Tour dates 2008

Something of a makeover this week, doughnutfans; since the day after I adorned the top of this e-journal with my strange double-exposure photo of scenes of Exeter (c. 2001) the city was caught up in the war on terr'r (to use George's pronunciation), I thought something more immediately Victorian might be appropriate, not least because the Victorian content suggested by the title hasn't been much in evidence so far this year. More to come in the forthcoming months, honest. I really can't wait to get hold of a scanner and share with you the late Victorian/Edwardian delights of The Doings of Vigorous Daunt, Millionaire, a kind of prototypic James Bond who first appeared in the Harmsworth Magazine at the turn of the century. The illustrations are great, marauding tigers and revolvers all over the place. In the meantime, you'll have to make do with Sidney Paget's image of John Watson from Conan Doyle's "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" in volume two of The Strand Magazine, 1891. Those of you wanting more gloss on this image should see what I said about it in Victorian Periodicals Review, 40.1 (2007). Ah, the distinctive aroma of self-promotion. While I'm about it, anyone in the academic business who wants to say hello (and to moan about the lack of Victorian stuff so far this year) can do so at any of the three forthcoming conferences I'll be speaking at in the next few months.

Firstly, there's Crime Cultures: Figuring Criminality in Literature, Media and Film at the University of Portsmouth, 14-16 July 2008, where I'll be presenting on urban myth and Edwardian crime fiction, in particular Marie Belloc-Lowndes' novel The Lodger. Although we tend to associate urban legends with twentieth century popular culture (and in particular fifties Americana onwards, I would guess), there's a persuasive case that such stories were all over nineteenth century popular culture, and certainly by the time Belloc Lowndes took a hearsay story about Jack the Ripper and turned it into fiction in 1912. It's probably a little on the late side, but you can book your front row seats here.

Secondly, and in the same week, a rare hometown gig; Artistry and Industry: Representations of Creative Labour in Literature and the Visual Arts, University of Exeter, 18-20 July 2008. This one is a development of the research area I unveiled at Birkbeck back in October, magic and conjuring in Victorian fiction. Like that paper, there'll be some Dickens in there, but this one is more generally about Victorian conjuring's internal struggle with its aesthetic status (is it an art? 'Yes,' says David Devant and other successful fin de siecle magicians; 'um maybe' says the public; 'Hell no' say the arbiters of high culture, but they obviously say it more politely). Expect side discussions of spiritualism and perhaps a bonus bad Derren Brown impersonation.

Thirdly, and finally for now, off to Leicester for Victorian Bodies: Touch, Bodies, and Emotions, 1-3 September 2008. Although last on the list at present, this one is part of my primary research project, being a cultural history of London Underground (those of you who have been paying attention to a psychotic degree will remember I mentioned this about fifteen months ago). Here, I'll be looking at how the establishment of the Underground in the 1860s gave popular culture a new space for fear, unease, and general terror, in particular in John Oxenham's 1897 crime serial A Mystery of the Underground, a story apparently so terrifying that readers refused to travel by underground. Or so Peter Haining argues, although I'm finding actual evidence for this rather scant (itself an interesting point; why are we so keen to accept narratives of terror about the underground?). Tour T-shirts to follow, featuring rockin' John Watson; yours for thirty pounds each.