Hands On At Femorabilia

Archives, when you are just having fun, meeting them for the first time and don’t have a deadline to meet, can be really refreshing. The sight of a reading room full of people with such varied interests happily exploring Special Collections and Archives at LJMU was just what Catherine Han and I hoped for when she first suggested the event.

The hands on, you never seem to have enough time for this, was followed by panels which worked with issues of method, context, access, mediatisation, commercial interests, editorship, reading cultures and pleasure. It was overwhelming to be able to focus on the subject for so long and from such diverse and considered perspectives.

We were very pleased to welcome Beth Rodgers (University of Aberystwyth) to start the panels with a consideration of Alice Corkran’s editorship of Girl’s Realm (1898-1915). Victorianists were definitely welcome and Beth’s forthcoming book