Dear blog,

I’m just returned from the Godwin diaries conference in Oxford and am about to go on leave for two weeks, so I thought I should update my blog before my holiday.

I really enjoyed the conference – the project has, over the last three years, made an electronic, fully searchable, and annotated version of William [...]

Dear Hannah – Great to hear from you again. It sounds as though you’ve got lots of exciting things going on!

Sorry Jamie – I don’t know the answer to your question. Hope you’ve been flooded by responses from others… I do know that Patrick Parrinder is very good on HG Wells. As for people to ask who are on the LitSciMed list – Martin Willis might be a good start (he’s written on science fiction [...]

I’d be really interested in hearing what people think about the changes in policy in Higher Education being brought in by the coalition government too.. on a related but different subject to Will’s blog post. There’s going to be an announcement by Vince Cable tomorrow that could make quite a difference to Universities in the [...]

Dear blog,

I’ve been in the Mitchell Library, in Glasgow, for the past few days reading Joanna Baillie’s letters to Lady Davy. There are 29 letters and they cover a lengthy period, from 1815 to 1851, when Joanna Baillie died. Given that Sir Humphry Davy dies in 1829, many of the letters (22 I think?) are [...]

I feel as if I should be slinking in here, waving a white flag and asking for forgiveness for being so incredibly awful at updating this blog. It’s been a very long time. The main reason for my absence has been the upgrading process and all of the attendant bureaucracy and writing. Putting together a [...]

Slow-coach that I am, I only just came across the internet sensation which is Ken Robinson’s (first) TED talk. I have a few ‘issues’ with TED, but you can’t deny the talks are good – and despite the perhaps occasionally questionable humour, I think this one is worth watching. I think all of his [...]

Dear blog,

I had a great time at the third event, and so from what I’ve read on students’ evaluations, did everyone else it seems. We had twenty students at this event from a real range of institutions and disciplines, many of which had not been represented at any of the previous events.

The first day (as [...]

It certainly seems strange if palaeography is under attack – the very basic study of deciphering handwritten manuscripts is surely enough justification for its prominent continuation. That I never had any kind of training in using handwritten documents is also telling I suppose. In fact, the transcription exercise in Event 3 was the first time [...]

SATURDAY 3rd and SUNDAY 4th July - the Royal Institution is at the Royal Society\'s Summer Science Exhibition in Southbank. Entrance is free. http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayEvent&id=1020

This is more question-begging than question answering, and I hope someone out there (with a strong nod in Will’s direction, probably…!) can help me out with this.

I have come under the impression that the common view is that the idea of bioterrorism first occurs explicitly in literature with the publication of War of the Worlds [...]

I have a somewhat similar sentiment as Rachael: that although using manuscripts seems to be what the rigorous historian should do, it is often painstaking, especially when compared to the easy access of databases and Text Creation Projects. I know that one manuscript-to-text database I use, Early English Books Online, claims a 99.995% accuracy rate [...]

Spooky!

Not really on the same subject but there have been various interesting efforts to map literature. Wordsworth is the poet who most springs to mind, with poems such as those on naming places and his clear association with a particular place, the Lake District. Technological advances have made it possible to map in very complex [...]

I know what you mean Rachel. There is nothing more frustrating than pouring over a handwritten letter and not being able to read a word, which, if you could read it, would reveal the meaning of the entire letter. Paleography training would be really useful; I remember being given some helpful tips, such as try [...]