This chapter looks at the evolving Gothic of the Vampire role playing games created by Mark Rein-Hagen et al. It offers a brief explanation of role-playing games for the uninitiated, defining their textuality in Bakhtinian terms – as chronotopes. It will lay out the relationship that role playing enjoys with the Gothic, drawing on Spooner’s pos…[Read more]

This introduction to the MLO special issue “Minoritised Languages and Travel” provides an overview of the pieces in this collection in context with historical travel accounts in German about nineteenth-century Wales.

The contributions in this collection lay bare frictions between traveller and travelee as well as the inherent instability of soc…[Read more]

This open access book draws on conceptual resources ranging from medieval scholasticism to postmodern theory to propose a new understanding of secular time and its mediation in nineteenth-century technological networks. Untethering the concept of secularity from questions of ‘religion’ and ‘belief’, it offers an innovative rethinking of the his…[Read more]

From living dolls to spirits wandering in search of solace or vengeance, the ghostly youth is one of the most enduring phenomena of supernatural fiction, its roots stretching back into the realms of folklore and superstition. In this spine-tingling new collection Jen Baker gathers a selection of the most chilling hauntings and encounters with…[Read more]

From living dolls to spirits wandering in search of solace or vengeance, the ghostly youth is one of the most enduring phenomena of supernatural fiction, its roots stretching back into the realms of folklore and superstition. In this spine-tingling new collection Jen Baker gathers a selection of the most chilling hauntings and encounters with…[Read more]

In the mid nineteenthcentury, a subgenre of ghost stories emerged that had roots in a hybrid tradition of institutional religious doctrine and oral folkloric expressions of anxiety over the fate of the child’s soul in the afterlife. Given the persistently high infant mortality rates and increased public awareness of child abuse across the c…[Read more]

In the mid nineteenthcentury, a subgenre of ghost stories emerged that had roots in a hybrid tradition of institutional religious doctrine and oral folkloric expressions of anxiety over the fate of the child’s soul in the afterlife. Given the persistently high infant mortality rates and increased public awareness of child abuse across the c…[Read more]

in Vision, Contestation and Deception: Interrogating Gender and the Supernatural in Victorian Shorter Fiction, ed. Oindrila Ghosh (Avenel Press, 2021), pp.51-58

in Vision, Contestation and Deception: Interrogating Gender and the Supernatural in Victorian Shorter Fiction, ed. Oindrila Ghosh (Avenel Press, 2021), pp.51-58

Historically, tourism in Wales was invigorated by the reinvention of mountain scenery during the Romantic period when travellers gained new perspectives of the terrain from higher ground. It is also during this period that inns and guesthouses began keeping visitors’ books in which guests evaluated their surroundings and their hosts’ good ser…[Read more]

This article argues that May Kendall’s comic verse presents a sustained consideration of one of the most prominent intellectual trends in late-Victorian Britain: the revival of idealist philosophy. Kendall’s poetry encapsulates and interrogates the connections between several important aspects of late-Victorian culture. Her thinking about idealism…[Read more]

The writings of Arthur Hugh Clough display a sustained interest in the relations between an individual, his or her generation, and the processes of historical change that distinguish and demarcate one generation from another. As someone who spent much of his life as a student and teacher, Clough was self-consciously aware of his location within an…[Read more]

For centuries, continental Europeans have come to Wales for numerous reasons. During the Romantic period some came seeking a rural idyll, whilst others in the Victorian era travelled as industrial spies, and during times of war many refugees escaped to Wales to find shelter from persecution. Not only have continental Europeans left their traces…[Read more]

The Victorian Era was one of transitions. Victorian Britain transitioned from a rural to urban society. It transitioned from an emergent empire to the dominant imperial power. It transitioned from a walking, water, wind, and animal-based transportation system to a steam-powered transportation system. It transitioned from a regional to national and…[Read more]

This is the PowerPoint presentation to accompany my comments for the Theoretical Foundations of Victorian Studies roundtable on January 7, 2021.

This chapter discusses two early anarchist conceptions of utopianism, a romantic conception associated with Gustav Landauer and a rationalist ideal linked to Peter Kropotkin. I argue that the differences have been exaggerated. Landauer and Kropotkin followed different paths, but they formulated their responses to utopianism in the same context,…[Read more]

This article examines William Morris’s idea of Englishness, considered through a critique of his concept of fellowship or community. It looks at the charge
that Morris wrongly neglected the importance of nationality as a focus for organization in socialism, preferring instead an internationalist ideal, based on an
unworkable model of s…[Read more]