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Peter wakes up and realises that the time travel is a dream. Smith suggests we can understand the text to be a time travel comedy with a didactic message. It is a text situated somewhere between Dickens and Wells, taking parts from didacticism and science fiction #VPFAExtremes

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To date, Sarah Alexander is the only scholar to pay any critical attention to this novel - so Smith's research is extremely original! #VPFAExtremes

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The final paper of the conference is Hayley Smith discussing Thomas Anstey Guthrie's Tourmalin’s Time Cheques as an early time travel narrative #VPFAExtremes

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Next we have Marijke Vale, who is discussing the fascination with radium's rejuvenating properties that led it to be known as the “elixir of life” #VPFAExtremes

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In the final science and imagination panel, Adam Baldwin is talking about tales of Venus. In these stories, the contemporary imperial assumption that other worlds are there to be conquered is subverted #VPFAExtremes

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in the Third Sex Reading group conference session we were discussing Nebedita Sen's Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island. A very poignant commentary on literal, intellectual, cultural, and literary consumption #VPFAExtremes

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Fowler says she finds walking a useful methodology because it allows her to situate herself in the landscape and understand why certain places were valued above others #VPFAExtremes

in a fascinating intersection of labour and colonial history, Ghandi visited Lancashire in 1931 to discuss the impact of the Indian boycott of British goods (particularly cotton) on the textile industry #VPFAExtremes

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George Loveless was sent to modern day Tazmania for being a Tolpuddle martyr. He was concerned about the brutality of the colonial regime and wrote that it was a good warning about aristocracy possessing unfettered power in the colonies as they do back home #VPFAExtremes

1 example is Charborough Park, owned by MP Drax. His ancestor went to Barbados and built a sugar empire. The wealth from this & compensation for enslaving people affected locals. A toll road was built meaning local people suddenly had to pay to go in that direction #VPFAExtremes

Take a look at Fowler’s book ‘Our Island Stories: Ten Walks through Rural Britain and its Hidden History of Empire’. She has an opium walk through the Lake District and more. It is a useful way of understanding what our colonial histories in this country are #VPFAExtremes

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Now for our final keynote of the conference, Corinne Fowler with her talk 'The Impact of Empire on the Countryside, 1837-1901' #VPFAExtremes

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Edwardian spy fiction activated the idea of the chivalrous gentleman hero who is loyal to country, class, and kingdom. Ouida sets her spy fiction in the glamorous courtly world of high society and manipulates ideas of powerful men #VPFAExtremes

Ouida anticipates the trope of cosmopolitan clandestine networks. She believed that ‘to the true poet his native land lies wherever what is beautiful can be beloved, or that which is sorrowful needs solace’ #VPFAExtremes

Adventure fiction often features a hero ‘whose connection to his world is eccentric, who cannot or does not accept the strictures of that world [...] undergoes many improbable adventures, and finally abandons the exotic and reintegrates into the adult world’ #VPFAExtremes

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finally we have Helena Esser discussing Ouida's spy fiction! Ouida is often discussed as a sensation writer, but Esser says that discussions are lacking with regards to her as a writer of adventure fiction #VPFAExtremes

her writing asserts the permeability of geographical borders and finds new ways of asserting multilingual and multicultural identities. The mountains, particularly, represent a place where the world convenes and how she understood her own multicultural identity #VPFAExtremes

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Collier writes ‘that “other side of Italy” where we had made up our mind to settle [...] I should see Italian ways in all their unsullied primitiveness’. Collier's use of 'primitiveness' reflects not an opinion on class, but an interest in their connection to nature #VPFAExtremes

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Second we have Claudia Capancioni discussing Margaret Collier's writings on the Sibylline range of the Apennines. Collier married an Italian Lieutenant #VPFAExtremes

Last day of @VPFA1 conference :( I'm attending the Adventures Abroad panel, and first speaker is Alison Dingle talking about representations of the Holy Land in early Victorian fiction and society more broadly #VPFAExtremes

Situated against the backdrop of the pan European fear of degeneration, combined with growing xenophobia, the novel is a radical and extreme means of cleansing society of undesirable elements and people. The burning sickness is a ‘wonderfully discriminating plague’ #VPFAExtremes

the result of the plague is New England: 'A great number of the poorer classes had been swept away, and in this case of the survival of the fittest those left in England to rebuild London..' - definitely seems a bit classist #VPFAExtremes

Sporting Life wrote: ‘we have heard something of germs [...] but when plague germs sufficient to slay thousands upon thousands can be carried in the waistcoat pocket in a phial, and distributed at will, it might be time to seriously question the benefit of science' #VPFAExtremes

finally in this panel is Justyna Jajszczok talking extremes in Fergus Humes' The Year of the Miracle. In this novel a plague is intentionally transported to England from Arabia in order to have the sinful Victorian society repent and change their ways #VPFAExtremes

