iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

How your email finds me this week 📚. (We were warned that children are often ill when they start nursery but we didn’t realise it might happen after just one day…)

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

An eclipse for me on my birthday!? Oh Sun, you shouldn’t have 😍🌘

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I spent a lot of time with the bawdy satires in Astrea's Book for Songs and Satyrs at the Bodleian that offer new connections between Behn and Mancini. And so the article is the most salacious piece I've written (so far), featuring phrases like "cunt gravy" and "fuck squad". Enjoy if you dare.

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Blissful day at the British Library and a rare break from the whirlwind of looking after a 10-month-old, bc what do you mean I can read what I want, for hours, in relative silence without interruptions. Felt like a Lady of Leisure.

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

A gorgeous evening celebrating a gorgeous book. Congratulations again @laurenworking.bsky.social on A Golden World, a book that traces the influence of the Americas in early modern England from canoes to copper, from silver to sunflowers🌻.

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Got an email this morning to say a piece I co-authored with Christophe Gillain is one of the most viewed articles published by Renaissance Studies. It feels hard being an ECR right now but news like this is a real boost to morale ✨. It’s open access - link below

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Had the most wonderful evening back in Oxford last night with my PhDay 1 Marina Perkins celebrating the publication of our books. Thanks to all who joined us (didn’t get enough photos bc I was having too much fun/wine) ❤️

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Late to my own party, but it is wonderful to see my edition of Hortense Mancini’s letters in print, which arrived at the start of the year. If you think your library would benefit from the words of one of the seventeenth-century’s most libertine women, here is the link: iterpress.org/978164959131...

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

It’s December! And I have a piece in this month’s @historytoday.com on (you guessed it) Hortense Mancini’s life, and what I learned about her as I prepared the first ever edition of her letters, which is out with Iter Press later this month. (Lots of other great stuff in HT Dec issue too)

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

I’m so happy that it’s publication day for my monograph! As I’m on leave atm, there’s no book launch (yet…) but I’m celebrating with my little mascot who says it’s almost as good as their favourite Peekaboo Moon, which is towering praise from this fairly fierce book critic.

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

Unboxing my author copies to finally hold the finished book in my hands. What a feeling! I started this research during my MA in 2016, and 1 PhD and 2 research fellowships later it’s finally here. Coming soon to a research library near you! ✨

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Did anyone else feel their heart leap with the news that the British Library are aiming to relaunch their archives and manuscript catalogue in early December? Can't wait to see you old friend 😭

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Starting some new writing today on a favourite topic - libertine women - with some motivational libertine treats

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

✨Excitingly my monograph now has a cover!✨ It’s out in November @bloomsburyhist.bsky.social, which means there will finally be a whole book on Hortense Mancini’s salon, the eager few will be relieved to know. It comes with an academic price tag £££ but will be Open Access. Library orders welcome 🙏

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Graveyard exploring today & spent a while gazing at this early eighteenth-century stone with skull and fletched arrow decoration - beside it was the grave of Henry Fawcett, husband of the indomitable Millicent Garrett Fawcett

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

This week I gave a paper in the TUNNEL SHAFT of the Brunel Museum, which was very cool in every sense

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

My review of The Graces: The Extraordinary Untold Lives of Women at the Restoration Court is out now in the August issue of @historytoday.com. Stans of the Stuarts, the Roaring Restoration, and early modern women - this book is for you 💘

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Travelling home after a wonderful day in York at the Women’s Worlds workshop where we explored the relationship between salons and slave ports, organised by the brilliant @susannah-lw.bsky.social. Inspired by the new methodologies being pioneered by young scholars and cultural heritage sites ✨

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

A wonderful evening celebrating the launch of Breeze Barrington’s The Graces 🚀. All about the most exciting, innovative, and scandalous women of seventeenth-century England. Tasters of the book are in her article on Maria of Modena in this month’s BBC History magazine @historyextra.bsky.social

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

My partner likes to joke the French will put a croissant on anything - after we saw a croissant-handbag in a Paris boutique. Read a review this morning about French imperialism in India & the ‘Croissant’ vessel dispatched from France to the East Indies, imagining a little pastry logo on the mast 🥐🌜

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

It is endlessly infuriating to me that Caster Semenya, and other women athletes, are punished for "naturally produc[ing] higher levels of testosterone than most women" - when that very same capacity is celebrated, rewarded, given medal after medal in the men's sports

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Somehow things have conspired so that I am doing two proofs and two indexes this month(!). But I am so excited for my first academic book - and my little edition of Hortense Mancini’s letters - to be out in the world soon 🌍. A summer of printing and proofs 💫

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

Lazy Sundays with Breeze Barrington’s new book on women at the Restoration court. Review out soon! 🌸🌻🌷

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Snippets from the terrific talks and conversations we’ve been having at Cultures of Philosophy in Exeter the past few days on women and natural philosophy - featuring a cameo from Saint-Évremond in a paper not by me! Bravo @cultphil.bsky.social

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Left my first Women in French @wif-ukire.bsky.social conference full of hope & admiration for the future of our field. Every panel was so engrossing that I’ve no conference pics except these two of the nun’s seminary we stayed in - what a location!

