Co-editors Dave Buchanan (MacEwan University), editor of Pennell’s A Canterbury Pilgrimage and An Italian Pilgrimage (University of Alberta Press, 2015), and Kimberly Morse Jones (Sweet Briar College), author of Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Nineteenth-Century Pioneer of Modern Art Criticism (Ashgate, 2015), are seeking proposals for interdisciplinary essays on the work and life of Elizabeth Robins Pennell, the American-born, London-based journalist and author who published (or co-published) over twenty books and hundreds of periodical articles between the early 1880s and 1930.

Pennell was a pioneer in the emerging field of cycle-touring literature, an important voice in late Victorian art criticism, an authority on James McNeill Whistler, a highly original food writer, and an accomplished biographer. She was a transatlantic figure, whose work was published and appreciated in both England and the United States, and she was an unconventional, independent (but married) woman who resisted the New Woman label of her age.

Our edited collection, the first of its kind on Pennell, will be organized into sections that represent her main interests: cycling, art criticism, travel writing, food and cookbooks, gypsy lore, and biography. We welcome submissions on any aspect of Pennell’s work and life.

Proposals: 300 words; final essays between 6000-8000 words

Proposal deadline: December 1, 2017

Please include with proposals a short cv and 50-word biographical note

Send proposals to pennellcollection@gmail.com

Notification of successful proposals: January 15, 2018

Essays to be submitted by July 1, 2018