Rebecca Anne Barr
@rabarr.bsky.social
Reading, writing, thinking about the long 18th Century at the Faculty of English @cam.ac.uk. Irish woman baffled by the fens and the English middle classes. Emotional support/ emotional manipulation provided by a terrier.
Pinned
Rebecca Anne Barr
@rabarr.bsky.social
· Nov 25
Here's our magnificent cover: a little-known illustration of Richardson's 'Pamela' by Francis Hayman. 'The Elopement' decorated one of the original #Pamela supper-boxes at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Thanks to @nationaltrust.bsky.social who hold the original at Sizergh Castle, Cumbria. #18thcentury
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
They’re trying to keep on punishing her even after they’ve ruined her life.
This is appalling: Top DOJ officials are actively pushing for a criminal investigation into the widow of Renee Good, leading prosecutors to quit en masse, NYT is reporting.
Who in the White House ordered DOJ to do this? That's the next thing to establish.
Who in the White House ordered DOJ to do this? That's the next thing to establish.
January 13, 2026 at 9:20 PM
They’re trying to keep on punishing her even after they’ve ruined her life.
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
The closing of Bucknell University Press is a tremendous loss for academic publishing in general and 18th-century studies in particular.
Universities have abandoned the academic mission. We’re the generation that will have to reinvent knowledge-work from the institutional ruins.
Universities have abandoned the academic mission. We’re the generation that will have to reinvent knowledge-work from the institutional ruins.
very much saddened to learn that bucknell university press will be closing. they took a chance on my first book when other presses said it was too short or too narrowly focused on minor authors.
www.chronicle.com/blogs/letter...
www.chronicle.com/blogs/letter...
Letter | Bucknell University Press to Close
This should alarm university presses nationwide, writes Aníbal González-Pérez.
www.chronicle.com
August 17, 2025 at 1:13 PM
The closing of Bucknell University Press is a tremendous loss for academic publishing in general and 18th-century studies in particular.
Universities have abandoned the academic mission. We’re the generation that will have to reinvent knowledge-work from the institutional ruins.
Universities have abandoned the academic mission. We’re the generation that will have to reinvent knowledge-work from the institutional ruins.
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them”.
January 10, 2026 at 12:39 PM
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them”.
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
LGBTQ+ conversion therapy was in the news recently, after a BBC report revealed many examples in English NHS hospitals in the 1960s/70s. On 16 Feb I’m giving a talk on the history of sexuality & psychiatry in Northern Ireland, as part of @niscifest.bsky.social.
nisciencefestival.com/event/shocki...
nisciencefestival.com/event/shocki...
Shocking: The Untold History of Psychiatry and Homosexuality in Northern Ireland | NI Science Festival
nisciencefestival.com
January 9, 2026 at 6:01 PM
LGBTQ+ conversion therapy was in the news recently, after a BBC report revealed many examples in English NHS hospitals in the 1960s/70s. On 16 Feb I’m giving a talk on the history of sexuality & psychiatry in Northern Ireland, as part of @niscifest.bsky.social.
nisciencefestival.com/event/shocki...
nisciencefestival.com/event/shocki...
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
A poem by John Kelly as it first appeared in Poetry Ireland Review.
January 8, 2026 at 2:59 PM
A poem by John Kelly as it first appeared in Poetry Ireland Review.
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
Winter, Edvard Munch, 1899.
January 7, 2026 at 7:51 AM
Winter, Edvard Munch, 1899.
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
Pictures that explain things.
Trees in Winter (back endpapers)
Artist: SR Badmin, 1963
Trees in Winter (back endpapers)
Artist: SR Badmin, 1963
January 4, 2026 at 7:43 PM
Pictures that explain things.
Trees in Winter (back endpapers)
Artist: SR Badmin, 1963
Trees in Winter (back endpapers)
Artist: SR Badmin, 1963
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
Day 3 of the New Year
January 3, 2026 at 1:26 PM
Day 3 of the New Year
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
What amazes me is how quickly people are losing either the confidence or the willingness to complete basic human tasks.
The parents of the first baby born in 2026 in this county outside Baltimore got their name ideas from ChatGPT. Hudson Oakley Winkler.
www.baltimoresun.com/2026/01/01/c...
www.baltimoresun.com/2026/01/01/c...
ChatGPT named Carroll County’s first-born baby in 2026
The first baby born in Carroll County in 2026 was named with help from ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot.
www.baltimoresun.com
January 2, 2026 at 3:22 PM
What amazes me is how quickly people are losing either the confidence or the willingness to complete basic human tasks.
