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Heather Tweed

@heathertweed.bsky.social

540 followers 340 following 450 posts

Artist, writer, researcher. Veiled & forgotten 19th Century characters, Circus, Music Hall. SoA, British Music Hall Soc, Circus250 Book Ahoy! www.heathertweed.net www.heathertweed.co.uk

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Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · Nov 7

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Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 15m

Ok enough faffing around here! Off down my wondrous rabbit hole of 19th Century Circus research. Write! ✍️ Write ✍️ ✍️!

a horse with a blue saddle is being groomed by two men

ALT: a horse with a blue saddle is being groomed by two men

media.tenor.com

Reposted by Heather Tweed

Dr. Vaughn Joy @gvaughnjoy.bsky.social · 1d

Would anyone be interested in either a couple-hour writing club or a reading group (academic article or book)? Maybe once a week or every two or once a month?

Full disclosure: I am sad about being unemployed and I am in need of academic community and conversation to feel like me again.

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Reposted by Heather Tweed

Dr. Vaughn Joy @gvaughnjoy.bsky.social · Aug 28

Everything is terrible right now in general, but in personal good news, my book has a cover and I'm so excited to share it!!!

Selling Out Santa is about Hollywood's manipulation of the Christmas holiday for socially conservative ends in the early Cold War 🗃️
www.barnesandnoble.com/w/selling-ou...

A book cover from De Gruyter. A faded American flag's red and white stripes sets the background. In the foreground are three Christmas baubles: a darker red ball is in front coming in from the left, a white ball is behind it, and a light navy blue ball hangs behind that. White text reads the title: Selling out Santa Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy. On the blue ball white text reads Vaughn Joy and the series name pop culture in context

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Reposted by Heather Tweed

Kev F Comic Artist @kevfcomicartist.bsky.social · 23h

Ready for caricaturing and Shakespeare graphic novel flogging fun at Bristol Comicon. Here they come now…

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Reposted by Heather Tweed

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 1d

The first British Professional Boxing Association was formed in London in 1885 at the Blue Anchor, Shoreditch. Its founding members numbered around 60. I believe Hezekiah Moscow to be the first Black man to be elected, but the digitised Sporting Life in which they're all named is too faded to read!

Two photos of a nine and a half stone Black or Black mixed heritage Chinese man in his late 20s. On the left he is posing shirtless in white tights, fists raised against a painted backdrop of tropical plants in a studio portrait. On the right in the same studio he is wearing a typical late-Victorian working man's outfit, a dark velvet looking jacket, waistcoat, shirt, trousers.

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Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 2d

🤗🌺🌹

Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 2d

In your garden? Beautiful! 🌹

Reposted by Heather Tweed

Reading Museum @readingmuseum.bsky.social · 3d

Today's @artukdotorg.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange theme is all about ✨glamour✨

We're sharing this beautifully illustrated catalogue for shortbreads, biscuits and cakes produced by Huntley & Palmers in 1929. Who doesn't feel this glamourous reaching for a cookie and a cuppa? 🍪

1994.21.50 🖼️

illustrated cover of a Huntley & Palmers catalogue for 'Shortbreads, Biscuits & Cakes' with a glamourous lady wearing jewelry and evening dress sitting on the edge of a table reaching for a bowl of biscuits. From Reading Museum's collection.

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Reposted by Heather Tweed

Kev F Comic Artist @kevfcomicartist.bsky.social · 3d

A fun night at the authors dinner with my fellow Isle of Wight Literary Festival authors. All notably more famous than me. But I’m the only person who took a selfie.

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Reposted by Heather Tweed

Victorian Web @victorianweb.bsky.social · 4d

For Wednesday, what better than Helen Wilson's handsome and most enjoyable book on the Pinwell sisters and their brilliant woodcarving career victorianweb.org/sculpture/pi...

Cover of Helen Wilson'sbook on "The Remarkable Pinwell Sisters"

Choir stall bench end carved by the Pinwill Sisters at Plympton St. Mary, Plymouth, Devon, 1898. Photograph © Helen Wilson.

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Reposted by Heather Tweed

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 6d

I'm writing this book partly, mostly, for readers who aren't already into boxing 🥊

The Devil's Dance Floor is about pugilists, pressmen, policemen, and Alf Ball's pet puma. Murder, madness, Jem Smith's tight tights. We got wives. Bald bears. A Victorian epidemic of discarded orange peel! Smallpox!

Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 6d

Seconds out! Round one!

THE DEVIL'S DANCE FLOOR

This isn't an official announcement from Duckworth. It's a page from my agent's newsletter and book fair rights catalogue, which is public. So, a tiny-text soft launch? Details subject to change.

A lot of thank yous and less Disney, to come.

