iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David Francis Taylor @davidftaylor.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Anyone else really struggling with hay fever? I always seem to struggle around this time. Whatever pollen is in the air doesn't agree with me.

010

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Julie Park @juliepark.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

Excited to deliver my paper--based on fresh work for next book Writing’s Maker—"Hester Thrale Piozzi's Minced Meat for Pyes: Scrapbook Composition as Life Writing"--to @oxford18thc.bsky.social next Tuesday. Many thanks to @ballasterros.bsky.social and @davidftaylor.bsky.social for the invitation

0146

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Faculty of English, University of Oxford @engfac.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

We're delighted to welcome Barney Ronay @barneyronay.bsky.social, Chief Sports Writer for The Guardian, to the English Faculty on 3 March. He'll be in conversation w/ Prof David Taylor discussing everything from the politics of sport to the changing nature of Britain’s media landscape. All welcome!

083

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Oxford 18th-Century Literature & Culture @oxford18thc.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

This Tuesday we'll be hearing @gabriellabird.bsky.social & @davidftaylor.bsky.social talk about reviving Centlivre's The Busy Body in a collab between @orangetreetheatre.bsky.social @creationtheatre.bsky.social & Oxford's Cultural Programme. 5.30 @ Seminar Room East, Mansfield College. All welcome!

Poster for Susanna Centlivre's The Busy Body, showing a masked eighteenth-century woman.

051

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Chloe Wilcox @sadpphicstanza.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

I (and, I think, the whole audience) had such fun at last night’s performance of ‘The Busy Body’ by Susanna Centlivre, put together by @davidftaylor.bsky.social, @creationtheatre.bsky.social, @orangetreetheatre.bsky.social!! It was kinda like a 1709 version of The Importance of Being Earnest :D

182

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Oxford 18th-Century Literature & Culture @oxford18thc.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

We're excited to reveal our programme for the term, featuring @davidftaylor.bsky.social, Gabriella Bird Katharine Boehm, @juliepark.bsky.social, and Peter Sabor. As always, all welcome!

Week 4: Tues. 11 Feb., 5.30-7pm
DAVID TAYLOR (Oxford) and director GABRIELLA BIRD
Reviving Susanna Centlivre’s The Busy Body for the 21st-century Stage

Week 6: Tues. 25 Feb., 5.30-7pm
KATHARINA BOEHM
(University of Passau, Germany)
Tangible Pasts: Antiquarian Culture and the Novel in the Eighteenth Century

Week 7: Tues. 4 March., 5.30-7pm
JULIE PARK (Penn State University)
Hester Thrale Piozzi’s Minced Meat for Pyes: Scrapbook Composition as Life Writing
* Joint event with the Romanticism Seminar*

Week 8: Tues. 11 March, 12.30-1.45pm
PETER SABOR (McGill University)
“The capital pen of a sister author”: Reading Frances Burney with Jane Austen
* Sandwich lunch provided*

Weeks 4, 6, 8: Seminar Room East, Mansfield College
Week 7: Massey Room, Balliol College

All welcome.

SEMINAR LEADERS:
Ros Ballaster, Christine Gerrard, Nicole Pohl, Tess Somervell, David Taylor, Carly Watson, Abigail Williams.

272

David Francis Taylor @davidftaylor.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

The ruins of Godstow Abbey amid the frost and freezing fog.

0180

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Inscription: the Journal of Material Text @inscriptionjournal.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Inscription issue 6 (out spring 2026) is all about cuts / tears. Here is our call for papers. Talk to us if you have an idea for an article!

03014

David Francis Taylor @davidftaylor.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Does anyone else have trouble renewing their BSECS (@bsecs.bsky.social) membership with Wiley? This is the 3rd year in a row that my card has been declined and the process to rectify this is time consuming and infuriating.

330

David Francis Taylor @davidftaylor.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

Just read Ciaran Carson's Fishing for Amber. It's an astonishing book. A masterpiece. I can't believe it's not better known.

010

David Francis Taylor @davidftaylor.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

This sonnet by Gillian Clarke. Beautiful.

060

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Chris Louttit @drchrislouttit.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Good to see Michael John Goodman's The Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery getting some festive attention. Completely open-access & reusable & remixable & with a range of Dickens's illustrators beyond the familiar original ones including Fred Barnard, Charles Green & Harry Furniss 👇.

openculture.com

Explore an Online Archive of 2,100+ Rare Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels

As Christmastime approaches, few novelists come to mind as readily as Charles Dickens. This owes mainly, of course, to A Christmas Carol, and even more so to its many adaptations, most of which draw i...

511452

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Emma Smith @oldfortunatus.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Brush up your Shakespeare! Read along with our monthly webinar or just drop in to hear the conversation: english.web.ox.ac.uk/english-facu... Please repost!

english.web.ox.ac.uk

English Faculty / Oxford World's Classics Shakespeare Webinar Series with Professor Emma Smith

710165

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Deidre Lynch @drbibliomane.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

This poem by Mary Robinson, published in The Morning Post in 1800, addressed to that newspaper's "Type," really must be the only poem about a typeface (as well as in a typeface) written in the #19thc. (But, gosh, I would be happy to hear of others.) Here are the first 2 stanzas. #BookHistory

To the New Type of the Morning Post (27 January 1800)
Ye Sable Legions, here you stand/ A thousand Subjects to command!/ All dimly clad in leaden mail,/ To triumph o'er your Victim pale!/To blur the white and spotless scene,/ And sport your Columns dark between! Ye Sable Legions! Fate decrees// That, 'midst your triumphs, you should please;/ That Mirth and Wisdom should combine/ To regulate each blacking line;/That Wit should in your Ranks appear, And Beauty drop the frequent tear,/When tales of tnender sorrow prove/ That Souls of Lead can yield to Love."

