Time and Tide Museum: Black Beauty, Anna Sewell and Great Yarmouth

 I'm giving a talk about Mary and Anna Sewell on Friday January 17th at the Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth:

Inside the Newport Mansions: Christmas Past

 I appeared on the Inside the Newport Mansions podcast to talk about Christmas Past:

Associated Press: Santa Claus

I spoke to the Associated Press about Santa Claus - available here - which got picked up around the world, including by Time magazine, here. 

USA Today: White Christmases

I'm quoted in this USA Today article about White Christmases:

UN Today Magazine: Here to Sleigh

I'm in this month's UN Today magazine (the magazine of United Nations civil servants) with an article about Christmas traditions around the world. You can read the whole thing here or below.  

Guardian: Christmas Movies

I've been quoted in The Guardian in a fun article about contemporary Christmas movies - enjoy here. 

Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize 2024: Winner

 

Delighted to announced that our edition of Lydia Maria Child's writing for children, co-produced with our students, was awarded The Literary Encyclopaedia's biennial prize for Scholarly Editions.

The full announcement can be found on The Literary Encyclopaedia's pages here and below.

National Geographic History Magazine

I'm quoted in this month's National Geographic History Magazine in an article about the ongoing significance of A Visit from St. Nicholas - a snippet below:

 

Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize 2024: Shortlisted

 

Our collection of Lydia Maria's Child's writing for children has been shortlisted for a Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize in the category: Scholarly editions of works originally in the English language. Results in December!

Frank Stockton: The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales

I'm delighted to say that the fourth book produced in collaboration my co-editor Hilary Emmett, our students, and the UEA Publishing Project, will be published in September as part of the Children's Corner Editions series! This time, we're bringing the groundbreaking fairy tales of Frank Stockton to a new generation of readers, young and old. Professor Jack Zipes, the pre-eminent fairy tale academic, has already described this edition as "simply superb"!  

Order your copy direct from the UEA Publishing Project here.

More advance praise below:

Mary Sewell

During the research that I've been doing on Black Beauty for my project with Redwings Horse Sanctuary, I became so captivated by the neglected life and work of Anna Sewell's mother, Mary, that I have collected some of her poetry in a new edition. Homely Ballads and Stories in Verse: The Poetry of Mary Sewell is the first modern collection of her work. Mary was one of the biggest-selling poets of the Victorian era and it's a privilege to be able to be bring this gathering of her most popular verses back to life. Now available!

Just not cricket: Baseball, youth and national identity in late nineteenth-century children’s magazines

My article "Just not cricket: Baseball, youth and national identity in late nineteenth-century children’s magazines" has just been published in European Journal of American Culture. Here's the abstract:

In the late nineteenth century, baseball became enshrined as America’s national sport. Across American culture, the game became imbued with a series of values and characteristics that seemed redolent of life in the Gilded Age and beyond. This article explores the ways in which this process played out in the pages of popular magazines directed at the children of the nation’s elite. These neglected resources provide us with an extraordinary lens through which to chart both the changing place of the national game within the lives of American children and the changing meaning of baseball within the life of the nation. In poems, stories, illustrations, editorials and even reader’s letters, children were newly acculturated into the sporting life in ways that had profound implications for wider questions of childhood, gender, race, class and national identity.

Transforming Educations Awards: Winner

 

Back in May our ongoing children's literature project (see more here, here and here) won a UEA Transforming Education Award for Employability and Experiential Learning. All of the books published so far through this project are now part of their own UEA Publishing Project imprint, Children's Corner Editions, and are available here.

Seaside Heritage Network

Alongside my colleague Malcolm McLaughlin, I spoke about our work on the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome at a Seaside Heritage Network event - recording below...

'Twas the Night Before Christmas: The Economist

I've been quoted in this article from The Economist about the 200th anniversary of "A Visit from St. Nicholas":

Comparative American Studies: Christmas Special

I've guest edited a special Christmas-themed double-issue of Comparative American Studies featuring a host of excellent articles which reshape our understanding of the place of the holiday in American life and culture and beyond. Available here (plenty of open access too...). Table of contents below.

The Last Gift: LSUP Online Author Series

 I gave a talk about The Last Gift for LSUP's Online Author Series - video below!

She learned all their secrets: The story of Anna Sewell and Black Beauty

Yesterday was the launch event for the new edition of Black Beauty that I've edited - a collaboration with the wonderful Redwings Horse Sanctuary. It was also the premiere of an another exciting aspect of this project: an animation about the life and legacy of Anna Sewell and her famous book - narrated by Dame Joanna Lumley. Enjoy below!

A Juvenile Miscellany: An Anthology of Lydia Maria Child's Writing for Children

Coming in November! Edited with my colleague Hilary Emmett, this is the latest collaboration between us, the UEA Publishing Project and the brilliant final-year students on our children's literature module at UEA (see also What Katy Did and Five Little Peppers). The official website is here and it's available for pre-order now. This is the first ever collection of Child's deeply influential writing for children, and I'm delighted to say that it has already received some very kind words of praise from some of the most significant Child scholars around:

"This splendid anthology of Lydia Maria Child’s writings for juveniles is a major publishing event that represents American Studies at its best. The product of an inspiring collaboration between the scholarly editors and their students in the field, the book reprints for the first time a wide range of texts covering all the subjects about which Child sought to educate her youthful readers—relations between indigenous peoples and white settlers; race, enslavement, and abolition; history and revolution; the natural world; and work, wealth, and poverty. The anthology’s superb introduction not only highlights Child‘s role in creating an American children’s literature and influencing later practitioners of the genre but offers insightful interpretations of key texts. Altogether a remarkable achievement."
Carolyn L. Karcher, author The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child

"A Juvenile Miscellany, a beautifully edited collection of Lydia Maria Child's children's literature, is a joy to read. The selected stories are lively and evocative; together, they provide irrefutable evidence of Child's genius as a pioneering American children's author. The editors' introduction contextualizes the stories in Child's wider career as a radical abolitionist and reformer, confirming her status as a major nineteenth-century intellectual with much still to teach us today. "
Lydia Moland, author of Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life

"A Juvenile Miscellany: An Anthology of Lydia Maria Child’s Writing for Children is a milestone in the author’s recovery. Offering an abundant selection of the author’s work on various social justice causes, as well as key texts on the natural world, this generous collection represents Child brilliantly as an activist and a citizen. It is exactly the book I have been wanting."
Karen Kilcup, Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor at UNC Greensboro and author of Stronger, Truer, Bolder: American Children's Writing, Nature, and the Environment

And we were interviewed for the Lydia Maria Child Newsletter - some screenshots here!

Full description below!

Circus at the Seaside: Building the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome, 1903 - Coastal Studies & Society

Over the last few months, with my colleague Malcolm McLaughlin, I've started a new research project on the history of the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome and circus at the seaside. Our first article, "Circus at the Seaside: Building the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome, 1903", has just been published open access in Coastal Studies & Society. Available here. Abstract below...