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Call for reviewers: BARS Review

The BARS Review is the review journal of the British Association for Romantic Studies, providing timely and comprehensive coverage of new monographs, essay collections, editions and other works dealing with the literature, history… Read more »

Conference Report: Sea Changes Conference

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The Open Graves, Open Minds research group’s 3-day conference Sea Changes: The fairytale Gothic of mermaids, selkies, and enchanted hybrids of ocean and river at the British Library and online was a resounding success and an absolute pleasure to attend. It was a truly international affair: delegates came from Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, the UK and the USA. There were a healthy number of doctoral students from the UK and beyond. BARS generously funded the fabulous Sea Changes programme design, Teams backgrounds and posters. This meant the organising committee could release funds for postgraduate tickets. You can view the fantastic design for the illustrated Sea Changes Booklet on the project’s webpages. The printed souvenir posters were popular with delegates and a PDF featured in the online conference packs for those presenting on Teams.

Romanticism informed many of the papers from presentations on Hans Andersen to lively discussions of sea changes in Keats, Wagner and La Motte Fouqué, and considerations of mermaids and other hybrid sea creatures in English, German, Polish and Czech Romanticism.

The conference began online with a full programme hosted by OGOM members Dr Daisy Butcher and Dr Ivan Phillips, of the University of Hertfordshire.  There were panels on ‘hybridity, monstrosity and taxonomy’, ‘aquatic romance’, ‘mermaids and otherness’, ‘romanticism and sirens’, ‘myth and storytelling’, ‘selkie stories from Scotland to the artic’, ‘The Little Mermaid’ and adaptation’, and ‘mermaids, hybridity and aquatic environment’. The first keynote speaker, Dr Katie Garner, seamlessly interwove her experience of humanities funding with her research into Romantic Scottish mermaids, to give a creative and informative talk for Postgraduates and ECRs. This was followed by the Sea Changes Flash Fiction competition and beautifully read fictional and biographical narratives from acclaimed writer Betsy Cornwell, author of Tides and the selkie-inspired memoir Ring of Salt.

On the second day the in-person event unfolded and there was a lot of excitement as  the Sea Changes signage went up at the British Library and the poster design and OGOM logo were projected onto large screens. There was an Open Graves, Open Minds display table with OGOM books, posters, postcards and fliers offering 30% off purchases for delegates from the publisher MUP.

The British Library days were hosted by the founders of the Open Graves, Open Minds project, Dr Bill Hughes and Assoc. Prof. Sam George. Proceedings got underway with an introduction to the OGOM Project and a slide show on its research strands, publications and mission statement:

The Project extends to all narratives of the fantastic, the folkloric, and the magical, emphasising that sense of Gothic as enchantment rather than simply horror. Through this, OGOM is articulating an ethical Gothic, cultivating moral agency and creating empathy for the marginalised, monstrous or othered, including the disenchanted natural world.

This was followed by Sam George’s keynote on Ningyō or Japanese human fish yokai and the rise of the fake museum mermaid. Panels ran throughout the day on ‘aqueous creatures and gender identity’, ‘hybridity and metamorphosis’, ‘re-enchanting nature’, ‘reimagining the merfolk of fairy tale’, ‘the gothic Little Mermaid’, ‘sirens selkies and the feminine’, ‘mariners and merfolk’, and ‘folklore, fairies and fish people’.

There was time for a few mermaid games and drinks at Mabel’s Tavern before a well-attended and enjoyable conference dinner at Nonna Selina, accompanied by some sea tunes. 

The third day saw delegates contributing to panels on ‘nation and nature’, ‘aquatic romance 2’, ‘the divine and monstrous feminine’, ‘mermaids of poetry’, ‘water women of Japan’, ‘oceanic post colonialism’, ‘selkies and ecocriticism’, ‘ambivalent selkies’, ‘traumatic water folk’ and ‘mermaids undines and the arts’.  

The final keynote was presented by Prof. Catherine Spooner, of Lancaster University, a long-standing contributor to the OGOM project. Catherine spoke generously on how much OGOM had influenced the direction of her own research before delighting delegates with her analysis of terror and wonder and the sparklification of the mermaid figure in all its glorious manifestations. 