2019756

David Francis Taylor @davidftaylor.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Oxford folk - get yourselves to the North Wall to see Creation Theatre's Christmas show, Hansel & Grettel. It's fabulous. Took our 8yo this evening and we booked to go again as soon as we got home. The final medley is worth the ticket price alone. Tickets: creationtheatre.co.uk/show/hansel-...

creationtheatre.co.uk

Hansel & Grettel - Creation Theatre

Family Christmas show at The North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford from Creation Theatre, specialists in site specific and digital theatre.

010

David Francis Taylor @davidftaylor.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Pringles are biscuits, not crisps (potato chips). For the second time this week, a student has blown my mind.

010

David Francis Taylor @davidftaylor.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Did you know that Leigh Hunt kept a *Hair Book*? Yes, a *Hair Book*: an album of locks belonging to literary greats. And the good folk @ransomcenter.bsky.social have digitized it. Thanks to my student @sadpphicstanza.bsky.social for telling me about this.

hrc.contentdm.oclc.org

CONTENTdm

0102

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Bodleian Libraries @bodleian.ox.ac.uk · 02/12/2024

For those who missed the press around the William Blake discoveries (mentioned in our previous post), catch up here: www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about/media/...

bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Engravings discovered on reverse of copper plates thought to be the earliest produced by William Blake

011036

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Richard Ovenden @richove.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Luminous Port Meadow

227326

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Tim Hitchcock @timhitchcock.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Paul Sandby, c.1759 - Old Chairs to Mend. London Museum.

A man walks from right to left. He is wearing a floppy black hat, and a grey coat and trousers. In his left hand is a chair with a rush seat, and in his right hand is a poll resting on his right shoulder, which holds a quiver of rush at his back.

1132

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

(And on the subject of near-perfect sonnets, this — from @ravoon.bsky.social’s Last of the Coalmine Choirboys — is magnificent. “…the sun has gone / to pieces in the song-forsaken sky”)

Text of a sonnet “After the Death of a Child (A Pastoral Heckle)” by Graeme Richardson

2113

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

It’s always life-affirming when you enjoy a reading so much you buy the book the next day, then you re-read properly and it’s even better than you remember. I’m loving @niaandthepoems.bsky.social’s Backalong, and the title sonnet is so close to ideal form you could almost mistake it for perfect.

Text of a poem “Backalong” by Nia Broomhall.

43010

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Ed Conway @edconway.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

🧵SALT🧵 It's been snowing in the UK and the road gritters are out in force, begging the question: Have you ever wondered where that grit actually COMES from? The answer is more magical, beautiful and fascinating than you probably realised. 1/14

18637661535

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Dan Hicks @profdanhicks.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

one highlight from San Francisco’s MOMA ast week - Hans Haacke's "Blue Sail" (1965; chiffon, oscillating fan, fishing weights, and thread) ✨

36315

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Oxford 18th-Century Literature & Culture @oxford18thc.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

We're excited to be talking the digital #18thcentury with Nicole Pohl and @jarona7.bsky.social of the @eenlightenment.bsky.social tomorrow (19th) from 12.30-1.45pm. Do join us in Seminar Room East at Mansfield College. A sandwich lunch will be provided.

183

David Francis Taylor @davidftaylor.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Co-teaching a special option on 'Word & Image' for our finalists with the wonderful @ljpowell.bsky.social has been the best teaching experience of my career... ...and the cherry on top is that for our final class today we were joined by T. J. Clark, who is as lovely and generous as he is brilliant.

030

David Francis Taylor @davidftaylor.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

I'm so excited to be working with Creation Theatre & @orangetreetheatre.bsky.social on a script-in-hand staging of Susanna Centlivre's wonderful comedy The Busy Body! Tickets: Oxford (24 Jan) creationtheatre.co.uk/show/thebusy... Richmond, London (26 Jan): orangetreetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/the...

On the left, a masked 18th-century woman looking at us. She is wearing an hat with an ornate arrangement of ribbons. On the right. The same woman appears upside down. Both are against a pink backdrop.

182

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Deidre Lynch @drbibliomane.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

I'm trying to write today about "papyromania"--an obsession w/ the illusionistic representation of paper--& about a 1780 watercolor by Samuel Lewis, a detail of which you see here. Kind #18thc & art history Bluesky pals, what is the paper object marked w/ the letter N & the word Isleworth? thanks!

A so-called "letter rack" painting: confined behind brown leather scraps one seems to see--but, no, it's a trompe l'oil, a "deception"-- various paper bits scattered: trade cards, a bank note, a lady's pocket book, two playing cards, a corner of the front page a Lloyd's Evening post newspaper.

88115

Reposted by David Francis Taylor

Oxford 18th-Century Literature & Culture @oxford18thc.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Hello! Hope we're not late to the party over here. Here's our list of speakers for this term. Do join us next week for what promises to be a fascinating session from by Electronic Enlightenment team.

1102