🐻🥊👊🏾👊🏻🦁🍺

Page from literary agency Curious Minds rights guide for Frankfurt Book Fair etc. Alongside a photo of me looking slightly drunk and a lot hostile, it says, in tiny font:

NEW DEALS
AGENT - Eli Keren
PUBLISHER - Duckworth
PUBLICATION - Spring 2027
STATUS - Manuscript due April 2026
LENGTH - 80,000 words
RIGHTS SOLD
World English (Duckworth)
The Devil’s Dance Floor
Late-Victorian London and the Last Bareknuckle Boys
SARAH ELIZABETH COX
An 1880s’ group biography of the last of Britain’s
bareknuckle boxers from the historical consultant behind
A Thousand Blows (Disney+/Hulu)
THE DEVIL’S DANCE FLOOR is the first popular book from Sarah Elizabeth Cox,
the historical consultant behind Steven Knight’s television series A Thousand Blows
and author of the historical blog ‘Grappling with History’.
A group biography of Victorian boxers, THE DEVIL’S DANCE FLOOR is a cultural
history that does far more than recount the true story behind the fictionalized
version now streaming. Taking a narrative approach, Cox charts the decline of
bareknuckle boxing over the 1880s, and, in doing so, explores subjects ranging
from policing and healthcare to the press and entertainment – all while offering a
personal-scale view of the melting point of Victorian London (think Hallie
Rubenhold’s The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper but
with a lot more getting punched in the face).
The subjects themselves hail from as far afield as London’s East End and the North
to the United States and the Caribbean. Each has a unique story to tell and reveals
something not only about our shared history but also about the world we live in
today.
Sarah Elizabeth Cox was a historical consultant on season one and two of Steven Knight's
1880s’ boxing and crime TV drama A Thousand Blows. She researches biographies of
Victorian and Edwardian boxers and wrestlers for her website ‘Grappling with History’ and
works as the British Science Association’…

1888 portrait of boxer Hezekiah Moscow, a slim Black or Black/East Asian mixed heritage man, taken by Harry Carpenter. He is shirtless, fists raised, wearing white tights and a chequered sash at the waist. There are painted palms on the studio backdrop.

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Reposted by Heather Tweed

Victorian Web @victorianweb.bsky.social · 6d

At Eastbourne #OnThisDay 1892, Lewis Carroll recorded in his journal just four words: "Death of Alfred #Tennyson." It was a personal blow to him as well as a national event, as Ray Dyer explains: victorianweb.org/authors/carr...
.

Pencil portrait of Tennyson in later life, by Helen Allingham

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Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 6d

Oh how wonderful. It was meant to be! I sometimes wonder if it’s the overlooked people we’re researching giving us a helping hand 👻😂

Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 6d

What an experience! Looking forward to book 📕

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Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 6d

Wonderful image. 😃

Reposted by Heather Tweed

Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 10d

We've updated our three BlueSky starter packs for historians.

Our principal list now includes details of 130+ societies and networks, based in the UK and Ireland, that advance the study, research and promotion of history go.bsky.app/AZaYQDd

Please let us know if there are gaps.
#Skystorians 1/2

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Victorian Commons @victoriancommons.bsky.social · 16d

Born #OnThisDay 1819 Edward William Watkin, Liberal MP for Great Yarmouth 1857, Stockport 1864-8 (& later MP for Hythe). He was a major railway entrepreneur & made a failed attempt to extend his network to France with a Channel Tunnel.

Head and shoulders portrait of a man. He is balding and has a white beard. He is dressed in black, but has a red handkerchief peeping out of his jacket pocket.

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Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 12d

🐇🐇🐇

Reposted by Heather Tweed

Dr Ian McCormick @wokestudies.bsky.social · 14d

Dog days! (dies caniculares).
The Romans associated hot weather (in late summer) and madness with the “Dog Star” Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major.
It was a dangerous time to write poetry.

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Reposted by Heather Tweed

Standawhile @standawhile.bsky.social · 14d

I thought I recognised it as Plas Newydd! We visited nearly 40 years ago but I was very taken by the idea of a special chamber to apply your wig powder.

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Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 14d

Oh wonderful 😃. So memorable & ecological to boot! A nearby artist who had been a computer programmer recreated an all white, lifesize textile version of the bedchamber.

Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 15d

Wig-powdering room at Plas Newydd, Llangollen 😃🌞

Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 15d

It’s a wig-powdering room. You stick your head through the hole & your servant applies the powder without spreading it on clothes or bedroom. Goodness knows what the servant looked like after 😬😂

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Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 15d

👏 congratulations! At Plas Newydd, Llangollen. Have you visited? It’s fabulous. Very liveable 😃🌞

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Heather Tweed @heathertweed.bsky.social · 15d

😂 close….ish ….