Dr Bill Hughes gave the closing remarks, after presenting earlier on selkie romance novels, and attendees joined together to celebrate fifteen years of the OGOM project. The Sea Changes edited book and special journal issue were announced, together with the planned publication of the Mermaid flash fiction shortlist. Sea Changes had a fantastic venue and striking visuals. It will be remembered for its lively theme, the quality and diversity of its papers and the kindness and warmth of its delegates. The event was made possible by the generosity of its sponsor BARS.

Dr Sam George

Sam George is Associate Professor in Research in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. Sam is known as the Convenor of the popular Open Graves, Open Minds Research Project, founded in 2010. She has an unusual research specialism in literary vampires. This led to her featuring in the BBC’s Seven of the Most Unusual Areas of University Research. She is a champion of Public Humanities, successfully promoting public discourse, raising the visibility of humanities research and enhancing its impact by speaking to diverse audiences through her research.

BARS Research and Innovation Event: Applying for Funding 

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20 April 2026, 10am-1pm UK time via Zoom https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TmUff5HhQxK-OaeAZB4sdQ#/registration

Join us for this Research and Innovation event designed to support colleagues who intend to apply for grants, including EU funding, and those who are keen to develop research collaborations. The event will link the expertise of academic colleagues with suitable funding opportunities and will support the development of meaningful partnerships to generate research income and collaborations. We welcome all members of our diverse research community at all career stages to attend. 

The event will include presentations from a range of successful grant winners (from the BARS Exec and further afield) with time for Q&A. 

Speakers: Carmen Casaliggi, Andrew McInnes, Matthew Sangster, Gerry McKeever, Sophie Coulombeau, Rhona Brown

News: Rydal Mount’s future secured

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The future of Rydal Mount, the final home of world-renowned poet William Wordsworth, has been secured thanks to a landmark acquisition by the Wordsworth Trust, working in partnership with The Julia Rausing Trust and the Charlotte Aitken Trust. 

The historic property, which had recently been placed on the market by Wordsworth’s descendants, faced an uncertain future after the rising costs of operating the attraction in its current format became unsustainable. The purchase ensures that Rydal Mount will be preserved for public benefit and protected for future generations. 

The UK’s Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage said: Wordsworth pressed the reset button on poetry, and his work retains its power and relevance today. I’m delighted that the Wordsworth Trust, an institution I have close connections with, is acquiring the iconic home of one of my heroes and forefathers as Poet Laureate, and that Rydal Mount will continue to be a place of creativity and inspiration. 

Commenting on the purchase, Wordsworth Trust Director, Michael McGregor said: We are delighted that there is going to be continued public access to Rydal Mount. The news of its sale came as a cautionary tale of how precarious the Wordsworths’ heritage in the Lake District has become. Having worked closely with the owners of Rydal Mount for many years we were able to have early and open discussions with them regarding its future. However, the purchase would not have been possible without The Julia Rausing Trust and the Charlotte Aitken Trust, whose generosity has enabled us to save and protect this important Wordsworth property for future generations.

 Acquiring Rydal Mount gives us an opportunity to tell a much richer story about the lives and works of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. The Wordsworth Trust has been the custodian of Dove Cottage, the Wordsworths’ first Lake District home, since it was founded in 1891. It also looks after an internationally significant archive, with the vast majority of William Wordsworth’s verse drafts and Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere and Rydal Journals at its heart. 

McGregor continued: What many people are unaware of is that the Wordsworth Trust does so much more than simply manage Wordsworth Grasmere, the visitor attraction based at Dove Cottage. As a charity, we deliver educational and community programmes for people of all ages and backgrounds. We plan in time to expand this offer through Rydal Mount. 

Wordsworth’s descendants Christopher Andrew and Simon Bennie commented: Since our grandmother bought Rydal Mount back into the Wordsworth family, we have worked hard to keep the house open, allowing the public to enjoy its unique family atmosphere. We have been lucky and proud to be the guardians of the house and its remarkable contents over the last 57 years. Over the years we have had a very good relationship with the Wordsworth Trust, and so it was with great relief that, at the beginning of the sale process, it became clear that Rydal Mount was likely to pass into their safe hands. Whilst we are sad to be leaving the Lake District, we retain a host of happy memories. We would like to thank the multitude of visitors who have passed through the house, and also, particularly, all the staff who have worked with us over the last five decades to keep the house and garden such a special place. 

