup.com/book/58805 was published online. Not sure if I should be pleased with nearly 500 downloads in that time. But I hope if you haven't yet, and you have access, you will today!
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
Are you an established or senior researcher in the humanities and social sciences? Our British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowships allow successful award-holders to concentrate on bringing a major piece of research to completion. Find out more: https://bit.ly/3VMeTZ9
October 16, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Are you an established or senior researcher in the humanities and social sciences? Our British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowships allow successful award-holders to concentrate on bringing a major piece of research to completion. Find out more: https://bit.ly/3VMeTZ9
An important essay for all of us interested in the Victorian archaeology of generations and generational thinking.
I'm really proud of this: the latest issue of #VictorianStudies has an article of mine in it!
It's on #ageing and #generations, & the insightful ways that Victorian novelist Margaret Oliphant approaches these issues, with takeaways for us now.
doi.org/10.2979/vic....
1/
It's on #ageing and #generations, & the insightful ways that Victorian novelist Margaret Oliphant approaches these issues, with takeaways for us now.
doi.org/10.2979/vic....
1/
October 15, 2025 at 7:23 PM
An important essay for all of us interested in the Victorian archaeology of generations and generational thinking.
The official CFP is a few days off, but I can't wait that long to announce that #BAVS2026 will be held in Liverpool, 27-29 July. We hope that some of the @rs4vp.org crowd will be able to make the trip over from #RSVP2026 and join @bavs-uk.bsky.social for more Victorian stuff. Details to follow.
October 15, 2025 at 10:51 AM
The official CFP is a few days off, but I can't wait that long to announce that #BAVS2026 will be held in Liverpool, 27-29 July. We hope that some of the @rs4vp.org crowd will be able to make the trip over from #RSVP2026 and join @bavs-uk.bsky.social for more Victorian stuff. Details to follow.
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
For reasons, it would be v. helpful to have information from a broad range of academic and non-academic (incl. GLAM) users of the BBC Written Archives OTHER THAN historians, briefly on: 1) What you've used it for and 2) How the proposed changes would impact on your research.
Reposts welcomed.
Reposts welcomed.
Historians dismayed by ‘scandal’ of BBC cutting access to...
Critics say new limit to trove of information sounds knell for independent research
observer.co.uk
October 14, 2025 at 9:09 AM
For reasons, it would be v. helpful to have information from a broad range of academic and non-academic (incl. GLAM) users of the BBC Written Archives OTHER THAN historians, briefly on: 1) What you've used it for and 2) How the proposed changes would impact on your research.
Reposts welcomed.
Reposts welcomed.
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
It was cool to see that Mokyr got the Nobel in economics. @antonhowes.bsky.social has a nice write up here: www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-inv...
Age of Invention: Joel Mokyr's Nobel
A triumph for history and the importance of ideas
www.ageofinvention.xyz
October 14, 2025 at 7:47 AM
It was cool to see that Mokyr got the Nobel in economics. @antonhowes.bsky.social has a nice write up here: www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-inv...
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
Now open: call for the Royal Historical Society's First Book and Early Career Article Prizes, 2026.
Eligible titles, published in 2025, may be submitted by the author before the closing date of 15 December. Further details and how to apply: bit.ly/3KnR47v
#Skystorians
Eligible titles, published in 2025, may be submitted by the author before the closing date of 15 December. Further details and how to apply: bit.ly/3KnR47v
#Skystorians
Royal Historical Society Book and Article Prizes, 2026: submissions now invited - RHS
The Royal Historical Society invites applications for its First Book Prize, 2026 and Early Career Article Prize, 2026. The call for submissions opens on Monday 29 September 2025 and runs to Monday 15 ...
bit.ly
October 14, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Now open: call for the Royal Historical Society's First Book and Early Career Article Prizes, 2026.
Eligible titles, published in 2025, may be submitted by the author before the closing date of 15 December. Further details and how to apply: bit.ly/3KnR47v
#Skystorians
Eligible titles, published in 2025, may be submitted by the author before the closing date of 15 December. Further details and how to apply: bit.ly/3KnR47v
#Skystorians
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
The British Newspaper Archive now includes Jackie and I was delighted to note problem pages in prominent position blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2025/10/06/j...
Hot Off The Press – New Titles This Week
We welcome iconic best-selling teen magazine Jackie to The Archive. Browse every single edition of the weekly magazine for girls, from 1964 through to 1993.
blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
October 9, 2025 at 3:02 PM
The British Newspaper Archive now includes Jackie and I was delighted to note problem pages in prominent position blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2025/10/06/j...
Have posted a short blog discussing what we now know about Sarah Lewis, author of Women's Mission (1839).