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When disaster strikes, the instinct for survival takes precedence over civility in apocalyptic fiction: ‘the platform was crowded with men, who fought each other like demons […] hundreds were dead under foot' #VPFAExtremes

apocalyptic fictions used Gothic tropes so that nature and the weather become active forces that shape the atmosphere. London is a space where 19th century anxieties converge to create an uncanny atmosphere of decay and fear #VPFAExtremes

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Stark argues that fictional depictions of devolution and destruction are not simply dramatic narrative devices, but a reflection of their authors' grappling with the limits of human control over progression and the world #VPFAExtremes

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third is Anna Stark talking about apocalyptic weather and apocalyptic society in late-Victorian disaster fiction. The environmental disaster tale is a new genre that arose in the late 19th century and is artistic expression that included and responded to human’s role in society #VPFAExtremes

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Maybe humans are not the most evolved creatures. The introduction of mythological creatures into the natural world has the potential to disrupt the traditional human, plant, animal hierarchy by asserting the plants' dominance in the animal kingdom #VPFAExtremes

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one plant, called the hydra genus, was compared to the mythological creature the hydra that Hercules fought because a new head would sprout where one was cut off. it has tentacles that would grab food and it had a central cavity that led to a stomach #VPFAExtremes

Lennox says that When fin de siècle fiction infused descriptions of man-eating plants with mythical creatures, they emphasise both's boundary crossing nature and further emphasise the anthropocentric hierarchy #VPFAExtremes

next we have Sarah Lennox talking about monstrous plants in 19th century popular fiction. Carnivorous plants have frequently been infused with the imagery of mythical and supernatural creatures #VPFAExtremes

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this contrasts with a rapid decay in human life and the demise of progression. Communication between places ceases and there is a generational fade in knowledge. There is an inability to look anywhere beyond the present moment and there is a relapse into barbarism #VPFAExtremes

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nonhuman spaces rapidly accelerate forward. First there is a revolution as trees invade and march up hills, then libration occurs in de-domestication, then the final step is evolution as animals become faster, bigger, stronger. #VPFAExtremes

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the distinction between human and non-human spaces in the novel is very robust, and Jeffries uses this distinction of space to map two different timelines: progression and regression #VPFAExtremes

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first in the panel on ecological extremes is Charlie Toogood talking about utopia and hybridity in After London; or, Wild England, which he calls 'a triumphant rejection of literary anthropocentrism' #VPFAExtremes

The biotech company Colossal speaks to the geographical aspects of bringing back extinct animals. Their intention is to bring back long lost ecosystems to combat climate change.#VPFAExtremes

Re-extinction emerges as a genre towards the end of the century, where novels would feature humans wiping out or killing prehistoric animals #VPFAExtremes

The depiction of prehistoric animals in fiction was mediated through anti-realist tropes like hallucinations and dreams, but in the 1860s depictions began to be legitimised as it became clear that humans had co-existed with certain prehistoric animals #VPFAExtremes

Edward Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni (1842) is perhaps the first novel to depict prehistoric creatures. It shows a immortal magician and his love for a mortal woman. He is projected into outer space and it is swarming with half-formed reptilian and dinosaur like creatures #VPFAExtremes

Our second keynote is Richard Fallon with 'Before De-Extinction: Encountering Prehistoric Animals in Victorian Popular Fiction' #VPFAExtremes

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metaphor works by creatively reconfiguring familiar mappings and generating poetic affect by shaping what we already know. E.G. conventional UP/DOWN HIGH/LOW metaphors are used to represent power and social hierarchies #VPFAExtremes

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Finishing off the panel is a paper from Irina Morozova and Valeriia Nikolaienko talking about spaces of social hierarchy and power dynamics in Wuthering Heights. They are explaining the conceptual metaphor theory to us and the concept of image schemas #VPFAExtremes

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Regional specificity shapes expressions of luddism. Craig Jackson Calhoun: ‘Luddite phenomenon was a movement which grew directly out of local community roots’ #VPFAExtremes

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next we have Tamiris Hallez looking at literary and historical perspectives on East Midlands Luddism (a movement of textile workers who protested against the use of new machinery in the wool and cotton industries) in Forest Folk and Writings of the Luddites. #VPFAExtremes

#VPFAExtremes! Asher Gibbens discussing economic extremes and psychological precarity. He says 'in the late 19th century, the development of naturalist literature in Britain, its themes, preoccupations, and paradigms, are inextricable from the late 19th century economic backdrop

I'm sadly missing out on attending @VPFA1 conference in person this year, but at least my catsitting duties have given me a friend while I attend from home! #VPFAExtremes

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