The next phase of the project is to explore sustainable options for Rydal Mount’s future operation, but the purchase confirms that the property will be preserved for public use in some form. As a much larger house with extensive grounds, Rydal Mount offers a different perspective to Dove Cottage and presents exciting opportunities to further explore the Wordsworths’ deep connection to nature and the environment. 

The acquisition has been made possible thanks to the generosity of The Julia Rausing Trust and the Charlotte Aitken Trust. 

Simon Fourmy, Chief Executive of The Julia Rausing Trust, said: Helping to preserve the UK’s cultural heritage is an important part of The Julia Rausing Trust’s mission, and we are pleased to support the Wordsworth Trust in the landmark acquisition of Rydal Mount. As the long-time home of William Wordsworth, the house offers a unique insight into the poet’s life, and charitable stewardship will ensure it remains a place where generations can engage with his legacy. We hope that this acquisition will provide a strong foundation for the Wordsworth Trust to expand its educational and community programmes over time. 

Sebastian Faulks, Chair of the Charlotte Aitken Trust said: The Charlotte Aitken Trust is proud to be playing a key part in supporting the Wordsworth Trust in the acquisition of Rydal Mount and its spectacular gardens. We are delighted that the names of Gillon Aitken and his daughter Charlotte will be permanently attached to a project of such ambition, whose scope will help preserve the legacy of one of this country’s greatest writers and make it available to the public in perpetuity.

The Wordsworth Trust will be making further announcements in due course with regards to future plans for Rydal Mount. 

However, for the immediate future the house and grounds will remain closed to the public, while essential maintenance work is carried out. 

For more information about the Wordsworth Trust visit wordsworth.org.uk

Call for Papers: Politics, Place and Print Culture: The 14th International Walter Scott Conference

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      > The University of Edinburgh, Scotland

      > 28 to 30 June 2027, with an optional trip to Scott’s home, Abbotsford House, on 1 July

The 14th instalment of the International Walter Scott conference returns to the University of Edinburgh, Scott’s alma mater in the city of his birth. Scott was at the centre of what Ian Duncan calls Edinburgh’s ‘northern literary galaxy’ in the early nineteenth century, while scholars continue to wrestle with the complexity of his dialogue with places (spots, localities, regions, nations …) across and well beyond the Anglosphere. Politically, Scott’s forthright, counter-revolutionary Toryism has not prevented his work from often seeming a mesh of alternatives, a textual world that readers responded to and appropriated for their own ends, then as now. At the same time, the evolving practices and expectations of print culture in the nineteenth century – from Victorian mass media to colonial school curricula to literary tourism – bore the imprint of Scott’s popularity as poet, critic, antiquarian and novelist. We look forward to welcoming delegates to Edinburgh and invite papers on any and all aspects of Scott’s relationship to questions of politics, place and print culture.

Keynote speakers:

> Philip Connell is Professor of Literature and History at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. He is the author of Romanticism, Economics and the Question of ‘Culture’ (Oxford University Press, 2001) and Secular Chains: Poetry and the Politics of Religion from Milton to Pope (Oxford University Press, 2016), as well as co-editor with Nigel Leask of Romanticism and Popular Culture in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 2009). He is currently working on revolution and cultural memory in Romantic Britain.

> Porscha Fermanis is Professor of Romantic Literature at University College Dublin. She is the author of John Keats and the Ideas of the Enlightenment (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), Romantic Pasts: History, Fiction, and Feeling in Britain, 1790-1850 (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) and the shortly forthcoming Settler Fiction from the Southern Hemisphere, 1820-1890 (Oxford University Press). She is currently working on settler colonialism and literary modernity in the southern hemisphere

The conference will also feature a special plenary session marking the 20th anniversary of Ian Duncan’s landmark monograph Scott’s Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh (Princeton University Press, 2007).

