Alice Wickenden
@awickenden.bsky.social
Leverhulme ECF: Library history, early modern books, named collections, theories of provenance.
Volunteer for Abortion Support Network. Sometime poet, always emo.
Book: Hans Sloane’s Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge (CUP)
Volunteer for Abortion Support Network. Sometime poet, always emo.
Book: Hans Sloane’s Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge (CUP)
Pinned
Now available online! www.cambridge.org/core/books/h... 🌿📚💚🪲
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
RIP Tom Stoppard who did so much incredible work, not least writing every single line of dialogue in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade.
November 29, 2025 at 5:18 PM
RIP Tom Stoppard who did so much incredible work, not least writing every single line of dialogue in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade.
Oh! I’m so sad. Arcadia as an A Level text was formative for me.
November 29, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Oh! I’m so sad. Arcadia as an A Level text was formative for me.
‘Five animals you’ve seen in the wild’ thing makes me think of the time my grandad stayed up for several hours watching a badger at the bottom of the garden which transpired, when the sun came up, to be an old football.
November 28, 2025 at 8:50 PM
‘Five animals you’ve seen in the wild’ thing makes me think of the time my grandad stayed up for several hours watching a badger at the bottom of the garden which transpired, when the sun came up, to be an old football.
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
Now available online! www.cambridge.org/core/books/h... 🌿📚💚🪲
November 28, 2025 at 7:23 AM
Now available online! www.cambridge.org/core/books/h... 🌿📚💚🪲
Now available online! www.cambridge.org/core/books/h... 🌿📚💚🪲
November 28, 2025 at 7:23 AM
Now available online! www.cambridge.org/core/books/h... 🌿📚💚🪲
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
What makes historic collections difficult? And how do researchers work with “difficult” collections?
New CFP from Paper Trails here:
blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll...
Deadline for proposals 31/1/2026
🗃️
New CFP from Paper Trails here:
blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll...
Deadline for proposals 31/1/2026
🗃️
Call for Papers: Difficult Collections | UCL UCL Special Collections
UCL Homepage
blogs.ucl.ac.uk
November 27, 2025 at 6:21 PM
What makes historic collections difficult? And how do researchers work with “difficult” collections?
New CFP from Paper Trails here:
blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll...
Deadline for proposals 31/1/2026
🗃️
New CFP from Paper Trails here:
blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll...
Deadline for proposals 31/1/2026
🗃️
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
What a pleasure to find this book is out now (digitally):
Alice Wickenden 2025 Hans Sloane's Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge @ doi.org/10.1017/9781...
Congratulations to @awickenden.bsky.social 🥳🎉 -- going straight to ch. 4 "Unreadable Books: False and Foreign Languages" now. 🤓
Alice Wickenden 2025 Hans Sloane's Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge @ doi.org/10.1017/9781...
Congratulations to @awickenden.bsky.social 🥳🎉 -- going straight to ch. 4 "Unreadable Books: False and Foreign Languages" now. 🤓
Hans Sloane's Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge
Cambridge Core - Renaissance and Early Modern Literature - Hans Sloane's Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge
doi.org
November 27, 2025 at 10:54 PM
What a pleasure to find this book is out now (digitally):
Alice Wickenden 2025 Hans Sloane's Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge @ doi.org/10.1017/9781...
Congratulations to @awickenden.bsky.social 🥳🎉 -- going straight to ch. 4 "Unreadable Books: False and Foreign Languages" now. 🤓
Alice Wickenden 2025 Hans Sloane's Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge @ doi.org/10.1017/9781...
Congratulations to @awickenden.bsky.social 🥳🎉 -- going straight to ch. 4 "Unreadable Books: False and Foreign Languages" now. 🤓
We have a turkey shaped ice cream cake. This is a holiday I cannot quite comprehend.
November 27, 2025 at 11:19 PM
We have a turkey shaped ice cream cake. This is a holiday I cannot quite comprehend.
happy thanksgiving, we are driving to pick up an ‘ice cream cake’ from n ‘Baskin Robbins’, which until a few years ago I believed was a fictional place invented by beloved band Bowling For Soup,
November 27, 2025 at 10:07 PM
happy thanksgiving, we are driving to pick up an ‘ice cream cake’ from n ‘Baskin Robbins’, which until a few years ago I believed was a fictional place invented by beloved band Bowling For Soup,
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
What I want is to sleep / inside a strange language,
Jim Carroll
Jim Carroll
November 26, 2025 at 10:17 PM
What I want is to sleep / inside a strange language,
Jim Carroll
Jim Carroll
just read the evocative but taxonomically confusing phrase "academic gadfly Stanley Fish"
November 26, 2025 at 9:07 PM
just read the evocative but taxonomically confusing phrase "academic gadfly Stanley Fish"
yes, yes. (US cover design in this case so superior to the UK one)
November 25, 2025 at 5:35 PM
yes, yes. (US cover design in this case so superior to the UK one)
This, by @adamwithbooks.bsky.social in the most recent HLQ, is really excellent. "Bibliography tends to drain out affect— but it needn’t."