Sarah Lewis, author of Woman’s Mission (1839)
Sarah Lewis must have strong claims to be most widely-known unknown person in Victorian Britain. Her book Woman’s Mission, first published in 1839 and reprinted 16 times in the next 15 years was enormously influential. Along with the contemporaneous works of Sarah Stickney Ellis (1799-1872), including the Women of England (1839), Lewis’ book formed the bedrock of early Victorian ‘separate spheres’ ideologies.
profmartinhewitt.com
October 8, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Have posted a short blog discussing what we now know about Sarah Lewis, author of Women's Mission (1839).
Great to see the whole archive of the BJRL available open access! A real boon to historians. (But in promoting this special issue, I might have omitted the 'local historians' designation for Alan Kidd and Terry Wyke, which rather undersells their place as social historians of Manchester and beyond.)
Now open access: BJRL back archive, including special issue on ‘Medical History in Manchester: Health and Healing in an Industrial City, 1750–2005’. Check it out.
This week, Professor Carsten Timmermann writes on Bulletin 87:1, ‘Medical History in Manchester: Health and Healing in an Industrial City, 1750–2005’.
Read the blog post: bit.ly/3KYQL39
Read the blog post: bit.ly/3KYQL39
October 8, 2025 at 8:36 AM
Great to see the whole archive of the BJRL available open access! A real boon to historians. (But in promoting this special issue, I might have omitted the 'local historians' designation for Alan Kidd and Terry Wyke, which rather undersells their place as social historians of Manchester and beyond.)
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
'fresh and fascinating ...astonishingly detailed ...I have not read any other such study that ranges so widely in Britain, is so authoritative, and so clearly expressed ...an exciting new way to think about the century', Janet Browne on Darwinism's Generations. I'd say I'm pretty chuffed with that!
Age does count - Metascience
Metascience -
link.springer.com
October 7, 2025 at 10:04 AM
'fresh and fascinating ...astonishingly detailed ...I have not read any other such study that ranges so widely in Britain, is so authoritative, and so clearly expressed ...an exciting new way to think about the century', Janet Browne on Darwinism's Generations. I'd say I'm pretty chuffed with that!
'fresh and fascinating ...astonishingly detailed ...I have not read any other such study that ranges so widely in Britain, is so authoritative, and so clearly expressed ...an exciting new way to think about the century', Janet Browne on Darwinism's Generations. I'd say I'm pretty chuffed with that!
Age does count - Metascience
Metascience -
link.springer.com
October 7, 2025 at 10:04 AM
'fresh and fascinating ...astonishingly detailed ...I have not read any other such study that ranges so widely in Britain, is so authoritative, and so clearly expressed ...an exciting new way to think about the century', Janet Browne on Darwinism's Generations. I'd say I'm pretty chuffed with that!
Quick response from the DNB; they are convinced. The previously unknown author of *Woman's Mission* (1839), key text of Victorian 'separate spheres' ideologies, was Sarah Lewis (1807-1878), who conducted a high class boarding school for girls in Putney, apparently from the later 1830s to the 1860s.
October 6, 2025 at 8:52 AM
Quick response from the DNB; they are convinced. The previously unknown author of *Woman's Mission* (1839), key text of Victorian 'separate spheres' ideologies, was Sarah Lewis (1807-1878), who conducted a high class boarding school for girls in Putney, apparently from the later 1830s to the 1860s.
Reposted by Martin Hewitt
Pleased to announce @univeng.bsky.social small funding scheme now open to members. UE will fund up to 20 projects up to £250 each to support research/pedagogy/continuing professional development activities in Lit, Lang, Creative Writing. See details here: universityenglish.ac.uk/englishcreat...
University English Funding
universityenglish.ac.uk
September 30, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Pleased to announce @univeng.bsky.social small funding scheme now open to members. UE will fund up to 20 projects up to £250 each to support research/pedagogy/continuing professional development activities in Lit, Lang, Creative Writing. See details here: universityenglish.ac.uk/englishcreat...
I was there again in the summer. It's a real throwback, and with some fantastic archival collections as well.
Somewhere free, quiet, and right next to Liverpool Street? 👀
Whether you’ve got a deadline looming, are polishing off a chapter on your lunch break, or hunting for a calm spot to do some work, our new Reading Room is open to you.
👋 https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/whats-on/activity/reading-room/
Whether you’ve got a deadline looming, are polishing off a chapter on your lunch break, or hunting for a calm spot to do some work, our new Reading Room is open to you.
👋 https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/whats-on/activity/reading-room/
Reading Room | Bishopsgate Institute
The Reading Room is separate to the Researchers’ Service, so if you’d like to look at our special collections and archives, you’ll need this instead https:
www.bishopsgate.org.uk
October 4, 2025 at 8:57 AM
I was there again in the summer. It's a real throwback, and with some fantastic archival collections as well.