Just a short post to introduce the new coordinators of the group and to give some information about the events we’ve held this term.

After convening the Nineteenth-Century Research Group here at Lincoln for a number of years, the group’s founder, Rebecca Styler, has handed over coordination responsibilities to two new lecturers in the School of Humanities, Hannah Field (that’s me) and Owen Clayton. We look forward to publicising 2014 events here in due course; anyone who would like to subscribe to the group mailing list can contact either me hfield at lincoln dot ac dot uk or Owen oclayton at lincoln dot ac dot uk. And in the meantime, we wish to thank Rebecca for her sterling work on the group!

Our first talk of the term took place on 23 October. Annie Richardson of the School of Art and Design spoke to the title ‘”Remember André!” Monumental Controversies, Anglo-American Relations and Major John André’, in a presentation that opened the group’s eyes to the quite surprising uses (chipping off souvenirs, bombing, and adorning with poetry, to name a few) to which late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century monuments were put. Then, last Wednesday 27 November, Owen gave a paper on Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, drawing fascinating interdisciplinary links between photography, chemistry (a handy hint on photographic processes, drawn from an article in a boys’ magazine contemporary with Jekyll and Hyde: ‘Do not use potassium of cyanide!), psychology, crime, and literary character and technique at the fin de siècle. Thanks to Annie and Owen for their talks, and we look forward to greeting you with further excellent speakers in the New Year.

Illustration below: Eadweard Muybridge’s Horse in Motion (ca. 1886), one of the photographic images that featured in Owen’s presentation.