Call for Expressions of Interest: Virtual Reading of Joanna Baillie’s The Family Legend

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Staging Baillie in a Digital Age: Virtual Reading of The Family Legend 

On Saturday 21st November 2026, as part of the ‘Joanna Baillie Project’ initiated and facilitated by Chris Bundock (University of Essex), we will be hosting a virtual reading of Joanna Baillie’s The Family Legend. The reading, accompanied by a closing discussion, is open to international participation and is approximated to run from 6.30-9pm UK time. At this stage, we are inviting anyone interested in contributing to this event, either as audience member, reader, or creative participant, to contact us (see below). 

Joanna Baillie’s ‘Highland play’, The Family Legend, was performed at the Edinburgh Theatre Royal in 1810. The play centres on two warring Scottish clans, the Macleans and the Campbells, and provides an early example of the Scottish ‘National Drama’, exploring themes of identity, vengeance, and the politics of peace. This was the first of Baillie’s plays to be performed in her native Scotland. While her earlier tragedy De Montfort (1798) had been staged at a large London playhouse – the prestigious Drury Lane – Baillie had no intention of allowing her Legend to suffer this same fate. She informed her friend, and the play’s dedicatee, Walter Scott, in a letter of 1810, that the play was better suited to Edinburgh’s ‘little theatre’ not only on account of its national theme, but because ‘Large Theatres are a bane & pest to the Drama’ (Slagle, Collected Letters, 1999). As Catherine Burroughs identifies, Baillie called overtly in her third volume of A Series of Plays – now more commonly known as the Plays On the Passions – for a ‘smaller stage’ than that popularised in London, ‘to permit subtler dramatization of both public and private realms’, and to enable ‘a more emotionally expressive, less exaggerated acting style’ (Closet Stages, 1997, 87). The expansive London playhouses, Baillie considered, sacrificed emotional minutia for extravagant spectacle, and were therefore inimical to the dramatic project outlined in her ‘Introductory Discourse’ to Plays On the Passions, which informed her dramatic corpus at large.  

Following the successful revival (directed by Robert Price) of Joanna Baillie’s The Tryal (1798) at the Bury St Edmunds Theatre in 2024, we are keen to experiment further with the performability of Baillie’s plays in a twenty-first-century context: this time, assessing the relationship between Baillie’s theory of the drama and the innovative practices facilitated by the digital age. Baillie’s animosity to large stages limited the theatrical reach of The Family Legend to a select, regional audience, confining the tropes and motifs of the nascent ‘National Drama’ to the country of its birth, and contributing to Baillie’s long-held reputation as a closet dramatist. Our virtual reading of The Family Legend, performed via an online platform, will grant Baillie’s ‘Highland Play’ a global audience not confined to the number of seats in a particular playhouse, while taking seriously her call for a theatrical backdrop which complements the dramatic design laid out in her ‘Introductory Discourse’: especially, her emphasis on emotional nuance and the cultivation of an intimate connection between character and spectator.  It will do so by experimenting with the synthesis of Baillie’s dramatic philosophy with the visual, aural and spatial opportunities afforded by online technologies. 

For further information, or to make your interest known, please contact the event organisers, Sarah Burdett (scb93@cam.ac.uk) and Diane Piccitto (diane.piccitto@msvu.ca) by 30th July 2026. 

Sarah Burdett

Romantic Drama, Contemporary Performance: A Roundtable Discussion

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2 June 2026, 5pm UK Time 

https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QLieh1WDSbSXqk36mtO5tg

With support from the Centre for Theatre Research and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Literary Studies at the University of Essex 

Well into the twentieth century it was common to think of Romanticism as a period somewhat allergic to the stage. Even today, anthologies and surveys of the period emphasise the achievements of lyric poetry and the novel. When drama does arise, it often takes the form of what Byron called “mental theatre.” However, over the last 30 or 40 years, scholars have challenged this view to reveal in the period a “ranging debate about the theatre” in which, according to Greg Kucich,“there is a recurrent insistence on stage production as an indispensable component of dramatic writing.” This roundtable builds on this critical reassessment of the Romantic stage and how it informs contemporary work on Romantic drama. The question of whether (and which) Romantic plays were viable on the commercial stage has been re-energised by the emergence of practice-as-research methodologies, which have seen contemporary scholars experimenting with producing Romantic drama for modern audiences. 

Join our speakers, Chris Bundock, Helen Dallas, David Francis Taylor, James Harriman-Smith, Omar F. Miranda, for a roundtable on Romantic theatre and its afterlives! 

