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David Francis Taylor

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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Anyone else really struggling with hay fever? I always seem to struggle around this time. Whatever pollen is in the air doesn't agree with me.
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor, Ros Ballaster

juliepark.bsky.social
Excited to deliver my paper--based on fresh work for next book Writing’s Maker—"Hester Thrale Piozzi's Minced Meat for Pyes: Scrapbook Composition as Life Writing"--to
@oxford18thc.bsky.social next Tuesday. Many thanks to @ballasterros.bsky.social and @davidftaylor.bsky.social for the invitation
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Can't wait. All welcome!
engfac.bsky.social
Faculty of English, University of Oxford @engfac.bsky.social · Feb 17
We're delighted to welcome Barney Ronay @barneyronay.bsky.social, Chief Sports Writer for The Guardian, to the English Faculty on 3 March. He'll be in conversation w/ Prof David Taylor discussing everything from the politics of sport to the changing nature of Britain’s media landscape. All welcome!
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

engfac.bsky.social
We're delighted to welcome Barney Ronay @barneyronay.bsky.social, Chief Sports Writer for The Guardian, to the English Faculty on 3 March. He'll be in conversation w/ Prof David Taylor discussing everything from the politics of sport to the changing nature of Britain’s media landscape. All welcome!
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

oxford18thc.bsky.social
This Tuesday we'll be hearing @gabriellabird.bsky.social & @davidftaylor.bsky.social talk about reviving Centlivre's The Busy Body in a collab between @orangetreetheatre.bsky.social @creationtheatre.bsky.social & Oxford's Cultural Programme.

5.30 @ Seminar Room East, Mansfield College. All welcome!
Poster for Susanna Centlivre's The Busy Body, showing a masked eighteenth-century woman.
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Thanks, Chloe!
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

sadpphicstanza.bsky.social
I (and, I think, the whole audience) had such fun at last night’s performance of ‘The Busy Body’ by Susanna Centlivre, put together by @davidftaylor.bsky.social, @creationtheatre.bsky.social, @orangetreetheatre.bsky.social!! It was kinda like a 1709 version of The Importance of Being Earnest :D
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

oxford18thc.bsky.social
We're excited to reveal our programme for the term, featuring @davidftaylor.bsky.social, Gabriella Bird Katharine Boehm,
@juliepark.bsky.social, and Peter Sabor.

As always, all welcome!
Week 4: Tues. 11 Feb., 5.30-7pm DAVID TAYLOR (Oxford) and director GABRIELLA BIRD Reviving Susanna Centlivre’s The Busy Body for the 21st-century Stage Week 6: Tues. 25 Feb., 5.30-7pm KATHARINA BOEHM (University of Passau, Germany) Tangible Pasts: Antiquarian Culture and the Novel in the Eighteenth Century Week 7: Tues. 4 March., 5.30-7pm JULIE PARK (Penn State University) Hester Thrale Piozzi’s Minced Meat for Pyes: Scrapbook Composition as Life Writing * Joint event with the Romanticism Seminar* Week 8: Tues. 11 March, 12.30-1.45pm PETER SABOR (McGill University) “The capital pen of a sister author”: Reading Frances Burney with Jane Austen * Sandwich lunch provided* Weeks 4, 6, 8: Seminar Room East, Mansfield College Week 7: Massey Room, Balliol College All welcome. SEMINAR LEADERS: Ros Ballaster, Christine Gerrard, Nicole Pohl, Tess Somervell, David Taylor, Carly Watson, Abigail Williams.
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
The ruins of Godstow Abbey amid the frost and freezing fog.
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

inscriptionjournal.bsky.social
Inscription issue 6 (out spring 2026) is all about cuts / tears. Here is our call for papers. Talk to us if you have an idea for an article!
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Are they specifically targeting theatre scholars?! 😆

by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Back in 2022 Wiley apologized and said their IT dept was aware of the card block issue and were working hard to solve it.

I can only assume those IT people at Wiley still working hard.
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Does anyone else have trouble renewing their BSECS (@bsecs.bsky.social) membership with Wiley?

This is the 3rd year in a row that my card has been declined and the process to rectify this is time consuming and infuriating.
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Just read Ciaran Carson's Fishing for Amber.