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

When I started working on Hortense Mancini nine years ago, every book said that (almost) none of her letters had survived. Since then, I’ve managed to find about seventy… transcribed them, translated them, and proofs are now here! 😍✨😭

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

On this magnificently sunny day, I worked in the Royal Society Library for the first time - an unexpectedly peaceful space, would 100% recommend. Need to gear more of my research towards natural philosophy

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Happily made it to ‘Rise Up’ at the Fitzwilliam today. The beautiful double portrait of Dido Belle and Elizabeth Murray is even more gorgeous irl. And loved seeing all the playbills advertising Ira Aldridge as Othello, Macbeth & King Lear 🎭

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Can't help but add 2 pence bc I am a (precarious) academic and my brother is a plumber. He helps family with repairs and manual expertise, and I help with CVs, education advice, difficult texts (like jobs apps and mortgage agreements). I'd like to think we "improve society" in complementary ways ☯️

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

International Women’s Day reads (accidentally v apt bc we celebrating women everyday in this house) #IWD25

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

It’s Friday, the sun is gleaming, & I am working on my shiny new project on Huguenot women, beginning with the indomitable Marie Dentière

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

A virtual Glastonbury-style queue this morning for the St James’s Palace tour so I can find out whether the ghost of Hortense Mancini really haunts the rooms 👻

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

I’m probably the last person to discover this but I was today years old when I found out ‘geyser’ is pronounced ‘geezer’ which (as a Londoner) I’m struggling to take seriously

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Final checks for the monograph at The National Archives… and then I promise to work on something that isn’t to do with Hortense Mancini

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Some great early modern women content in this month’s @historytoday.com - on the allegedly ‘Mad Duchess’ of Albemarle & the ethics of writing histories tied up with mental health

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Super late to the party but wow the BL exhibition on Medieval Women is fantastic. So many stunning illuminations but also unexpected beauties like an ivory comb decorated with a narrative of courtship. Go if you haven’t yet!

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Also available as a scarf that one Ebay seller has ingeniously styled as a *cape* of tenderness. A little flashy pun

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Hello BlueSkywalkers of 2025! Starting the week with an encyclopedia entry on Madeleine de Scudéry that I rlly need to finish. Desperately trying to find a way to work Gucci's SS16 Carte de Tendre dress into the section on 'Reception' 👗

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Back to writing/thinking about libertine women in Restoration London after a weekend of debauchery. Managed to lose my sunglasses, scrunchie & jacket at a rave - but at least didn’t lose my hair like this one poor punter 💃

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

My first appeal to the early modern hive mind here! I'm working on this satire, but cannot decide what the dashed-out expletive is in the second line of the first stanza: 'While I drink my Bottle & s- with my Mate'. All suggestions gratefully received 🙏

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

For years I have been living with an imposter complex as a dix-septiémiste who had never been to Versailles…..until today ✨🦚

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Working in the Bibliothèque Mazarine for the first time. When I say I gasped when I first walked in…

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

A fabulous day at Paris Cité teaching a class on Hortense Mancini, archive-rummaging & palaeography guesswork, followed by a lunchtime talk on some of the filthiest satires I’ve found about libertine women. And then for cakes! (I went for the giant red raspberry macaron)

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 21/10/2024

It was a wonderful weekend at the Esther Inglis conference in Edinburgh & so aptly full of variety as we celebrated the multitalented Inglis - papers, keynotes, badges, tote bags, library visits, concert, embroidery, music, digital exhibition launch, dress up!! 🪡🎨🪶

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 18/10/2024

En route to Edinburgh for a weekend of all things Esther Inglis. For the first time in a long time, presenting work that is nothing to do with my thesis/monograph. Nervous excitement ✨

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 02/10/2024

First day of a new job/project, & I'm finally going back to this gorgeous manuscript by Esther Inglis to think about Huguenot women's material culture & gift-giving practices ✒️ . Obsessed with Inglis' peaked hat...

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 02/09/2024

Another favourite for #WorldLetterWritingDay: Hortense Mancini asking Jean de Hautefeuille for another copy of Hippocrates because 'I have a monkey who has eaten mine'. Her mischievous monkey always reminds me of the Earl of Rochester's portrait 🐒 🐵 💌

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 02/09/2024

It’s #WorldLetterWritingDay & I couldn’t resist posting some of my archive favourites - these from Henrietta Maria & Charles II to the Duke of Mazarin. Materially gorgeous - thick creamy paper with envelopes fastened by dyed horsehair & chunky wax seals (Monaco Archives)

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 27/08/2024

hello new followers! I'd sort of given up here but a new surge of #earlymodern ists has encouraged me to try again. I work on early modern women & exiles. I've just finished editing Hortense Mancini's letters & am now starting a new project on Huguenot women 🖋️📜

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