Contributing Papers

Please send 300-word proposals for individual papers to the organising team led by Dr Gerard McKeever (scottconference2027@gmail.com) by 1st October 2026. For panels or roundtable sessions, please send a 250-word description of the topic and a few sentences on each of the papers involved. All submissions should include short biographical notes (no more than 50 words) on the contributor(s).

Details of financial support for postgraduates will be made available in due course.

PhD Studentship Opportunity: University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

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ASSISTANT/PHD POSITION IN BRITISH OR AMERICAN LITERATURE (100%) STARTING DATE: 1 AUGUST 2026 

The Institute of English Studies at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, is looking to hire a full-time assistant / doctoral student for a four-year teaching and research position, with the possibility of a fifth year. The candidate will be expected to teach between two and four hours a semester, and to write a dissertation under the supervision of Patrick Vincent (https://www.unine.ch/anglais/biographie/patrick-vincent).

Profile 

Candidates should have completed an M.A. degree in English or Comparative Literature or be near completion. They should have an excellent track record in literary studies and write well in English; digital skills, alongside knowledge of French and / or German, are also welcome.

We encourage candidates with a demonstrated research interest in one of the following, or in a similar area: the long Romantic period; William and / or Dorothy Wordsworth; Lord Byron; Mary and / or Percy Shelley; John Ruskin; H.D. Thoreau; nineteenth-century material culture; travel literature; cultural exchanges between Great Britain, the Continent and America; the cultural history of the Alps; literature and political theory; literature and the environment; and twentieth-century American poetry.

Responsibilities

Half of our doctoral assistants’ workload is dedicated to researching and writing a doctoral thesis. In addition to light administrative duties, assistants are also required to teach one or two sections of our first-year “Literature and Writing Workshop” every semester (2 or 4h per week), which focuses on close analysis of texts and composition. 

Conditions 

The position is renewed yearly, based on the successful fulfilment of work duties and the satisfactory progress of the thesis. The starting monthly salary is CHF 5’381.50.

Workplace  

The Institute of English Studies at the University of Neuchâtel is a small but vibrant community of researchers, teachers, and students devoted to the study of English linguistics and literature. We offer B.A.- and M.A.-level programs in English, and we participate in the Swiss CUSO doctoral school. For more on the Institute, click here: https://www.unine.ch/anglais/home.html.

Neuchâtel is a pleasant town in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, tucked in between a lake and the Jura mountains. For more on the University and town of Neuchâtel, click here: https://www.unine.ch/etudier/choose/neuchatel.

Application 

  • a cover letter explaining why you are interested in the position, your research interests, and a doctoral project.
  • a C.V. with an academic reference who can be contacted.
  • an academic transcript. 
  • a writing sample (e.g. an academic essay or, if relevant, a published article).

Please submit your application by 1 May 2026

For questions and to submit your application, you may write to Patrick Vincent (patrick.vincent@unine.ch)

PhD Studentship Opportunity: USYD UofG Joint PhD Scholarship: Living with Print in the Eighteenth Century

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We invite applications from qualified candidates who wish to complete a fully-funded doctorate examining the diverse ways in which eighteenth-century readers lived actively with print. The project will focus on underutilised archival materials—including manuscript commonplace books, annotated copies, collections of anecdotes, scrapbooks, and albums—to explore how reading practices extended beyond passive consumption to encompass a wide range of dynamic engagements with texts and with the material forms of books. By tracing practices of annotation, excerpting, compilation, and reuse, this PhD will provide opportunities to shed new light on how eighteenth-century readers actively participated in knowledge circulation and the production of literary meaning.

Bringing new materials into the centre of analysis will allow the project to develop a rich account of reading as a creative and materially embedded practice, contributing to broader debates in eighteenth-century studies, book history, and the history of reading about the entangled relationships between manuscript, print, and lived experience. The student will be guided by two experienced supervisors, Nicola Parsons (Sydney) and Matthew Sangster (Glasgow), but will have considerable scope for shaping the project based on their interests.