It's an astonishing book. A masterpiece. I can't believe it's not better known.
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
This sonnet by Gillian Clarke. Beautiful.
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

drchrislouttit.bsky.social
Good to see Michael John Goodman's The Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery getting some festive attention. Completely open-access & reusable & remixable & with a range of Dickens's illustrators beyond the familiar original ones including Fred Barnard, Charles Green & Harry Furniss 👇.
Explore an Online Archive of 2,100+ Rare Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels
As Christmastime approaches, few novelists come to mind as readily as Charles Dickens. This owes mainly, of course, to A Christmas Carol, and even more so to its many adaptations, most of which draw i...
www.openculture.com
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor, David McInnis

oldfortunatus.bsky.social
Brush up your Shakespeare! Read along with our monthly webinar or just drop in to hear the conversation: english.web.ox.ac.uk/english-facu...
Please repost!
English Faculty / Oxford World's Classics Shakespeare Webinar Series with Professor Emma Smith
english.web.ox.ac.uk
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Definitely 'waved'.
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Possibly my favourite episode.
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

drbibliomane.bsky.social
This poem by Mary Robinson, published in The Morning Post in 1800, addressed to that newspaper's "Type," really must be the only poem about a typeface (as well as in a typeface) written in the #19thc.
(But, gosh, I would be happy to hear of others.)
Here are the first 2 stanzas.
#BookHistory
To the New Type of the Morning Post (27 January 1800) Ye Sable Legions, here you stand/ A thousand Subjects to command!/ All dimly clad in leaden mail,/ To triumph o'er your Victim pale!/To blur the white and spotless scene,/ And sport your Columns dark between! Ye Sable Legions! Fate decrees// That, 'midst your triumphs, you should please;/ That Mirth and Wisdom should combine/ To regulate each blacking line;/That Wit should in your Ranks appear, And Beauty drop the frequent tear,/When tales of tnender sorrow prove/ That Souls of Lead can yield to Love."
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Oxford folk - get yourselves to the North Wall to see Creation Theatre's Christmas show, Hansel & Grettel.

It's fabulous. Took our 8yo this evening and we booked to go again as soon as we got home. The final medley is worth the ticket price alone.

Tickets:
creationtheatre.co.uk/show/hansel-...
Hansel & Grettel - Creation Theatre
Family Christmas show at The North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford from Creation Theatre, specialists in site specific and digital theatre.
creationtheatre.co.uk
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Pringles are biscuits, not crisps (potato chips).

For the second time this week, a student has blown my mind.
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
Did you know that Leigh Hunt kept a *Hair Book*? Yes, a *Hair Book*: an album of locks belonging to literary greats.

And the good folk @ransomcenter.bsky.social have digitized it.

Thanks to my student @sadpphicstanza.bsky.social for telling me about this.
CONTENTdm
hrc.contentdm.oclc.org
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

bodleian.ox.ac.uk
For those who missed the press around the William Blake discoveries (mentioned in our previous post), catch up here: www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about/media/...
Engravings discovered on reverse of copper plates thought to be the earliest produced by William Blake
www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
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by Tim Hitchcock — Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

timhitchcock.bsky.social
Paul Sandby, c.1759 - Old Chairs to Mend. London Museum.
A man walks from right to left. He is wearing a floppy black hat, and a grey coat and trousers. In his left hand is a chair with a rush seat, and in his right hand is a poll resting on his right shoulder, which holds a quiver of rush at his back.
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

richove.bsky.social
Luminous Port Meadow
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

garethprior.bsky.social
(And on the subject of near-perfect sonnets, this — from @ravoon.bsky.social’s Last of the Coalmine Choirboys — is magnificent.

“…the sun has gone / to pieces in the song-forsaken sky”)
Text of a sonnet “After the Death of a Child (A Pastoral Heckle)” by Graeme Richardson
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor

garethprior.bsky.social
It’s always life-affirming when you enjoy a reading so much you buy the book the next day, then you re-read properly and it’s even better than you remember. I’m loving @niaandthepoems.bsky.social’s Backalong, and the title sonnet is so close to ideal form you could almost mistake it for perfect.
Text of a poem “Backalong” by Nia Broomhall.
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by David Francis Taylor

davidftaylor.bsky.social
This essay by Fara Dabhoiwala is stupendously good. Both scholarly detective work and storytelling of the highest order.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Fara Dabhoiwala · A Man of Parts and Learning: Francis Williams Gets His Due
The only certainty about the picture is that it shows Francis Williams. No one has ever been able to discover who...
www.lrb.co.uk
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Reposted by: David Francis Taylor, James E. Wood, Paul Sheehan , and 1 more

edconway.bsky.social
🧵SALT🧵
It's been snowing in the UK and the road gritters are out in force, begging the question:
Have you ever wondered where that grit actually COMES from?
The answer is more magical, beautiful and fascinating than you probably realised.
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