November 25, 2025 at 3:50 AM
This, by @adamwithbooks.bsky.social in the most recent HLQ, is really excellent. "Bibliography tends to drain out affect— but it needn’t."
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
I will add the following: our students lack the research skills required to audit an LLM essay for errors. They don’t arrive on campus with these skills; we teach it to them over four long years. So throwing freshmen in the deep end and saying “swim your way to a shore of rectitude” is folly.
November 24, 2025 at 1:23 PM
I will add the following: our students lack the research skills required to audit an LLM essay for errors. They don’t arrive on campus with these skills; we teach it to them over four long years. So throwing freshmen in the deep end and saying “swim your way to a shore of rectitude” is folly.
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
Come and apply to be the Professor of Bibliography & Modern Book History @engfacoutreach.bsky.social & @jesusoxford.bsky.social (and work closely with us @bodleian.ox.ac.uk). Following a long line of great scholars: Don McKenzie, Kathryn Sutherland, & Dirk van Hulle ... my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
my.corehr.com
November 23, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Come and apply to be the Professor of Bibliography & Modern Book History @engfacoutreach.bsky.social & @jesusoxford.bsky.social (and work closely with us @bodleian.ox.ac.uk). Following a long line of great scholars: Don McKenzie, Kathryn Sutherland, & Dirk van Hulle ... my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
Yesterday I learned that ‘coffee cake’ in the US is not coffee flavoured. Instead it’s a dry crime against the name of cake. Evil
November 23, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Yesterday I learned that ‘coffee cake’ in the US is not coffee flavoured. Instead it’s a dry crime against the name of cake. Evil
When I packed to come to California I did not think about the optics of having to wear a hat that says ‘losers’ to my nephew’s football match.
November 22, 2025 at 7:15 PM
When I packed to come to California I did not think about the optics of having to wear a hat that says ‘losers’ to my nephew’s football match.
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
To “my students and to anyone who might listen, I say: Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so.”
www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...
www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...
I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. The Results Were Shocking.
"Students are not just undermining their ability to learn, but to someday lead."
www.huffpost.com
November 21, 2025 at 12:22 AM
To “my students and to anyone who might listen, I say: Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so.”
www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...
www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...
Gleeful that this book has finally been done.
Episode 46: Sapiens
It's an ambitious goal to write the entire history of humanity in just 400 pages. It's even more ambitious to do it without reading any research.
It's an ambitious goal to write the entire history of humanity in just 400 pages. It's even more ambitious to do it without reading any research.
Sapiens
Podcast Episode · If Books Could Kill · 11/20/2025 · 1h 38m
podcasts.apple.com
November 20, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Gleeful that this book has finally been done.
Just! What are we doing here!
November 20, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Just! What are we doing here!
not drawing any conclusions from this
November 20, 2025 at 10:43 AM
not drawing any conclusions from this
reading Keanu Reeves’ Wikipedia page again
November 19, 2025 at 9:41 PM
reading Keanu Reeves’ Wikipedia page again
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
Also, we had the terrific Reid Byers come up and talk to us yesterday about his imaginary books as a form of reading what you can't actually read. Maine is really a very good place for to be doing bookish things www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
The Best Fake Books—Made Real
At the Grolier Club, in midtown, a collection of imaginary volumes—the play within “Hamlet,” Hemingway’s lost first novel—are bound, scuffed, and shelved.
www.newyorker.com
November 18, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Also, we had the terrific Reid Byers come up and talk to us yesterday about his imaginary books as a form of reading what you can't actually read. Maine is really a very good place for to be doing bookish things www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Really looking forward to this later today!
As part of the Fredson Bowers award from @bibsoc.bsky.social (🙏) I’ll be giving a short talk on ‘The reassembly, analysis and appraisal of John Bellingham Inglis (1780-1870): #rarebooks collector; savant; scholar; slave owner’
November 18th, 5-7pm.
In person / online bibsoc.org.uk/event/panel-...
November 18th, 5-7pm.
In person / online bibsoc.org.uk/event/panel-...
November 18, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Really looking forward to this later today!
Reposted by Alice Wickenden
If Edinburgh Uni, with no operational deficit, gets to sack 1800 people, imagine what this will signal to more fiscally challenged Scottish universities?
MSPs need to realise that this is more than a local crisis – we need urgent public scrutiny of Edinburgh’s governance.
MSPs need to realise that this is more than a local crisis – we need urgent public scrutiny of Edinburgh’s governance.
November 17, 2025 at 1:02 PM
If Edinburgh Uni, with no operational deficit, gets to sack 1800 people, imagine what this will signal to more fiscally challenged Scottish universities?
MSPs need to realise that this is more than a local crisis – we need urgent public scrutiny of Edinburgh’s governance.
MSPs need to realise that this is more than a local crisis – we need urgent public scrutiny of Edinburgh’s governance.