The WPHP Monthly Mercury

Throughout the month of August, we’ve been sharing Spotlights on the WPHP site as part of the “Around the World with Six Women” Spotlight Series on travel writing. In this month’s episode, hosts Kate Moffatt and Kandice Sharren are joined by the authors of the Spotlight Series, who share what they have learned during their vicarious journeys through France, Italy, Germany, India, Chile, Rome, Chin...

In 2016, Dr. Kirstyn Leuner shared data from her project, The Stainforth Library of Women’s Writing , with the WPHP — in particular, the Virtual International Authority Files she and her team had attached to their person records. This month, she joins us to chat all things Stainforth, databases, and cataloguing, including the kinds of data her team has been working with and collecting, the project...

Welcome back! In the first episode of Season 2 of The WPHP Monthly Mercury , hosts Kate Moffatt and Kandice Sharren delve into the publication history of Frances Burney’s first two (and most popular) novels,  Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782). Although both were regularly reprinted well into the nineteenth century, we recently realised that the WPHP was missing the post-1800 editions of these work...

As we get ready to launch the second season later this week, WPHP Primary Investigator Michelle Levy reviews some of the highlights from our first season.

In the final episode of Season One of The WPHP Monthly Mercury , hosts Kate Moffatt and Kandice Sharren celebrate Women’s History Month by interviewing Dr. Kate Ozment about the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century writer, Delarivier Manley. Famous for her scandalous semi-autobiographical ‘secret histories,’ which satirized important Whigs in Queen Anne’s courts, Manley inspires us to co...

In Episode 9, “Bluestockings in Print,” hosts Kate Moffatt and Kandice Sharren are joined by Dr. Betty Schellenberg, Bluestocking expert, to talk about the learned ladies of the informal eighteenth-century society and their complex relationships with print — along with some musings about puddings, friendships, and dirty laundry. Put on your blue stockings and join us for our penultimate episode of...

Ramble. Ambulate. Wander. What are the words you use for walking? In our eighth episode, we’re looking to the words that women used to describe walking in print and manuscript during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, when a surge in pedestrian activity for leisure and pleasure occurred. An interview with guest Dr. Kerri Andrews, author of Wanderers: A History of Women Walking, has us...

As 2020 draws to a tumultuous close, join hosts Kate Moffatt and Kandice Sharren as they look back—all the way to 1816. Often remembered as the cold and fog-laden year in which an 18-year-old Mary Shelley came up with the idea for Frankenstein , 1816 was a year of catastrophe more generally, known colloquially as “The Year Without a Summer” or “Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.” This double epi...

Have you ever wondered, “Where does all the WPHP data come from?” Well, look no further than this month’s episode of The WPHP Monthly Mercury! From missing Frances Burney and Ann Radcliffe editions to ESTC imprint-specific searches, our sixth episode identifies data gaps and explores our superstar resources, the wide variety of print and digital sources we use, and the data limitations we wrangle...

What do two of our favourite Gothic titles from the WPHP have in common? Banditti, the name ‘Clementina,’ and abducted women, for a start! Join hosts Kate and Kandice for this Halloween-themed episode of The WPHP Monthly Mercury as they discuss how you can identify works that align with the ‘gothic’ mode in the WPHP, chat about little-known women authors, and share their experiences reading two go...

In the fourth episode of The WPHP Monthly Mercury , “A Bibliographical Education”, hosts Kandice Sharren and Kate Moffatt wander through the works categorized as “Education” in the WPHP, exploring its variety of formats and styles, as well as its many adjacent genres—not least of which is the considerable “Juvenile Literature” genre, which past RA Reese Irwin cheerfully (and almost single-handedly...

In this double episode of The WPHP Monthly Mercury , "Black Women and Female Abolitionists in Print," hosts Kandice Sharren and Kate Moffatt are joined by the entire team of the WPHP to speak to the Black Women’s and Abolition Print History Spotlight Series that we published on the WPHP site between June 19th and July 31st in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests t...

In Episode 2: Women in the Imprints, follow Kate and Kandice through the labyrinthine labour that goes into discovering female-run firms: the women who were publishers, printers, and booksellers. Starting with the discovery of Ann Sancho, a Black bookseller in London (the only Black woman in the book trades we know of thus far), this episode shares the joys and the frustrations of discovering and...

In this first episode of The WPHP Monthly Mercury , “Jane Austen Adjacent”, hosts Kandice Sharren and Kate Moffatt explore Jane Austen’s publication history, from unpublished anonymity to well-beloved and canonical, to introduce you to the Women’s Print History Project . They share the project’s not-so-humble data collection beginnings at Chawton House Library and the types of bibliographic data c...

The Women’s Print History Project is pleased to announce the arrival of its very own podcast. Introducing: The WPHP Monthly Mercury . The WPHP Monthly Mercury will be released every third Wednesday of the month, starting June 17, 2020, so welcome to our first-ever podcast episode: Episode 0.5: Introducing the WPHP Monthly Mercury. Each future episode will have a corresponding blog post on the WPHP...