Compiled by Patrick Leary
Students of nineteenth-century Britain are fortunate in having a number of scholarly journals to choose among as readers and writers. The following list connects you to an information page for each journal that explains how to subscribe as well as how to submit manuscripts. While only specifically 19th-century oriented journals are included here, broader publications like the Journal of British Studies, Book History, the Review of English Studies, Studies in English Literature, and of course many others, also publish articles on Victorian topics. (SEL devotes one of its four annual issues to the 19th century.) Journals devoted to individual Victorian authors are a dwindling breed, but among the survivors are the venerable Dickensian and Dickens Quarterly, Brontë Studies, George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies, The Gaskell Journal, The Wilkie Collins Journal, and The Trollopian, published by the Trollope Society.
Every scholarly organization has its own history and dynamics, but all of them serve important functions for their members. Most of the societies listed below hold an annual conference. These conferences offer wonderful opportunities to share your own work and to learn about the work of others; many friendships, and many collaborative projects, have first begun at conferences. Since the pandemic of 2020-21, many conferences are either entirely online or feature a portion of the conference online. Nevertheless, they remain essential to the pursuit of Victorian research as a collective enterprise. A number of societies offer prizes for presentations, essays, and books. Small non-profits like these typically operate on very slender budgets, but RSVP, for example, is able to offer substantial funding in aid of research. University-based groups like those at Princeton and Rutgers often welcome input from Victorianists elsewhere, and some hold conferences that other scholars around the world are encouraged to attend. This list of societies includes only organizations devoted specifically to the 19th century, but many Victorianists also belong to groups like SHARP, as well as the large professional groups like MLA and AHA. In the U.S. and Canada, the North American Conference on British Studies holds an annual conference that includes work on 19th-century Britain. PL
News of upcoming conferences and other events sponsored by these and other societies can frequently be found on the Victorian section of Penn's useful Call for Papers site, as well as NAVSA's blog, "Of Victorian Interest". They can also be searched for on H-ANNOUNCE.
Patrick Leary
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