Articles by Michael Whitworth

BSLS Conference, Cambridge, 9 April 2011

I am pleased to announce that we are now ready to take BSLS 2011 Conference Bookings online at:

https://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/product.asp?catid=1086&modid=1&compid=1

The full fee is £75, the reduced rate (for postgraduate students) is £55. Please remember that to attend you need to have paid your BSLS membership fee (£10/year); if you’ve not yet done so, you can add membership to your virtual basket.

Because we will need to confirm numbers for catering on Monday 4 April, it is planned that the shop will close at midnight local time on Sunday 3 April. For administrative simplicity we would prefer all those planning to attend to book through the online shop, but if this presents difficulties for you, please contact Dan and Michael (daniel.cordle@ntu.ac.uk and michael.whitworth@merton.ox.ac.uk).

In using the shop, please note the following:

(1) You first need to register. This is relatively quick.
(2) The shop will ask for your “delivery address”, but in this case you will not receive anything through the post.
(3) We’d like to know your institutional affiliation for the sake of the name badge.
(4) At present the shop does not automatically email you a receipt, so if you need one, please print out the appropriate screen. When you book, the Faculty Office receive a “Sale Notification Email”, and they will forward this in due course.
(5) If you want confirmation that the transaction went through, you can log back in again and look at your “Order History” at the bottom

The online shop is hosted by Oxford University, and we’re grateful to the English Faculty for setting it up. The Faculty and the University are not involved in the conference in any other way, so please don’t address queries to them.

I’ll be posting the conference programme here on Friday.

Michael Whitworth, 24 March 2011

We have been asked to alert the membership to the research potential of writings by Victorian writer, Grace Stebbing.  Her work has yet to receive any form of scholarly attention and very little is known about her.  Indeed, despite her numerous volumes (many of which are listed on Google Books), few if any are currently in print.

It is thought that Stebbing was the daughter of  Henry Stebbing (1799-1883), British poet, preacher, and historian.  An 1898 edition of the Dictionary of National Biography suggests that ‘two of Stebbing’s sons, Mr. William Stebbing and Mr. Thomas Roscoe Rede Stebbing, F.R.S., have distinguished themselves respectively in literature and science; while two daughters, Beatrice (now Mrs. Batty) and Miss Grace Stebbing, are also well known as authors.  The eldest son, John (d. 1885), translated Humboldt’s ‘Letters to a Lady’ and Their’s ‘History of France under Napoleon’…’

We would be happy to learn of any members with a scholarly interest in Grace Stebbing,  knowledge of anyone who is investigating her work, or someone who would like to do so.

Narratives and Knowledge.
The Early Modern Scientific Anecdote (16-17th centuries)

New College Symposium, University of Oxford
22-23 September 2009
Organisers : Frédérique Aït-Touati and Anne Duprat

For further details, contact frederique.ait-touati@new.ox.ac.uk

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