Oliphant's novels & stories show us
1) how misleading the term "old" is, since it can include several distinct generations,

2) the intersectional discrimination facing older women then as now,

2/4

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/

My to-read pile in the British Library today... (Of course I only got through 3 of 7 - I'd better come back next week.) But what luxury to sit with such richness of thought!

.@emilyjlm.bsky.social gives us a brilliant paper at #BAVS2025 about adapting sentiment analysis for Victorian texts. Current method is
1) confined to +/-
2) lexicons are made of 21stC tweets.
Here's a +/- map of HP7 - my students try this with David Copperfield, also episodic & peripatetic

I've had a wonderful day at #BSG2025 - gerontology showing itself to be such a refreshingly interdisciplinary field. And I spotted #StudyingGenerations on the @policypress.bsky.social bookstand!

I'm in Genoa for #INCS conference, and it turns out to be wonderfully intriguing and multi-layered. Church in a cliff anyone, with attached car park?

When I was teaching History at @leedstrinity.bsky.social I loved being at the home of @1972shp.bsky.social & attended some great workshops.
@apf102.bsky.social quotes @iandawson51.bsky.social powerfully here - I'd love these to explicitly be aims for English teaching too.

"#Generation" is the most fascinating of all, for me. Most uses refer to family, but when it refers to cohort, DNB contributors mainly use it to demarcate their subjects’ achievements and values from their own. Basically, it's saying "you're outdated, pal".

"Permanent value" seems superficially similar to "will always", but it's not! Instead, in DNB it's a tool of snide condemnation - usually used to say "his works are of no permanent value...". DNB combined the eulogies of obituary with the brutal critique of periodical reviews.

While contributors avoided using "modern" in ways that would later look outdated, they couldn't resist speculating about future reputations. "Will always" is a recurrent phrase in DNB - a clue to how the project's biog entries combine norms from many genres, including obituary.

The final piece of my work on overview media is out! An analysis of the Dictionary of National #Biography, using corpus stylistics #DigitalHumanities.

The DNB claimed to be monumental & definitive, but it was full of very recent lives! How did it pull off the illusion? https://doi.org/10.1353/bio.

On campus today, feeling wobbly about other things, but came across this leaf, which is too good not to share.
#TinyJoys

The early #Victorian era was just disappearing outside living memory for these Edwardian suffrage campaigners - they're creating a pantheon of recent past history and I love it!
Thank you Christina Broom, pioneering press photographer.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

I hear it's #NationalOatcakeDay. I know it's mostly celebrating the Staffordshire pancakey variety, but I'll be celebrating in my own way, as most days.

I'm presenting for @ihr.bsky.social 'Britain at Home & Abroad since 1800' seminar on 8th Feb:
'How to get an overview of contemporary history (19thC style): from panorama paintings to biographical dictionaries'. It's online so all can join - you can book a slot via www.history.ac.uk/seminars/bri...