‘Rowley’s Ghost’: An evolving checklist of creative responses to the poet Thomas Chatterton (1752-70)

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‘Rowley’s Ghost’ is an online text resource, cataloguing as many creative responses to Thomas Chatterton and examples of his influence as can be identified, from 1770 to the present day. The latest version can be found here.

So, it started as a simple list of creative responses to Chatterton, whose mock-medieval poems and supposed despairing suicide at the age of 17 (nowadays seriously questioned as such: see ODNB), caused a sensation in the 1780s and thereafter. It was compiled for the first book of essays on the poet, edited by Nick Groom (1999). I had ten-thousand words, two bibliographies, many tip-offs and a copyright library for further research. Three years on, the ‘Thomas Chatterton and Western Culture’ conference at the University of Bristol, marking the poet’s 250th birthday in 2002, alerted me both to further influences, and to deeper ones. Chatterton’s influence ran right through some poets’ work. Coleridge re-worked his ‘Monody’ on Chatterton for most of his life. For the poet Barry MacSweeney (1948-2000) the ‘myth of exemplary failure and belated recognition’ Chatterton represented was a lifelong inspiration in itself. Then there were the artists – from Blake and Flaxman through to Sam Taylor-Wood; dramatists, musicians, novelists. I found that some very familiar names had added a stone to the cairn: Vita Sackville-West’s play ‘Chatterton’ was her first publication; Peter Akroyd wrote a well-received and thoughtful novel. Rock star Pete Doherty even gave himself a Medieval alter-ego (‘Villein’) to match Chatterton’s ‘Rowley’. The poet’s influence hugely increased after Alfred De Vigny’s 1835 play, which caused a sensation when it was first performed in Paris, with ripples spreading through Europe. ‘Perhaps no other poet,’ as David Fairer puts it, ‘offers such a contrast between a brief and obscure life and a vast and powerful posthumous existence’.

Clearly a simple list was not enough. Not only were there many more creatives to include, but the echoing works themselves needed some analysis, to show where Chatterton’s influence resided, and what exactly each individual contributed to the tapestry of his ‘vast’ posthumous existence. One had to track the progress of Chatterton’s influence more carefully through complexly responsive figures like Wordsworth or Keats. Putting it online freed me from word-limits and fixed versions, so I could begin to analyse as well as list, adding and revising as time allowed. It became more like an encyclopaedia of Chattertonian influence, or a gathering of short essays, bringing with them the freedom to explore issues such a Chatterton’s role as ‘The Father of Romanticism’ or in the development of the Pre-Raphaelite movement; or his influence on particular categories of creative figures: women writers, or working-class and autodidact poets, or abolitionists (through his ‘African Eclogues’). One could even see – as noted in entries for Oscar Wilde and Patricia Highsmith – Chatterton cited as a formative figure in the creation of the modern individual. Andrew Wilson links Highsmith’s amoral character Ripley with Chatterton and Thomas Wainewright (‘Wainewright the Poisoner’), as filtered through Wilde’s views on art: ‘Men like Wainewright and Chatterton were, Wilde believed, works of art in themselves and, similarly, Ripley can be read in this way. Emptied of his essence, he is the perfect embodiment of modern man – self-created, self-determined, a constantly changing, protean personality existing in a world where, as Wilde said, “lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art”’. In such discussions, literary influence becomes much deeper than a few verbal echoes, a fondness for antiquified poetry or the tale of a tragically short life.

On Chatterton as ‘The Father of Romanticism’, the most famous statement is Wordsworth’s formulation, ‘the marvellous boy’ (first applied to Chatterton some years before ‘Resolution and Independence’, in a little-known poem by Francis Garden). Wordsworth admired Chatterton’s youthful precocity, how he ‘excelled in every species of composition’. Coleridge was perhaps the most prominent poet who saw in Chatterton a ghostly friend or mentor figure, a companion or kindred spirit. For Keats it was all about language, the ‘purest English’ of Chatterton’s linguistic re-workings. Blake asserted an almost mystical belief in the authenticity of what were often called Chatterton’s medieval ‘forgeries’, and John Clare went further, imitating Chatterton’s strategies by sending off his own disguised ‘antique’ poems. (James Montgomery at the Sheffield Iris saw through this strategy, but shrewdly published the poems anyway.)