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
Breakfast with Barthes:
January 2, 2026 at 9:21 AM
Breakfast with Barthes:
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
This, combined with "vice signaling" (taking pride in antisocial behavior) has given us the reign of the Stupid Asshole, something most people are against, but can only be remedied if we're not too polite to talk about it
An essential development over the past decade-plus is that the ignorant went from feeling chastened when their ignorance was revealed to banding together and deciding that, actually, they were right. They might disagree at times, but they agreed that ignorance itself was an indicator of trust.
December 29, 2025 at 6:46 PM
This, combined with "vice signaling" (taking pride in antisocial behavior) has given us the reign of the Stupid Asshole, something most people are against, but can only be remedied if we're not too polite to talk about it
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
Tonight you will be visited by the ghosts of three gender studies majors, each warning you that you’ll have to burn off in hell after death all the sins you accumulated in your futile effort to be a real man in life …
December 26, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Tonight you will be visited by the ghosts of three gender studies majors, each warning you that you’ll have to burn off in hell after death all the sins you accumulated in your futile effort to be a real man in life …
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
This individual had no right being in a *Muppets* movie.
December 25, 2025 at 10:39 PM
This individual had no right being in a *Muppets* movie.
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Cardiff couple invited man in for Christmas, he stayed for 45 years
An arrangement Rob and Dianne Parsons thought would last a few days ended up changing their lives.
www.bbc.co.uk
December 25, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
“there are only 7 full-time book critics left in the US: three at NYT ( Jacobs, Garner, Szalai), 2 at WaPo(Rothfeld, Charles), 1 each at WSJ (Sacks), NY mag (Chu), Slate (Miller)
more people have walked on the moon than write book reviews for a living”
worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...
more people have walked on the moon than write book reviews for a living”
worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...
Criticism Is Literature. Why Is It Vanishing?, by Adam Morgan
What do the best book reviews do? What is the current state of the critical ecosystem? Chicago Review of Books founder Adam Morgan takes stock of book reviewing in the US.
worldliteraturetoday.org
December 23, 2025 at 4:53 PM
“there are only 7 full-time book critics left in the US: three at NYT ( Jacobs, Garner, Szalai), 2 at WaPo(Rothfeld, Charles), 1 each at WSJ (Sacks), NY mag (Chu), Slate (Miller)
more people have walked on the moon than write book reviews for a living”
worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...
more people have walked on the moon than write book reviews for a living”
worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
not that the present economic picture is rosy, but i do think that popular culture — and specifically nostalgia bait television — is a big part of the reason that our public memory of the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s seems to miss the real economic pain that marked each of those decades.
December 20, 2025 at 2:44 PM
not that the present economic picture is rosy, but i do think that popular culture — and specifically nostalgia bait television — is a big part of the reason that our public memory of the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s seems to miss the real economic pain that marked each of those decades.
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
For obvious reasons, I've been thinking today not just about Tristram Shandy but also about Holly Medgar's 2012 print-on-demand (&-btw-destroy-your-printer) artist's book "Black Friday."
apod.li/black-friday
apod.li/black-friday
December 20, 2025 at 1:00 AM
For obvious reasons, I've been thinking today not just about Tristram Shandy but also about Holly Medgar's 2012 print-on-demand (&-btw-destroy-your-printer) artist's book "Black Friday."
apod.li/black-friday
apod.li/black-friday
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
December 19, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
Jane Austen used 'however' at the beginning of a sentence, and so can you.
December 16, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Jane Austen used 'however' at the beginning of a sentence, and so can you.
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
L is for Lovelace, who Lost in a dueL.
our Clarissa reading group celebrated finishing the novel yesterday by visiting the Morgan Library for a personal display of their Richardson holdings. I just love this Edward Gorey-ish frontispiece to a children's adaptation (!) of Clarissa.
December 13, 2025 at 5:19 PM
L is for Lovelace, who Lost in a dueL.
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
a transcription thereof
December 13, 2025 at 1:57 PM
a transcription thereof
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
I was asked yesterday if I thought that English might benefit from a governing academy, like French, and noted that a language that, to date, supports dreamed and dreamt, dove and dived, and pleaded and pled, is not a language you can govern.
(And I wouldn't want to.)
(And I wouldn't want to.)
December 11, 2025 at 8:27 PM
I was asked yesterday if I thought that English might benefit from a governing academy, like French, and noted that a language that, to date, supports dreamed and dreamt, dove and dived, and pleaded and pled, is not a language you can govern.
(And I wouldn't want to.)
(And I wouldn't want to.)
Reposted by Rebecca Anne Barr
Writing words by hand on paper is so satisfying. We really fumbled the ball on changing culture to doing so much less of it 😩
December 8, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Writing words by hand on paper is so satisfying. We really fumbled the ball on changing culture to doing so much less of it 😩