The project takes full advantage of the Sydney–Glasgow joint PhD structure to bring together unique archival holdings and specialised scholarly expertise. The successful applicant will spend the first year undertaking a literature review and initial archival work in Sydney, followed by a substantial period of research in Glasgow engaging with extensive eighteenth-century collections held across Scotland and the UK, before returning to Sydney for a final year of intensive writing and synthesis. This structure supports a research approach that reconnects geographically dispersed but methodologically connected materials, allowing for an analytical breadth that would not be possible within a single institutional or national context. The student’s studies will also incorporate extensive opportunities for professional development, including bespoke training in rare book and manuscript studies; public-facing writing; and collaborations with cultural heritage professionals on physical and digital exhibitions.

Full details here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships/usyduofgjointphdscholarshiplivingwithprintintheeighteenthcentury/.

The deadline for applications is April 21st.

Please feel free to contact either or both of us with any questions (nicola.parsons@sydney.edu.au and matthew.sangster@glasgow.ac.uk).

Historical Romance, Austen, and Romanticism: Bridgerton Season Four Review by Emma Butler

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As an avid fan of historical/Regency romance and period dramas more broadly, as well as a scholar of the long nineteenth century, I enjoy the world that Shonda Rhimes’ adaptation (2020-) of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton book series (2000-2005) has created. I understand the critiques of the series being marketed as ahistorical or alternate from real societal issues of the time we would now consider the ‘Romantic era’, c. 1790-1850; though, from a purely entertainment aspect, Bridgerton as a series has certainly captured a large and engaging audience. Bridgerton, so far, has given viewers love interests for the eponymous siblings that are Black, South Asian, and now East Asian. This diversity enables the Bridgerton world to engage with England’s global connections and contexts (however, it has also led to the questionably magical erasure of racism by 1813 onwards, when the series is set). For the focus of this review, however, I will include some ways that Bridgerton’s fourth series engages with some recognisable Romantic context alongside some of my favourite moments:

(Some Bridgerton spoilers ahead, but mostly season four.)

Yerin Ha and Luke Thompson as Sophie and Benedict. Image: Liam Daniels/Netflix

Inter-class relationships:

The focus of season four’s romantic plot is the second Bridgerton brother, Benedict, alongside his newly introduced love interest, Sophie Baek (the adapted version of the book’s Sophie Beckett), played by the incredibly talented Yerin Ha. Rhimes keeps the main plot of Benedict’s book, An Offer from a Gentleman (2001), and Sophie is introduced sneaking into Violet Bridgerton’s masquerade ball. As their romance grows, Benedict wishes to make Sophie his mistress (a status she repeatedly rejects). As the illegitimate daughter of the Earl of Penwood and a maid, she does not wish to subject a child she may have to the same fate. This inter-class relationship is much more dramatic than what is commonly featured in Romantic novels, but the trope echoes plots of Jane Austen. Austen features couples of various levels of wealth and status, though none so dramatic as what is portrayed in Bridgerton. 

The marriage of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy of Pride and Prejudice (1813) is famously objected to by Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who claims such a match will cause ‘the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted’. Unfortunately, Sophie has no Lizzie Bennet retort (‘He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter; so far we are equal!’) to justify her relationship with Benedict, until Violet, Benedict’s mother, comes to the rescue and persuades Sophie’s stepmother agree to the lie that Sophie was actually a distant legitimate relative of the late Lord Penwood. Of course, then Sophie becomes Mrs Bridgerton and so all is well, like Lizzie becomes Mrs Darcy, despite the great protesting of Darcy’s aunt. Sophie’s story also has echoes of Austen’s Emma (1815). She most resembles Harriet Smith, who is introduced as ‘the natural daughter of somebody’. Harriet’s background similar to Sophie’s, though Harriet does not get so lucky as to marry a sexy Bridgerton brother. 

The Lake Scene (or, Benedict as Byronic hero):

Benedict Bridgerton is the second-oldest brother, therefore the spare to the Viscount Bridgerton title, and a man who wishes to reject the norms of the ‘ton’. Benedict fits into the archetype of the Byronic hero. A key Romantic literary trope, D. Michael Jones defines the Byronic hero as having ‘an internal classlessness that is deepened by his exile from any recognisable domestic life’ and that ‘his class status […] is both haughtily aristocratic and sentimentally middle class’. Benedict, most notably, is torn between his duty and status as a member of the ‘ton’ and his allegiance to the Bridgerton family, and the freedom he wishes he had. 

