Endnotes

VanArsdel Essay Prize

Graduate students are invited to submit essays for the 2011 VanArsdel Prize for the best graduate student essay on, about, or extensively using Victorian periodicals. The winner will receive $300 and publication in Victorian Periodicals Review. Manuscripts should be 15-25 pages and should not have appeared in print. Send paper submissions postmarked by 1 April 2011 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.

Research Society for Victorian Periodicals 43rd Annual Conference at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, 22-23 July 2011

This year's conference theme will be "Work and Leisure." Much of the Victorian Press was built on an interdependency of these two seemingly opposite terms. Texts designed for consumption in leisure hours were created by armies of workers: authors, illustrators and editors, of course, but also printers' devils, water-colourists, photographers, ad agents, newsvendors, street sellers and a host of others. Who exactly were these labourers and how were they organised? More generally, how did the press fit into the wider context of the entertainment industry: the theatre, travel, music, exhibitions, sport - and shopping?

Then, what was the "leisure" that they promoted and how different was it from work? Reading the press was not always leisure at all. It could be work for teachers, reviewers or those trying to entertain children or colleagues. To what extent, indeed, might the very concept of leisure be a ruse? How far did the Victorian press inscribe women's domestic labour as a form of leisure, or male work as pleasurable?

Not all of the press was devoted to leisure and its limits. What of that enormous sector that unashamedly named their focus as work: the trade and professional press, newspaper pages devoted to the stock market and commodity prices, articles worrying over women in the workplace, over the masculinity of the civil servant, or over the demands of labourers on strike?

Finally, what of the "cultural work" of the Victorian press? What was the function of the press in and on society? How might that cultural work relate to the pleasures of leisure?

For more information about the conference, contact Clare Horrocks (C.L.Horrocks@ljmu.ac.uk) or Andrew King (andrew.king@canterbury.ac.uk).

The Curran Fellowship for Research on the Victorian Press

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) is pleased to announce the competition for the fourth annual Curran Fellowship, a travel and research grant intended to aid scholars studying 19th-century British magazines and newspapers in making use of primary print and archival sources. Made possible through the generosity of Eileen Curran, Professor Emerita of English, Colby College, and inspired by her pioneering research on Victorian periodicals, the Curran Fellowship is awarded annually in the form of two grants of $2,500 each.

Applicants' projected research may involve study of any aspects of the periodical press in any of its manifold forms, and may range from within Britain itself to the many countries, within and outside of the Empire, where British magazines and newspapers were bought, sold, and read during "the long nineteenth century" (ca. 1780-1914).

Applicants should send a c.v., the names and contact information of two scholars who are familiar with the applicant and his or her research goals, and a description of the project to which these funds would be applied. Applications for the Curran Fellowship for research to be undertaken in 2012 must be submitted in electronic form and sent to curranfellowship@rs4vp.org by 1 October 2011. Any queries about the application may be sent to the same address. Applicants will be notified by 1 December 2011. Successful applicants will be required to submit a brief report to RSVP at the conclusion of the funded portion of their project, describing the results of their research.

The full version of this call for applications, as well as a set of guidelines for applicants, may be found on the RSVP website at http://www.rs4vp.org/prizes.html

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