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”

Lucie Matthews-Jones (Liverpool John Moores University), hands-on creative teaching pedagogy workshop

The Victorian Popular Fiction Association is dedicated to fostering interest in understudied popular writers, literary genres and other cultural forms, and to facilitating the production of publishable research and academic collaborations amongst scholars of the popular.

We invite a broad, imaginative and interdisciplinary interpretation on the topic of ‘Victorians and Their Publics’ and its relation to any aspect of Victorian popular literature and culture that addresses literal or metaphorical representations of the theme. Inter- and multidisciplinary approaches are welcome, as are papers that address poetry, drama, global literature, non-fiction, visual arts, journalism, historical and social contexts. Papers addressing works from the ‘long Victorian period’ (i.e. before 1837 & after 1901) and on neo-Victorian texts/media are also welcome, so long as the links to the Victorian period are clear. 

Submissions from scholars at all stages of their careers, as well as independent researchers and postgraduate students, are encouraged. Please send proposals for 20-minute papers, panels of three papers (by individual scholars, or affiliated with another Learned Society), or non-traditional papers/panels, on topics that can include, but are not limited to: 

• Genres that are central to Victorian popular fiction - the Gothic, sensation fiction, crime fiction, invasion fiction among others - and their readers, habits, public perception and impact
• Writers of Victorian popular fiction, their networks, connections and writing practices
• Popular fiction and the periodical press: illustrators, advertisers, publishers and their publics
• Transnational publics for Victorian popular fiction: local and global circulation; colonialism and empire; travel writing
• Victorian popular fiction and the theatre-going public; stage and adaptation, spectatorship and performance
• Authorial self-fashioning, public personae of celebrated figures, (auto)biography
• Public and private spheres in Victorian fiction
• Mental illness and the public/private self
• Print culture, periodicals, and popular journalism
• Exhibitions, museums, and the public display of culture
• Public spaces: their representation in fiction, their management and regulation, or their role in facilitating social encounters
• Neo-Victorian publics: writers, readers, publishing, scholarship, teaching
• Victorian popular visual arts, material culture and their publics
• Place and space; Liverpool as a global city; maritime history; Blue Victorians
• Science, medicine and communicating these to publics / in popular fiction
• Innovation and change - social, political, medical, environmentalism and more
• Change of public perceptions (about, as well as depicted in, Victorian popular fiction)
• Victorian law, policies and the public
• Victorian institutions, businesses and narrating their relationship with their publics
• Ideas of the public good (e.g. public health), and state intervention
• Politics, reform, and appeals to the activist public in Victorian popular culture
• Representations of gender & sexuality, race & ethnicity, LGBTQI+, age, and disability for the Victorian reading public
• Unruly publics: crowds, mobs, and misbehaving or subversive audiences
• Victorian popular fiction and language, translation and dissemination
• Games, the franchises of play, and their significance for particular publics
• Teaching and writing (Neo-)Victorian popular fiction, pedagogy and staff/student perspectives

Submission Guidelines:

• Abstracts of no more than 250 words for individual papers, or 700 words for panel proposals, in Word format.
• Brief biographical note (max 100 words) including your institutional affiliation if appropriate.
• The conference will be fully hybrid. Please state whether you expect to attend in person or online and, if online, what time zone you are in.
• If you have a Twitter/X or Bluesky handle, please include this too.
• Submit proposals to the Conference Team at vpfaconference@gmail.com by 1 March 2026.

All speakers must be current members of VPFA. 

To find out more visit the website at www.victorianpopularfiction.org/vpfa-annual-conference/