Alice Wickenden
@awickenden.bsky.social
Leverhulme ECF: Library history, early modern books, named collections, theories of provenance.
Volunteer for Abortion Support Network. Sometime poet, always emo.
Book: Hans Sloane’s Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge (CUP)
Volunteer for Abortion Support Network. Sometime poet, always emo.
Book: Hans Sloane’s Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge (CUP)
Pinned
Alice Wickenden
@awickenden.bsky.social
· Jun 30
Hans Sloane's Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge | Cambridge University Press & Assessment
www.cambridge.org
hello. if you work at a university please ask your library to buy my book. it is all about books and libraries and also plants, museums, the Royal Society, and the ways we learn. I think it will be interesting to lots of people, hopefully. thank you www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...
yes, yes. (US cover design in this case so superior to the UK one)
November 25, 2025 at 5:35 PM
yes, yes. (US cover design in this case so superior to the UK one)
This, by @adamwithbooks.bsky.social in the most recent HLQ, is really excellent. "Bibliography tends to drain out affect— but it needn’t."
November 25, 2025 at 3:50 AM
This, by @adamwithbooks.bsky.social in the most recent HLQ, is really excellent. "Bibliography tends to drain out affect— but it needn’t."
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
I will add the following: our students lack the research skills required to audit an LLM essay for errors. They don’t arrive on campus with these skills; we teach it to them over four long years. So throwing freshmen in the deep end and saying “swim your way to a shore of rectitude” is folly.
November 24, 2025 at 1:23 PM
I will add the following: our students lack the research skills required to audit an LLM essay for errors. They don’t arrive on campus with these skills; we teach it to them over four long years. So throwing freshmen in the deep end and saying “swim your way to a shore of rectitude” is folly.
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
Come and apply to be the Professor of Bibliography & Modern Book History @engfacoutreach.bsky.social & @jesusoxford.bsky.social (and work closely with us @bodleian.ox.ac.uk). Following a long line of great scholars: Don McKenzie, Kathryn Sutherland, & Dirk van Hulle ... my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
my.corehr.com
November 23, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Come and apply to be the Professor of Bibliography & Modern Book History @engfacoutreach.bsky.social & @jesusoxford.bsky.social (and work closely with us @bodleian.ox.ac.uk). Following a long line of great scholars: Don McKenzie, Kathryn Sutherland, & Dirk van Hulle ... my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
Yesterday I learned that ‘coffee cake’ in the US is not coffee flavoured. Instead it’s a dry crime against the name of cake. Evil
November 23, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Yesterday I learned that ‘coffee cake’ in the US is not coffee flavoured. Instead it’s a dry crime against the name of cake. Evil
When I packed to come to California I did not think about the optics of having to wear a hat that says ‘losers’ to my nephew’s football match.
November 22, 2025 at 7:15 PM
When I packed to come to California I did not think about the optics of having to wear a hat that says ‘losers’ to my nephew’s football match.
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
To “my students and to anyone who might listen, I say: Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so.”
www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...
www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...
I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. The Results Were Shocking.
"Students are not just undermining their ability to learn, but to someday lead."
www.huffpost.com
November 21, 2025 at 12:22 AM
To “my students and to anyone who might listen, I say: Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so.”
www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...
www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...
Gleeful that this book has finally been done.
Episode 46: Sapiens
It's an ambitious goal to write the entire history of humanity in just 400 pages. It's even more ambitious to do it without reading any research.
It's an ambitious goal to write the entire history of humanity in just 400 pages. It's even more ambitious to do it without reading any research.
Sapiens
Podcast Episode · If Books Could Kill · 11/20/2025 · 1h 38m
podcasts.apple.com
November 20, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Gleeful that this book has finally been done.
Just! What are we doing here!
November 20, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Just! What are we doing here!
not drawing any conclusions from this
November 20, 2025 at 10:43 AM
not drawing any conclusions from this
reading Keanu Reeves’ Wikipedia page again
November 19, 2025 at 9:41 PM
reading Keanu Reeves’ Wikipedia page again
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
Also, we had the terrific Reid Byers come up and talk to us yesterday about his imaginary books as a form of reading what you can't actually read. Maine is really a very good place for to be doing bookish things www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
The Best Fake Books—Made Real
At the Grolier Club, in midtown, a collection of imaginary volumes—the play within “Hamlet,” Hemingway’s lost first novel—are bound, scuffed, and shelved.
www.newyorker.com
November 18, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Also, we had the terrific Reid Byers come up and talk to us yesterday about his imaginary books as a form of reading what you can't actually read. Maine is really a very good place for to be doing bookish things www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Really looking forward to this later today!
