Submissions for the VPFA First Book Prize are now OPEN! Deadline is 31st December 2025. For full eligibility criteria and submission guidelines, go to: victorianpopularfiction.org/…
VPFA's Third Sex Reading Group are back with their first session of 2026! In this session, co-hosted by Crescent Rainwater, they will be discussing Netta Syrett's The Victorians. To attend or be put on the mailing list,please email vpfareadinggroup@gmail.com with 'FAO: Third Sex'
VPFA Study Day: 'The Critical Age in Victorian Popular Literature'
❓literary representations of (peri-) menopause
🌏 online
📅 19th May 2026
💰 free for VPFA Members/ £5 for non-members
Proposals to jessica.cox@brunel.ac.uk and siobhan.smith@tees.ac.uk by 19th Feb 2026
ALT We invite 20-minute papers exploring any aspect of the critical age in Victorian popular
literature. Topics for exploration include but are not limited to:
• Representations of the critical age in Victorian popular fiction
• The medicalisation of (peri-) menopause
• Cultural constructions of middle-aged women
• Class and (peri-) menopause
• (Peri-) Menopause in Victorian advice literature
• Motherhood and (peri-) menopause
• Experiences of the critical age in Victorian women’s life writing
• Myths and popular misconceptions
The event will also include a Digital Humanities Research Skills Workshop, with an emphasis
on making digital methods more accessible. We invite short papers or workshop proposals
that showcase how digital tools can be used to research women and their bodies in
Victorian literature. Possible topics include data creation/cleaning/visualisations, textual,
quantitative or statistical analysis, using AI or specific tools (such as Voyant or Power BI).
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: Katie Brandt's doctoral research analyzes representations of intoxication and addiction in realist literature of the time, and how addiction itself can be a theoretical foundation for understanding the development and formal technologies of realism in Vic. lit.
Her 2023 article received an honorable mention for the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association's Emerging Scholar Prize and can be accessed through Victorian Popular Fictions Journal at DOI: doi.org/10.46911/GUIL7181
The deadline for abstracts for 'The Victorian Short Story' VPFA Study Day has been extended to 16th January! We would love to see your proposal in our inbox at vpfaconference@gmail.com
We are Study Day MAD: 'The Victorian Short Story: Influence, Innovation, and Legacy'.
🌏 Online
📅 19/4/26
💰 small fee for non-members
Full CfP: victorianpopularfiction.org/…
Send abstracts (250-300) for 20-min papers and bio (50) to VPFAconference@gmail.com by 20/12/25
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT SERIES 🔦 : Claudia Sterbini's PhD traces the history of asexuality through the construction of ‘nonsexuality’ in fin de siècle sexology and literature. Check out her article on non-sexual patients & doctors in The Island of Doctor Moreau: academic.oup.com/jvc/advance…
New Special Issue of Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, edited by @EsserHelena and @drclaireocall alert ‼️ The issue explores Victorian popular fiction and culture as key sites for negotiating gender and sexual non-conformity, with a focus on the concept of the ‘third sex’.
Join us for our final Virtual Tea Salon of 2025! Continue the festivities by networking with fellow Victorianists. Christmas attire and festive drinks encouraged! ☃️❄️
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT! 🔦 : Milly Harrison has been a VPFA member since 2021. Her thesis, 'Deviant Cartographies', examines how British Weird fiction allowed late-Victorian authors to explore deviant masculinity.
Harrison recently published in Gothic Studies: euppublishing.com/doi/10.336…
To be featured in the Member Spotlight series to showcase your research or any achievements, please email vpfamedia@gmail.com with a photo of yourself and details of what you would like shared.
Join us for our final Virtual Tea Salon of 2025! Continue the festivities by networking with fellow Victorianists. Christmas attire and festive drinks encouraged! ☃️❄️
Check your emails for 'Upcoming VPFA Events' to sign up. If you aren't a member, become one here to receive the event links: victorianpopularfiction.org/…
CfP for VPFA's 18th Annual Conference is now live and the topic is 'Victorians and their Publics'. To read the CfP and full submission guidelines online, please head to: victorianpopularfiction.org/…
Victorian Periodicals Review is hiring an Associate Editor! Send a 1 page letter detailing interest and qualifications and 1 page CV to katherine.malone@sdstate.edu by Monday, December 15, 2025
@RS4VP
Just a reminder that the deadline for our First Book Prize is coming up (31 December). Full submission guidelines are in the original post - we'd love to see your entry!
Submissions for the VPFA First Book Prize are now OPEN! Deadline is 31st December 2025. For full eligibility criteria and submission guidelines, go to: victorianpopularfiction.org/…
Submissions for the VPFA First Book Prize are now OPEN! Deadline is 31st December 2025. For full eligibility criteria and submission guidelines, go to: victorianpopularfiction.org/…
Check out Emma Butler-Way's new blog post about Guillermo del Torro's Frankenstein. Did you enjoy the film? What did you like and dislike? Even if it deviated from the book, did it, as Emma says, keep its 'soul'? Let us know your thoughts! 🧌
victorianpopularfiction.org/…
TOMORROW! With this cold weather we have been having lately, what better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than indoors while still meeting new people?! ❄️
Due to technical difficulties, we had to postpone our last Tea Salon. Never to fear, because we have another one coming next month! Members: check emails for 'Upcoming VPFA Events'. If you aren't a member, sign up here and you will be sent the event links: victorianpopularfiction.org/…