As much as the poetry, the life and especially the death of Chatterton have always inspired fresh creativity. ‘Rowley’s Ghost’ lists dozens of poems and artworks sparked, for instance, by Henry Wallis’s famous deathbed portrait, ‘Chatterton’ (1856), described by John Ruskin as ‘faultless and wonderful’ (though by Barry MacSweeney as a ‘romantic fraud’). As early as 1780, John Flaxman was painting Chatterton into the gothic tradition. Last speeches and final words by the poet are common creative responses, as are indignant condemnations of those who supposedly failed to support him, especially Horace Walpole, often cast as the villain of the story, or the poet’s home city of Bristol. Ann Yearsley added her own disappointments to Chatterton’s in introducing a late poem, sarcastically trusting that ‘as the city of Bristol is the scene for the pathetic poet, and as every poet who has hitherto sung in her shade has been rewarded, the author expects her civic Wreath’. Other Bristol writers, from Hannah More to Robert Southey, were equally engaged with the story of Chatterton, for this was local, and personal. But Chatterton’s influence spread far and wide across Europe and America, too, and it continues to do so.

‘Rowley’s Ghost’ has been expanding and evolving for over a quarter of a century now as discussion evolves around this extraordinary figure, his influential life-story, and his rich body of work. Updated versions are regularly posted on Knowledge Commons, academia.edu and Researchgate. – And comments, suggestions and contributions are always very welcome.

John Goodridge, Nottingham Trent University

johnagoodridge@gmail.com

Edward Villiers Rippingille (1790?-1859), ‘Bristol Rewards the Arts’ , Frontispiece to [John Eagles], Felix Farley: Rhymes, Latin and English, by The Man in the Moon (Bristol: J. M. Gutch, 1826). Note the devastated Muses, on the right, and the drooping banner there reading, ‘To the Memory of Chatterton, & all the other Sons of Genius…’

John Goodridge is Emeritus Professor of English at Nottingham Trent University and President of the John Clare Society. His research focuses on 18th and 19th Century labouring-class poetry. He will be giving the John Halstead Memorial Lecture at the John Rylands Research Institute, Manchester, on Saturday 13 June 2026, 2pm, entitled ‘Reading by Glow-worm: The Struggles of Labouring-Class Poets’.

The Winners of the Keats-Shelley Prizes 2025-2026 are announced

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The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association have announced the winners of the 2025-2026 Keats-Shelley Prizes at a special awards ceremony held on 16 April 2026 at 50 Albemarle Street, the former home and office of Lord Byron’s publisher, John Murray. 

The Prizes include the Keats-Shelley Prize for essays and poems and the Young Romantics Prize, also for essays and poems, open to those aged 16 to 18yrs. 

Pascale Petit has won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize for her poem, Night Canoe on Lake Sandoval. This is the second time Pascale has won having received the award in 2020 for her poem, Indian Paradise Flycatcher. Pascale is also in the remarkable position of being the first poet in the history of the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize to have both won and been highly commended in the same year. Pascale’s poem, John Gould’s Hummingbird House, was submitted and was highly commended by this year’s judges. 

Pascale said of her win: 

‘Winning the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize has special significance for me because Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale‘ is the poem that made me want to write poetry when I was sixteen. When I heard the teacher read it out it was like a close friend holding out their hand to show me the way through my life. And I have followed that path through the painful wood, listening to the nightingale of nature. Thank you to the judges for choosing my poem and encouraging me with my current collection in progress.’

Pascale explained the inspiration for her poem: 

‘My winning poem ‘Night Canoe on Lake Sandoval’ was inspired by several boat or pontoon rides on oxbow lakes in the Peruvian Amazon. Lake Sandoval is a particularly beautiful lake in the pristine Tambopata National Reserve, and giant river otters live in dens in the half of the crescent not allowed to tourists. Their wavering screams are extraordinary to hear and I wanted to capture the feeling the sound gave me, at the same time my awareness of their endangered status.’

The Keats-Shelley Essay Prize was won by Tom Bailey for his essay, Listening to William Blake.

Tom, is delighted with the success of his essay:

‘It’s an absolute honour and joy to have won the Keats-Shelley Essay Prize. Blake is a poet whose work means a great deal to me, and whose lines have stayed with me ever since my mother first read them to me as a boy.

The argument in my essay, that poems should be listened to, is hardly a radical one. But it’s one that I think is especially important with Blake, whose poems come alive when read aloud – and by ‘come alive’ I suppose I mean that they become strange, difficult even, as we try to pronounce them. His rhythms are constantly taking us by surprise.’

The Young Romantics Poetry Prize was won by Chelsea Guo for her poem, Portrait of My Mother, Lovely and the Young Romantics Essay Prize won by Lila Abularach for her essay, Turning In and Out: John Clare’s Negotiation of the Sonnet’s Form.

The theme of the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize 2026 was chosen to mark the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. Entrants were invited to submit poems on the subject of either, ‘Dystopia’ or ‘Utopia’.  Entries for the Keats-Shelley Essay Prize 2026 could be on any aspect of the writing and/or lives of the Romantics and their circles.

