Endnotes

Congratulations to RSVP member Linda Hughes, whose essay, "What the Wellesley Index Left Out: Why Poetry Matters to Periodical Studies" (Victorian Periodicals Review 40:2, Summer 2007) received the 2007 Honorable Mention for the Donald Gray Prize from the North American Victorian Studies Association for best essay in Victorian studies.

Graduate students are invited to submit essays for the 2009 VanArsdel Prize for the best graduate student essay on, about, or extensively using Victorian periodicals. Manuscripts should be 15–25 pages and should not have appeared in print. The winner receives a plaque, $300, and publication of the prize essay in VPR. Send paper submissions by mail by 1 April 2009 to Kathryn Ledbetter, Department of English, 601 University Drive, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas 78666-4616. Please include a description of current status in graduate school.

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals is very pleased to award the annual Robert Colby Scholarly Book Prize for a scholarly book that most advances the understanding of the nineteenth-century British newspaper and/or periodical press. All books exploring periodicals of the period are eligible (including single-author monographs, edited collections, and editions) as long as they have a publication date of 2008. The winner will receive a plaque and a monetary award of up to $3,000, and will be invited to speak at the RSVP conference next year. The prize was made possible by a generous gift by Vineta Colby in honor of Robert Colby, a long and devoted member of RSVP and a major scholar in the field of Victorian periodicals. For more information, please contact Kathryn Ledbetter, KLedbetter@txstate.edu.

The 41st Annual Conference of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) will be held at the University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, 21-22 August 2009. While papers addressing any aspect of Victorian periodicals will be considered, RSVP particularly welcomes proposals for papers on the ways in which the newspaper and periodical press relied on a variety of networks, including journalistic, business, communication and technology, transportation, imperialist, immigra-tion, political/activist, scientific, philosophical, literary, artistic, and other social networks. Other possible topics: gossip, celebrities, and blackmail; leisure clubs and societies; networks of influence; Transatlantic and transnational networks; family and kinship networks; networks of readers, writers, and publishers; sites of production, distribution, and syndication.

E-mail two-page (maximum) proposals for individual presentations or for panels of three to all three committee members: Molly Youngkin, e-mail: myoungki@lmu.edu; Sally Mitchell, e-mail: sm@temple.edu, and Deborah Mutch, e-mail: dmutch@dmu.ac.uk. Include a one-page C.V. with relevant publications, teaching, and/or coursework. The deadline for submission of proposals is 1 February 2009. Final papers should take 15 minutes (20 minutes maximum) to present.

The program will also include a plenary speaker, a presentation by the winner of the 2009 Colby Scholarly Book Prize, and workshops devoted to digital resources and to methods of teaching periodicals. Pre-conference activities include the William Holman Hunt exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. More information about the conference can be found at www.stthomas.edu/english/victorian or www.rs4vp.org.

RSVP will award grants covering the conference registration fee to three graduate students presenting papers. Graduate students who would like to be considered should include a cover letter explaining how the conference proposal fits into their long-term research plans as well as any other special considerations. Recipients will be notified in early spring of 2009.

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) is pleased to announce a new travel and research grant that will aid scholars studying nineteenth-century British magazines and newspapers in making use of primary print and archival sources. The Curran Fellowship, made possible through the generosity of Eileen Curran, Professor Emerita of English at Colby College, and inspired by her pioneering research on Victorian periodicals, will be awarded annually in the form of two grants of $2,500 each.

The Curran Fellowship is open to researchers of any age from any of a wide range of disciplinary perspectives—literary scholars, historians, biographers, economists, sociologists, art historians, and others—who are...