victorian

British literature of the 1800s has a close relationship to archival forms and practices. With a boom in bureaucratic record-keeping, extensive imperial documentation, meticulous medical and legal case histories, and the development of libraries and institutional archives, Victorian literary texts frequently include, copy, or contest letters, ledgers, case files, diaries, and serialized records. By engaging with and appropriating formal aspects of “the archive,” Victorian literature often blurred the boundaries between history and literature, fact and fiction, what is real and what is constructed. But who was keeping records? And of whom?

Prospero Rivista di Letterature e Culture Straniere
A Journal of Foreign Literatures and Cultures
Call for Papers: Volume XXXI (2026):
NARRATIVES OF CRISIS IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN-LANGUAGE LITERATURES

The Scottish Archipelago. Literatures and cultures of Scottish islands, of Scottish insularity, of Scotland as an island, or of islands of Scottishness around Britain and the globe: whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, chained together or scattered apart in diaspora.

Please write to Sam Baker at sebaker@utexas.edu with expressions of interest or full proposals (250 word abstract + short cv)

Extended Deadline (MLA 2027): William Morris, Collections Technology & the Virtual Archive

Call for Papers: MLA 2027 - Los Angeles

The William Morris Society in the United States is soliciting proposals for two panels at next year's MLA (January 7-10, 2027 in Los Angeles). You are warmly invited to submit proposals for either session. Please submit your proposals to the email addresses listed with each CFP. Submissions must be received by March 22.

William Morris, Collections Technology & the Virtual Archive

Act quickly! Less than one month remains before the editorial deadline for Volume 53 of The Victorians Institute Journal.

Through April 1st, we are still accepting manuscripts between 7k-9k words on any aspect of Victorian and Edwardian literature, art, and culture for publication in Volume 53 of the journal, which will be published later this year.

Rising water levels in oceans and rivers, streams with high flood waves, and torrential rains that turn puddles into lakes: houses that are currently exposed to such increasingly regular water events are becoming a problematic, if not catastrophic, environment. The protective function that the house is supposed to have according to its original idea and design is being compromised. While roofs and walls are supposed to keep out wind and water—and the traditional European gabled roof is primarily designed to divert water from above—in these extreme weather scenarios, basements are flooded, roofs are torn off, entire houses stand like islands in the water or are even swept away.

Call for Papers: MLA 2027 - Los Angeles

The William Morris Society in the United States is soliciting proposals for two panels at next year's MLA (January 7-10, 2027 in Los Angeles). You are warmly invited to submit proposals for either session. Please submit your proposals to the email addresses listed with each CFP. Submissions must be received by March 15.

William Morris, Collections Technology & the Virtual Archive

Neo-Victorian Crime: A Companion – extended cfp

We are seeking 3 additional chapters for an edited collection, Neo-Victorian Crime: A Companion, which is currently under contract with Peter Lang publishers.

Call for Papers: SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900

SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, published quarterly by Johns Hopkins University Press for Rice University, invites submissions of original scholarly essays for upcoming issues. We seek work that offers fresh, rigorous contributions to the study of British literature across four historical fields:

• English Renaissance Literature

• Tudor and Stuart Drama

• Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature

• Nineteenth-Century Literature

We extend a warm invitation for you to share your contributions for our upcoming publication in 2026.

The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies (ISSN: 1137-005X, ISSNe: 2386-5431, DOI: 10.17561/grove) is a peer-reviewed, indexed periodical. Published annually and distributed both nationally and internationally, The Grove is sponsored by the research group HUM-271 of the Regional Andalusian Government, published by the University of Jaén (Spain). It is indexed by MLA, IEDCYT-CSIC, Latindex, Dialnet, MIAR, Dimensions and DICE and has been awarded the FECYT Quality Seal.

I am hoping to organize a panel for the upcoming NAVSA conference (Nov 11-15, 2026 in Pasadena), examining the exploration of anxieties associated with trafficking and transport in nineteenth-century British literature.

The conference web link is attached: https://traffic2026.ucr.edu/

Please send 300-word abstracts and 1-page CVs to charlotte.fiehn@yu.edu by February 28th, 2026.

The Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize is awarded annually to the best Ph.D. dissertation, defended in the previous calendar year, that explores the British periodical press of the long nineteenth century (including magazines, newspapers, and serial publications of all kinds) as an object of study in its own right, not as a source of material for other historical topics. Winners of the prize receive a monetary award of $1,000 and a two-year membership to RSVP.

Liverpool John Moores University, UK

6-8th July 2026

Confirmed keynotes:

Melissa Gustin (National Museums Liverpool), with guided tours of the Walker Art Gallery

Tara MacDonald (University of Lethbridge, Canada) “Public Institutions, Private Care: Sex Work and Care Work in Victorian Popular Fiction”

This panel invites papers on the topic of (re)vision—retelling, translating, adapting, re-seeing—literature in ways that engender community empowerment. There are myriad ways to revisit literary texts through new iterations, and it is often through the act of retelling and recrafting that subversive narratives are formed and new communities forged. This panel will explore how retelling a narrative shapes understandings of an original text, the community from which it was created, and the community into which it is being called forth. How can translation produce new entry points for readers into “foreign” texts, cultures, and languages? How might the adaptation of literature foster community across disciplines, ages, cultures, genders, and species?