Chair of the judges, author, journalist and critic Rupert Christiansen, said of this year’s Prize winners:

“Judging this year’s finalists has been a rewarding and refreshing experience in an era dogged by the threat to human creativity posed by AI, the entries all showed an unmistakeable originality of thought that no computer software could ever replicate. Pascale Petit’s poem evoked both mood and landscape with rare and refined sensibility, and Tom Bailey’s essay opened fresh perspectives on the genius of William Blake. They are both distinguished and worthy winners.”

Joining Rupert, fellow judges for this year’s poetry prizes were award-winning poet Will Kemp and Professor Deryn Rees-Jones, and for the essay prizes Professor Simon Bainbridge and Professor Sharon Ruston. 

The winners of the Keats-Shelley essay and poem prizes receive £1,000, and the two runners-up £500. The Young Romantics essay and poem prize winners each receive £700 and the two runners-up £300 each.

The winners are:

Keats- Shelley Poetry Prize – Pascale Petit – Night Canoe on Lake Sandoval

Highly Commended

Mark Fiddes – Some seasonal adjustments 

Pascale Petit – John Gould’s Hummingbird House 

Keats-Shelley Essay Prize – Tom Bailey – Listening to William Blake

Highly Commended

Elizabeth King – Life Among the Ruins: Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley on Human History and Animal Futures

Karen May – “That Colossal Wreck”: La Boétie, Prometheus and the tyrant’s downfall in Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’

Young Romantics Poetry Prize – Chelsea Guo – Portrait of My Mother, Lovely

Highly Commended

Millie Hamill – The Last Nature Reserve

Shuyu Zheng – The Regulations of Happiness

Young Romantics Essay Prize – Lila Abularach – Turning In and Out: John Clare’s Negotiation of the Sonnet’s Form.

Highly Commended 

Ela Begum Kumcuoglu – To Imagine is to Resist: the Emotional Politics of Dystopia

Matilda Sheehan – What is the appeal of dystopias in literature?

The winning poems and essays and those shortlisted can be read here https://www.keats-shelley.org/

Appointed Role Advertisements: The BARS Review Editor and BARS Postgraduate and Early Career Officers 2026-2028

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The British Association for Romantic Studies is currently looking to appoint new Postgraduate and Early Career Officers to replace the outgoing role-holders, Cleo O’Callaghan Yeoman, Kate Nankervis and Zooey Ziller, and a new Editor for The BARS Review to replace Caroline Anjali Richie, who will be stepping down after the next issue (62), but will work with the new editor on the following number (63).  The BARS Exec would like to thank Caroline, Cleo, Kate and Zooey for all their hard work on behalf of the Association.

As specific skills and backgrounds are needed for these roles, we are inviting expressions of interest that will be assessed by subcommittees of the Executive, including the outgoing role-holders and a plurality of postgraduate and early career members for the Postgraduate and Early Career roles.  Expressions of interest for all roles should be received by the end of Friday 12 June 2026.

The BARS Review Editor

Applications are welcome for the role of Editor of The BARS Review, the online journal of the British Association for Romantic Studies. The BARS Review Editor leads the commissioning, editing and publication of The BARS Review, ensuring it reflects the breadth and vitality of current Romantic Studies scholarship.

The BARS Review is published biannually (Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter issues).  Please see: http://www.bars.ac.uk/review/index.php/barsreview. 

The Editor is the main point of contact for publishers, the reviewers and the production team.  The work varies depending on the scale of an issue, but might reasonably be estimated at 30-40 hours per issue.

Duties and Responsibilities of the Role:

  • Request relevant books from publishers
  • Ensure that books are promptly allocated for review by scholars with recognised expertise in the area
  • Ensure that reviewers stick to the agreed timeframe
  • Review and edit submitted manuscripts
  • Identify emerging trends in scholarship [for the Spotlight section]
  • Ensure that the journal has sufficient articles per issue, and that these are published to academic standards
  • Send the final issue to publishers and reviewers
  • Report to the BARS Executive to ensure ongoing development of the journal at Executive meetings (held every 2-3 months), and play a role in the Exec’s wider discussions

Eligibility:

The Editor should have a stable position from which they can receive and send books for review; the time necessary to devote to the role; experience of editing scholarly work; and a strong knowledge of the field of Romantic Studies to support seeking suitable reviewers.

How to Apply:

Please send an expression of interest covering why you would like to take up this role and what you would bring to it, together with a two-page CV including a brief description of your research, to the Secretary of the Association, Andrew McInnes, copying in the President, Matthew Sangster. The deadline for expressions of interest is 12 June 2026.