As part of the Fredson Bowers award from @bibsoc.bsky.social (🙏) I’ll be giving a short talk on ‘The reassembly, analysis and appraisal of John Bellingham Inglis (1780-1870): #rarebooks collector; savant; scholar; slave owner’
November 18th, 5-7pm.
In person / online bibsoc.org.uk/event/panel-...
November 18th, 5-7pm.
In person / online bibsoc.org.uk/event/panel-...
November 18, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Really looking forward to this later today!
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
If Edinburgh Uni, with no operational deficit, gets to sack 1800 people, imagine what this will signal to more fiscally challenged Scottish universities?
MSPs need to realise that this is more than a local crisis – we need urgent public scrutiny of Edinburgh’s governance.
MSPs need to realise that this is more than a local crisis – we need urgent public scrutiny of Edinburgh’s governance.
November 17, 2025 at 1:02 PM
If Edinburgh Uni, with no operational deficit, gets to sack 1800 people, imagine what this will signal to more fiscally challenged Scottish universities?
MSPs need to realise that this is more than a local crisis – we need urgent public scrutiny of Edinburgh’s governance.
MSPs need to realise that this is more than a local crisis – we need urgent public scrutiny of Edinburgh’s governance.
Writing about teaching book history:
November 17, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Writing about teaching book history:
the question is, as someone who read her ex-girlfriend's copy of Wuthering Heights at 18 whilst in the midst of an intense interconnected set of devastating and fundamentally traumatising toxic relationships... will my memory of it be ruined when I finally reread it?
November 17, 2025 at 1:02 PM
the question is, as someone who read her ex-girlfriend's copy of Wuthering Heights at 18 whilst in the midst of an intense interconnected set of devastating and fundamentally traumatising toxic relationships... will my memory of it be ruined when I finally reread it?
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
If you're looking for illustrations for "AI", don't use robots, glowing disembodied brains, or computer code in empty space. Here are a some alternative suggestions:
November 17, 2025 at 10:45 AM
If you're looking for illustrations for "AI", don't use robots, glowing disembodied brains, or computer code in empty space. Here are a some alternative suggestions:
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
What do you give someone who has everything? A purpose-built room in which to put their stuff?
A while back I wrote about Ole Worm's 17th-century curiosity cabinet for @smarthistory.bsky.social. 1/n
🗃 #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #arthistory #materialculture
smarthistory.org/ole-worm-mus...
A while back I wrote about Ole Worm's 17th-century curiosity cabinet for @smarthistory.bsky.social. 1/n
🗃 #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #arthistory #materialculture
smarthistory.org/ole-worm-mus...
November 16, 2025 at 7:45 PM
What do you give someone who has everything? A purpose-built room in which to put their stuff?
A while back I wrote about Ole Worm's 17th-century curiosity cabinet for @smarthistory.bsky.social. 1/n
🗃 #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #arthistory #materialculture
smarthistory.org/ole-worm-mus...
A while back I wrote about Ole Worm's 17th-century curiosity cabinet for @smarthistory.bsky.social. 1/n
🗃 #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #arthistory #materialculture
smarthistory.org/ole-worm-mus...
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
My latest cartoon for @theguardian.com books pages.
November 16, 2025 at 4:15 PM
My latest cartoon for @theguardian.com books pages.
Me: maybe I will go and sit in the comfy chair and read.
Cordy:
Cordy:
November 16, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Me: maybe I will go and sit in the comfy chair and read.
Cordy:
Cordy:
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
My favourite year for oppressed literary masculinity was 2023 when the number of women on the Booker shortlist was smaller than the number of men named Paul
Exactly one woman has won the Booker in the past six years www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
November 16, 2025 at 3:14 PM
My favourite year for oppressed literary masculinity was 2023 when the number of women on the Booker shortlist was smaller than the number of men named Paul
👀
Cursed shelves and ghoulish libraries... 👻
Dive into fourteen tales featuring bewitched books in The Haunted Library, for lovers of the weird and the written word.
Available now: shop.bl.uk/products/the-haunted-library-tales-of-cursed-books-and-forbidden-shelves
Dive into fourteen tales featuring bewitched books in The Haunted Library, for lovers of the weird and the written word.
Available now: shop.bl.uk/products/the-haunted-library-tales-of-cursed-books-and-forbidden-shelves
November 15, 2025 at 5:44 PM
👀
I mean, it's certainly a title
November 14, 2025 at 2:14 PM
I mean, it's certainly a title
Really enjoying the epigraph choices for Christopher Hill’s biography of Cromwell.
November 12, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Really enjoying the epigraph choices for Christopher Hill’s biography of Cromwell.
wrote a villanelle! the perfect form
November 12, 2025 at 2:31 PM
wrote a villanelle! the perfect form