Endnotes

Call for Papers: RSVP 2010

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) will hold its annual conference at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 10–11 September 2010. Proposals for papers that address any aspect of nineteenth-century British magazines or newspapers will be welcome. This year, we particularly seek proposals dealing with the conference theme, "The Material Cultures of Periodicals," including ones that integrate displays of related material, either from private collections or (by special arrangement with the conference host) from Yale's libraries.

Please e-mail two-page (maximum) proposals for individual presentations or panels of three to RSVP2010@rs4vp.org. Include a one-page C.V. with relevant publications, teaching, and/or coursework. The deadline for submissions is 1 February 2010. Final papers should take 15 minutes (20 minutes maximum) to present.

The program will also include a plenary speech named in honor of Michael Wolff and a presentation by the winner of the 2010 Colby Scholarly Book Prize. More information about the conference can be found at www.rs4vp.org.

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Ashgate Publishing, RSVP is able to award partial travel funding to three graduate student presenters. Graduate students who would like to be considered should include a cover letter explaining how their conference proposal fits into their long-term research plans as well as any other special considerations. Recipients will be notified in early spring 2010.

Call for Submissions

RSVP's 40th anniversary warrants an assessment of the current state of our organization, and speculation about our future. At the last RSVP conference in Minneapolis, Michael Wolff suggested after the plenary session that the time had come for scholars to write a comprehensive history of the Victorian press. Wolff was probably thinking back to an observation that he and Joanne Shattock had made in 1982 in the introduction to The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings: "The systematic and general study" of the Victorian press "has hardly begun." While Shattock and Wolff acknowledged that periodicals scholarship at that time was still in its infancy, they predicted that the field would grow. Indeed, numerous studies have been published which concern an impressive range of topics. Certainly each RSVP conference testifies to the vigor and health of our scholarship, but it could be argued that Wolff is right: we lack a comprehensive history of the Victorian press that embraces all its constituent parts (Shattock and Wolff xvi). VPR will devote a forthcoming volume to a re-examination of Shattock's and Wolff's study and our society's future in light of it.

To inaugurate our first "VPR Forum," we will return to the issues that Shattock, Wolff, and their contributors raised in The Victorian Periodical Press. I invite our members to re-examine this important early study and offer their own assessment of the current state of RSVP, as well as posit answers to whether or not RSVP is at a point where a comprehensive history of the press is possible to write, or if such a study as Wolff envisioned it is even necessary. Please send your responses by 1 March 2010 to: Andrea Broomfield, Associate Book Review Editor, VPR, Dept. of English, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS 66210 or email your response to abroomfi@jccc.edu.

VanArsdel Prize

Graduate students are invited to submit essays for the 2010 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 postmarked by 1 April 2010 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.

Robert L. Colby Scholarly Book Prize

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals awards the annual Robert L. 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...