If you would like to discuss the position further, please feel free to get in touch with:

BARS Postgraduate Officer

We are currently looking for a postgraduate student (or students) willing to join the Executive in to represent our postgraduate members and students in the field more generally.  The Postgraduate Officer represents the interests of postgraduate students within BARS, shaping the Association’s activities and creating opportunities for early-stage researchers to develop and connect.

Duties and Responsibilities of the Role:

During their term, the Postgraduate Officer will attend Executive meetings (typically online; held every 2-3 months) and have the opportunity to co-organise postgraduate events. They will also work with the Early Career Officer to organise the next biennial Postgraduate and Early Career Conference, due to be held in 2027 and announced later this year.

The position offers valuable experience in conference organisation, logistics and communications, as well as excellent networking opportunities. Importantly, it provides the chance to help shape the Romantic Studies community by feeding into the Executive’s discussions and launching new initiatives to support postgraduates in the field. Past Postgraduate Officers have been instrumental in the launch of the BARS Digital Events series, co-editing special journal issues arising from the PGR/ECR conferences, launching new bursaries for these conferences, piloting a Best Paper Prize, and expanding the opportunities for professional development on offer at these conferences.

The Postgraduate Officer will serve for an initial term of two years: after this, there is the opportunity to apply to renew their position, according to their status of their studies, or to apply for the role of Early Career Officer. Please note that BARS offers an honorarium of £750 per annum for this role; also, any agreed travel expenses incurred for attending BARS Executive business onsite will be met by the Association.

Eligibility:

We are especially keen to receive applications from students who expect to have postgraduate status until the summer of 2028, although this is not required.

How to Apply:

Please send expressions of interest, together with a two-page CV including a brief description of your research, to the Secretary of the Association, Andrew McInnes, copying in the President, Matthew Sangster. The deadline for expressions of interest is midnight, 12 June 2026.

Expressions of interest should be up to 500 words in length. We encourage applicants to discuss their experience, skills, and passion for the role in their expression of interest, and we would very much like to read of proposals applicants have for the location, topic and logistics of the next BARS Postgraduate and Early Career Conference in 2027.

Depending on circumstances and context, the appointing panel will have discretion to propose up to two Postgraduate Officers to the BARS Executive Committee, as has been the case in recent years.

If you would like to discuss the position further, please feel free to get in touch with:

BARS Early Career Officer

Alongside the BARS Postgraduate Officer, we are also looking to appoint an Early Career Researcher willing to join the Executive to represent our early career members and early career researchers in the field more generally.  The Early Career Officer advocates for unaffiliated and recently qualified researchers within BARS, mentoring postgraduate colleagues and co-running the Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship with BAVS.  In line with the Copley Awards, BARS considers someone eligible to be considered as early career until they have held an open-ended academic role for three years.

Duties and Responsibilities of the Role:

During their term, the Early Career Officer will attend Executive meetings (typically online; held every 2-3 months) and have the opportunity to co-organise events that benefit the postgraduate and early career community. They will also work with the Postgraduate Officer(s) to organise the next biennial Postgraduate and Early Career Conference, due to be held in 2027 and announced later this year.

The position offers valuable experience in peer mentoring, conference organisation, logistics and communications, and offers excellent networking opportunities. Importantly, it provides the chance to help shape the Romantic Studies Early Career and Postgraduate community by feeding into the Executive’s discussions and launching new initiatives to support early career researchers in the field. Past Early Career Officers have been instrumental in the launch of the BARS Digital Events series, co-editing special journal issues arising from the PGR/ECR conferences, launching new bursaries for these conferences, piloting a Best Paper Prize, and expanding the opportunities for professional development on offer at these conferences.

The Early Career Officer is also responsible for facilitating the Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship together with the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) Postdoctoral Representative. The Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship is an annual initiative jointly run by BARS and BAVS to offer unaffiliated early career researchers a platform from which to develop their research profiles and organise professionalization workshops and research seminars on a theme related to nineteenth-century studies, relevant to the agreed host institution’s specialisms.

The Early Career Officer will serve for a term of two years. After this, there is the opportunity to apply to renew their position according to their eligibility. Please note that BARS offers an honorarium of £750 per annum for this role; also, any agreed travel expenses incurred for attending BARS Executive business onsite will be met by the Association.

Eligibility:

The Early Career Officer must be an early career researcher based in the UK. The Early Career Officer will mentor the Postgraduate Officer(s) through the process of organising the next BARS Postgraduate and Early Career Conference, to be held in 2027, alongside working with their BAVS counterpart to run the Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellowship on an annual basis. Therefore, demonstrable in-person conference organisation experience is essential. Excellent team working skills and communication skills must be evidenced. Prior mentoring experience is desirable.

