An eclipse for me on my birthday!? Oh Sun, you shouldn’t have 😍🌘

I spent a lot of time with the bawdy satires in Astrea's Book for Songs and Satyrs at the Bodleian that offer new connections between Behn and Mancini. And so the article is the most salacious piece I've written (so far), featuring phrases like "cunt gravy" and "fuck squad". Enjoy if you dare.

Blissful day at the British Library and a rare break from the whirlwind of looking after a 10-month-old, bc what do you mean I can read what I want, for hours, in relative silence without interruptions. Felt like a Lady of Leisure.

A gorgeous evening celebrating a gorgeous book. Congratulations again @laurenworking.bsky.social on A Golden World, a book that traces the influence of the Americas in early modern England from canoes to copper, from silver to sunflowers🌻.

Got an email this morning to say a piece I co-authored with Christophe Gillain is one of the most viewed articles published by Renaissance Studies. It feels hard being an ECR right now but news like this is a real boost to morale ✨. It’s open access - link below

Had the most wonderful evening back in Oxford last night with my PhDay 1 Marina Perkins celebrating the publication of our books. Thanks to all who joined us (didn’t get enough photos bc I was having too much fun/wine) ❤️

Late to my own party, but it is wonderful to see my edition of Hortense Mancini’s letters in print, which arrived at the start of the year. If you think your library would benefit from the words of one of the seventeenth-century’s most libertine women, here is the link: iterpress.org/978164959131...

It’s December! And I have a piece in this month’s @historytoday.com on (you guessed it) Hortense Mancini’s life, and what I learned about her as I prepared the first ever edition of her letters, which is out with Iter Press later this month. (Lots of other great stuff in HT Dec issue too)

I’m so happy that it’s publication day for my monograph! As I’m on leave atm, there’s no book launch (yet…) but I’m celebrating with my little mascot who says it’s almost as good as their favourite Peekaboo Moon, which is towering praise from this fairly fierce book critic.

Unboxing my author copies to finally hold the finished book in my hands. What a feeling! I started this research during my MA in 2016, and 1 PhD and 2 research fellowships later it’s finally here. Coming soon to a research library near you! ✨

Did anyone else feel their heart leap with the news that the British Library are aiming to relaunch their archives and manuscript catalogue in early December? Can't wait to see you old friend 😭

Starting some new writing today on a favourite topic - libertine women - with some motivational libertine treats

✨Excitingly my monograph now has a cover!✨ It’s out in November @bloomsburyhist.bsky.social, which means there will finally be a whole book on Hortense Mancini’s salon, the eager few will be relieved to know. It comes with an academic price tag £££ but will be Open Access. Library orders welcome 🙏

Graveyard exploring today & spent a while gazing at this early eighteenth-century stone with skull and fletched arrow decoration - beside it was the grave of Henry Fawcett, husband of the indomitable Millicent Garrett Fawcett

This week I gave a paper in the TUNNEL SHAFT of the Brunel Museum, which was very cool in every sense

My review of The Graces: The Extraordinary Untold Lives of Women at the Restoration Court is out now in the August issue of @historytoday.com. Stans of the Stuarts, the Roaring Restoration, and early modern women - this book is for you 💘

Travelling home after a wonderful day in York at the Women’s Worlds workshop where we explored the relationship between salons and slave ports, organised by the brilliant @susannah-lw.bsky.social. Inspired by the new methodologies being pioneered by young scholars and cultural heritage sites ✨

A wonderful evening celebrating the launch of Breeze Barrington’s The Graces 🚀. All about the most exciting, innovative, and scandalous women of seventeenth-century England. Tasters of the book are in her article on Maria of Modena in this month’s BBC History magazine @historyextra.bsky.social

My partner likes to joke the French will put a croissant on anything - after we saw a croissant-handbag in a Paris boutique. Read a review this morning about French imperialism in India & the ‘Croissant’ vessel dispatched from France to the East Indies, imagining a little pastry logo on the mast 🥐🌜

It is endlessly infuriating to me that Caster Semenya, and other women athletes, are punished for "naturally produc[ing] higher levels of testosterone than most women" - when that very same capacity is celebrated, rewarded, given medal after medal in the men's sports

Somehow things have conspired so that I am doing two proofs and two indexes this month(!). But I am so excited for my first academic book - and my little edition of Hortense Mancini’s letters - to be out in the world soon 🌍. A summer of printing and proofs 💫

Lazy Sundays with Breeze Barrington’s new book on women at the Restoration court. Review out soon! 🌸🌻🌷

Snippets from the terrific talks and conversations we’ve been having at Cultures of Philosophy in Exeter the past few days on women and natural philosophy - featuring a cameo from Saint-Évremond in a paper not by me! Bravo @cultphil.bsky.social

Left my first Women in French @wif-ukire.bsky.social conference full of hope & admiration for the future of our field. Every panel was so engrossing that I’ve no conference pics except these two of the nun’s seminary we stayed in - what a location!

When I started working on Hortense Mancini nine years ago, every book said that (almost) none of her letters had survived. Since then, I’ve managed to find about seventy… transcribed them, translated them, and proofs are now here! 😍✨😭

On this magnificently sunny day, I worked in the Royal Society Library for the first time - an unexpectedly peaceful space, would 100% recommend. Need to gear more of my research towards natural philosophy

If Rapunzel was wisteria

Happily made it to ‘Rise Up’ at the Fitzwilliam today. The beautiful double portrait of Dido Belle and Elizabeth Murray is even more gorgeous irl. And loved seeing all the playbills advertising Ira Aldridge as Othello, Macbeth & King Lear 🎭

Can't help but add 2 pence bc I am a (precarious) academic and my brother is a plumber. He helps family with repairs and manual expertise, and I help with CVs, education advice, difficult texts (like jobs apps and mortgage agreements). I'd like to think we "improve society" in complementary ways ☯️

International Women’s Day reads (accidentally v apt bc we celebrating women everyday in this house) #IWD25