Benedict’s arc before series four has been exploring his persona as an artist who cannot commit to anything – or anyone. True to this nature, before he devotes himself to Sophie, Benedict sleeps around, constantly. Often with two or three lovers in his bed at a time. (It was a pleasant relief to me tha season four did not erase Benedict’s previously established bi/pansexuality, and a bigger relief still that Sophie unquestionably accepts Benedict’s coming out to her.) 

Tying Benedict to a more modern iteration of Romanticism, he has a call-back to the infamous Mr Darcy lake scene of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. Benedict, however, is completely naked – which for me further cements his status as a Byronic figure. Though Benedict is never truly exiled, as often Byronic heroes are, he seriously considers moving to the countryside with Sophie in order to have a relationship with her; the couple would have faced exile from polite society.

Claudia Jessie as Eloise Bridgerton. Image: Liam Daniel/Netflix

Eloise as Proto-Feminist:

In season three, Eloise Bridgerton is given a ‘silly novel’ to read by her brother Colin: Austen’s Emma. Bridgerton, it seems, is quite self-aware. Season four, however, features another Romantic reference, side character Cressida Cowper, informing Eloise that she has been reading Mary Wollstonecraft. Indeed, Cressida says that Elosie ‘would not stop talking about her’. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) definitely seems like something that Eloise would enjoy and corresponds with the (proto)feminist views that the character exhibits. 

If the rumours are true, and Eloise’s book will be the focus of the next season of Bridgerton, I look forward to seeing how her story unfolds with her relationship to such seminal texts of Romantic female empowerment, as well as what other Romantic connections the series will develop in the future. 

Emma Butler is a PhD researcher in English Literature at Edge Hill University. Her thesis ‘From Health to Leisure: The Seaside Resort in the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination’ studies the representation of the coast as a liminal space in nineteenth-century literature in relation to literary depictions health/sickness, the working class, and the Gothic. Emma’s research interest spans the long nineteenth century, with a focus on the novels of Jane Austen and the medical humanities. She was recently the BARS Visiting Fellow at Chawton House for 2025, researching obscure Romantic period seaside-based novels and continuations of Austen’s Sanditon. 

She is on Instagram and BlueSky as 19thcenturyem.

Bridgerton Season 4 is now playing on Netflix.

Call for Papers: 2026 Wordsworth Summer Conference

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The 2026 Wordsworth Summer Conference at elegant Rydal Hall will be the 55th since Richard Wordsworth’s inaugural conference gathering in 1970. This year we continue the format pioneered by Richard, mingling lectures, papers and lively academic debate with fell walking, picturesque rambles, and bus excursions to places of Wordsworthian and Romantic interest.

Call for Papers

2026 marks the centenary of Ernest de Selincourt’s publication of the parallel texts of the 1805 and 1850 Prelude, a landmark volume that shaped Wordsworth studies during the twentieth century and continues to do so today. 2026 is also 150 years since the publication of Wordsworth’s Prose Works of William Wordsworth, a three-volume set edited by the Scottish scholar A. B. Grosart. In view of these Wordsworth anniversaries, we invite papers that will explore ‘Wordsworth Texts’ broadly considered, to embrace the poet’s manuscript and printed texts in verse and prose, versions and editions up to the present. Papers may consider texts produced by the wider Wordsworth family (e.g. Mary Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Dora Wordsworth, Edward Quillinan) as well as critical, biographical, scholarly, and editorial commentaries from Wordsworth’s time up to the present.

In addition to these topics, we also welcome proposals on any aspect of Wordsworth and his circle, and the Romantic period more broadly, including its influences and legacies.

For more information, including bursaries, please see the PDF attached to this email.

All proposals for papers, bursary applications (and references, if applicable) should be emailed by 15 May 2026 to proposal.wsc@gmail.com.

Call-for-Papers-Wordsworth-Summer-Conference-2026.docxDownload

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Kira
Conference Administrator