How to Apply:

Please send expressions of interest, together with a two-page CV including a brief description of your research, to the Secretary of the Association, Andrew McInnes, copying in the President, Matthew Sangster. The deadline for expressions of interest is midnight, 12 June 2026.

Expressions of interest should be up to 500 words in length. We encourage applicants to discuss their experience, skills, and passion for the role in their expression of interest, and we would very much like to read of proposals applicants have for the location, topic and logistics of the next BARS PGR/ECR conference in 2027.

If you would like to discuss the position further, please feel free to get in touch with:

BARS International Conference 2028: Second Call for Expressions of Interest

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Dear BARS members,

We received no firm responses to our initial call for Expressions of Interest in hosting the 2028 BARS conference, and after exploring possibilities with a number of institutions, we have several potential venues for a 2030 conference, but as yet nowhere for 2028.  We’re therefore reopening the call for Expressions of Interest until June 19th (see text below).  We’re aware that the sector in the UK at the moment is under intense pressure (which has been brought home further to us through hearing about the experiences of colleagues we’ve approached regarding the 2028 conference), so it may be that at this point it’s not viable to schedule a big event two years in advance.  Ideally, though, we would like to get back to a situation where we can announce the next BARS at the end of the international conference so that people can plan.  If you might be able and willing to host BARS 2028, therefore, it would be brilliant to hear from you – please feel free to get in touch with questions and queries.

With best wishes,

Matthew Sangster (for the BARS Exec)

—

BARS International Conference 2028: Call for Expressions of Interest

The British Association for Romantic Studies is pleased to invite Expressions of Interest in hosting its 2028 International Biennial Conference. This conference will follow the upcoming ‘Romantic Retrospection’ conference at the University of Birmingham (29-31 July 2026), which builds on successful BARS conferences in Glasgow (2024), at Edge Hill (with the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism; 2022), online (2021), in Nottingham (2019), in York (2017) and in Cardiff (2015). BARS membership and conference attendance have grown and diversified over the past decade, and delegate feedback from recent events has been very positive.

Drawing on this momentum, we are very much looking forward to working with institutions to build on and further diversify the successful BARS model.

To make BARS accessible, we generally run the conference across three full days during the working week, usually in late July or early August.  Further details about the usual shape of conference are given below, and a full set of programmes for past conferences can be seen here.

Expressions of Interest should include a description of the host institution (or institutions – we’re open to partnerships), including the proposed venue(s); details of a potential conference theme; and an outline budget to give a sense of the likely cost for delegates (an example budget template can be provided on request).  Expressions of Interest should be sent to the BARS Secretary, Andrew McInnes (bars.secretary@gmail.com), by Friday 19th June 2026.

We are happy to answer questions from potential conference hosts; these can be addressed to Andrew McInnes and the BARS President, Matthew Sangster (bars.secretary@gmail.com and matthew.sangster@glasgow.ac.uk).

BARS News: Stephen Copley Research Award Applications Open (deadline June 1st 2026)

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Postgraduate researchers and early career scholars working in Romantic Studies are invited to apply for a Stephen Copley Research Award. 

The BARS Executive Committee has established the bursaries in order to help fund research expenses up to a maximum of £500. Expenses may include but are not limited to the cost of travel and accommodation related to archival or research-focused trips, as well as photocopying, scanning, and childcare. Copley Awards cannot be used to cover presenting at or attending a conference. A postgraduate must be enrolled on a postgraduate research programme in the UK; an early career scholar is defined as someone who holds a PhD (from the UK) but has not held a permanent academic post for more than three years by the application deadline. Application for the awards is competitive, and cannot be made retrospectively.

Applicants must be members of BARS for their applications to be considered. Awards should normally be taken up within a year.  The names of recipients will be announced on the BARS website and social media, and successful applicants will be asked to submit a short report to the BARS Executive Committee within four weeks of the completion of the research trip and to acknowledge BARS in their doctoral thesis and/or any publication; Reports may also be published on the BARS Blog where this is appropriate.

Previous winners or applicants are encouraged to apply again. However, previous winners are ineligible for a period of two years. For example, someone who received a Copley Award in the June 2025 round would not be eligible again until the June 2027 round. Everything else being equal, the panel will prioritise applicants who have not recently been awarded other BARS funding.

Your full name and institutional affiliation (if any).
The working title and a short abstract or summary of your PhD or current project.
A description of the research to be undertaken for which you need support.  Please be as detailed and specific as possible regarding your proposed research.  For example, if you intend to consult archival material, identify (where possible) the specific items/collections and state why consulting these is necessary for your project.
An estimated costing for the proposed research trip.  Costs should clearly relate to the proposed activities.  If driving is essential, please use UK Government rates to estimate mileage.
Estimated dates between which the research will be undertaken.
Details of current or recent funding (AHRC award, &c), if applicable.
The name of one supervisor/referee (with email address) to whom application can be made for a supporting reference on your behalf.
Applications and queries should be directed to the Bursaries Officer, Dr Gerard Lee McKeever (gerard.mckeever@ed.ac.uk) at the University of Edinburgh.

There are two rounds of the scheme in each year.  The deadlines are June 1st and November 15th.

Call for Submissions: Special Issue of Studia Neophilologica on Thomas Lovell Beddoes

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2028 will mark the two hundredth anniversary of Thomas Lovell Beddoes’s completion of the first version of his masterpiece Death’s Jest-Book. This special issue of Studia Neophilologica, coinciding also with the centenary of a journal that has been the home of many significant essays on Beddoes’s writings, will offer new readings and accounts of Beddoes’s life, work, and reputation.

Contributions are invited for essays between 5 and 8,000 words on all aspects of Beddoes’s career. Topics might include:

·       Death’s Jest-Book as a verse drama

·       Beddoes’s relationships with his Romantic precursors and contemporaries

·       Beddoes and Victorian and/or Modern poetry

·       Beddoes’s sense of humour

·       Beddoes’s political vision

·       Beddoes’s engagement with German life and culture

·       Beddoes and the gothic

·       Beddoes’s and Romantic, Jacobean, and/or Elizabethan drama

·       Beddoes and tragedy

·       Beddoes and Switzerland  

·       Beddoes’s letters and other prose

·       Beddoes and medicine

·       Beddoes’s critical and editorial history

·       Beddoes and evil

·       Beddoes’s revisions  

·       Beddoes and love


Please send abstracts of 250–300 words to Andrew Hodgson at a.hodgson@bham.ac.uk by Friday 2 October 2026. If accepted, final submissions will be due for submission by Friday 7 January 2028. Please direct any queries to the same address.

BARS First Book Prize 2026 Shortlist Announced

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The judges of the BARS 2026 First Book Prize received a large number of excellent nominations for this year’s prize. Discriminating amongst such a strong field was necessarily very challenging but the judges are now pleased to announce the following shortlist: 

Joseph Albernaz, Common Measures: Romanticism and the Groundlessness of Community (Stanford University Press, 2024)

Lindsey N. Chappell, Temporal Forms and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean (Cambridge University Press, 2024)

Jamison Kantor, Honor, Romanticism, and the Hidden Value of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

Joey S. Kim, Romanticism and the Poetics of Orientation (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)

Mathelinda Nabugodi, Shelley with Benjamin: A Critical Mosaic (UCL Press, 2023)

Sarah Sharp, Kirkyard Romanticism: Death, Modernity and Scottish Literature in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2024)

Colleen Taylor, Irish Materialisms (Oxford University Press, 2024)

Yin Yuan, Alimentary Orientalism: Britain’s Literary Imagination and the Edible East (Bucknell University Press, 2023)

This year’s judging panel is chaired by Professor Ross Wilson (University of Cambridge), and includes Dr Susan Civale (Canterbury Christ Church University), Professor Daisy Hay (University of Exeter), Dr Andrew McInnes (Edge Hill University), Dr Cleo O’Callaghan Yeoman (University of Glasgow), Dr Emily Paterson-Morgan (The Byron Society), and Dr Amy Wilcockson (Queen Mary University of London).

The prize will be awarded at this year’s BARS International Conference, ‘Romantic Retrospections’, to be held at the University of Birmingham, Wednesday 29 – Friday 31 July.

Austen Retold: How I Brought Murder and Mayhem to Jane Austen’s Emma

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Lucy Andrew discusses how she transformed Austen’s Harriet Smith into a feisty detective in her new novel A Very Vexing Murder.

As a huge fan of both Jane Austen and crime fiction, my urge to combine the two originated in my A-Level English homework, a co-written piece of Emma fan fiction in which I explored the suspiciously convenient timing of Mrs Churchill’s death, which allowed her nephew, Frank Churchill, to marry his secret fiancée, Jane Fairfax, of whom his aunt would definitely have disapproved. Over twenty years later, I’ve finally turned that germ of suspicion into a published novel.

Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s.

A Very Vexing Murder is a cosy crime retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma which transforms Emma’s mousy little sidekick, Harriet Smith, into a feisty-con-woman-turned detective who is hired to investigate a murder that hasn’t yet been committed. Harriet is employed by the tyrannical Mrs Churchill to break off her nephew’s secret engagement to Jane Fairfax who, she claims, is trying to kill her. Set in the Regency period and within the locations and narrative timeframes of Austen’s Emma, my work began by establishing how Harriet’s story fits into Austen’s narrative, in which she is a satellite of Emma Woodhouse’s story. I had to make decisions about the key events, characters and locations from Austen’s novel that I would be bringing into Harriet’s narrative. I wanted to ensure that the skeleton of Emma could be traced by Austen fans and that there were plenty of rewards for the reader who was familiar with Emma. 

But, as with every retelling, and particularly those that blend genres, I had to ensure that the novel worked as a detective narrative in its own right for readers without any knowledge of Austen’s oeuvre. Emma’s status as a proto-detective novel, as discussed by P. D. James amongst others, certainly helped make my job easier. Emma is full of secrets, scandals, misdirection and clues hidden in plain sight. There is no murder mystery, but there are plenty of marriage mysteries for the readers to solve (and for Emma herself to wilfully misinterpret). Harriet Smith may seem like an unlikely detective, but it was exactly for this reason that I selected her as my sleuthing heroine. Nobody expects anything from sweet, pliable Harriet and, so, like Christie’s Miss Marple, she is perfectly placed to investigate. She is invisible, socially mobile and, seemingly, insignificant.

Transformation is a key part of retellings. A retelling needs to do something new with the original novel: bring things from the margins to the centre; offer fresh perspectives; challenge dominant readings of the source text. In A Very Vexing Murder, much of this work was done through my re-characterisation of Harriet Smith. Firstly, I wanted to respond to the prevailing representation of Harriet as a country bumpkin and naïve little idiot that is perpetuated in many adaptations and retellings of Emma. It’s very easy to play Harriet for laughs, but she is not often given her due credit for having the courage, at last, to resist Emma’s influence and trust her own instincts in deciding to marry Robert Martin. I don’t think that Harriet is quite as silly as she’s purported to be and so I wanted to come up with an alternative narrative which empowered Harriet and explained away her naivety – hence why, in my version, she is a con woman, playing the role of sweet little Harriet Smith in order to infiltrate Highbury society to do her job.

I also wanted to explore the class ambiguity surrounding Harriet as an illegitimate child of unknown parentage. There are huge gaps in Harriet’s backstory – which Emma herself attempts to fill in Austen’s narrative (erroneously, of course) – but I wanted to play with the idea of her class ambiguity. What if Harriet is from good stock, but has fallen on hard times? Who are her parents and why have they abandoned her? Or why has she abandoned them? Connected to this, I wanted to explore the precarity of the protagonist’s position and alternative roles that could be open to her through engaging in a profession, initially as a con-woman and then as a detective. In Emma, the idea of a woman working is regarded as a terrible fate in the case of Jane Fairfax who, if she is unable to marry well, will have to go into the governess trade, which she compares to the slave trade. I wanted to challenge the narrative of tragedy surrounding the unmarried, working woman by tying Harriet’s transformation into a detective to her moral growth and independence. And, through the transformation of Robert Martin into Harriet’s gay best friend rather than her love interest, I wanted to challenge the heteronormativity of Austen’s narratives by introducing a more diverse cast of characters and relationships, including male/female platonic friendships, which are touched upon in Austen’s novels, but are never centre stage. 

The best thing you can do with a retelling is to give your readers something that they didn’t even know they wanted. In my case, that’s murder most Austen and an unlikely detective heroine who is just the girl to solve it.

A Very Vexing Murder is out now in the UK with Corvus (Atlantic Books) and will be published in the US with William Morrow (HarperCollins) on 12th May. 

Lucy Andrew is a crime writer and crime fiction scholar who has an unhealthy fixation with Jane Austen. She has a PhD in English Literature from Cardiff University and was a Senior Lecturer in English Literature before leaving academia to concentrate on her writing. Her academic publications include The Boy Detective in Early British Children’s Literature and edited collections Crime Fiction in the City: Capital Crimes with Catherine Phelps and The Detective’s Companion in Crime Fiction: A Study in Sidekicks with Samuel Saunders. You can find out more about her work at https://www.lucyandrew.com/ and you can sign up for her Secret Sleuths Club here to receive her latest author newsletter, plus an exclusive article, ‘Five Ways Jane Austen Paved the Way for Golden-Age Detective Fiction’.

You can find Lucy on Instagram: @drlucyandrew; X: @LucyVAndrew; Facebook: Lucy Andrew; Bluesky: @LucyVAndrew