Dear blog,

I’m just returned from the Godwin diaries conference in Oxford and am about to go on leave for two weeks, so I thought I should update my blog before my holiday.

I really enjoyed the conference – the project has, over the last three years, made an electronic, fully searchable, and annotated version of William Godwin’s diaries, 1788-1836. You can read about it here: http://godwindiary.politics.ox.ac.uk/. Now nearing the end of the project the team asked individuals to talk at the conference about various aspects of the diary and I concentrated on the scientific and medical aspects. The diary has an awful lot to say on these matters. Godwin was very sociable and seems to have been friends with a great number of surgeons, physicians, natural historians, and chemists, including Humphry Davy, Anthony Carlisle, William Nicholson, John Aikin, and William Lawrence. His diary is also a fascinating account of an individual’s health throughout out his life and the treatments he received from the various doctors he consulted. It seems that Godwin also took the internal temperature of his house every single day for years! The diaries are a rich resource and when the electronic version is made public I urge everyone to take a look. There is a lot there for LitSciMeders.

Earlier this week we appointed someone to the AHRC-funded collaborative PhD that will be co-supervised by the Working Class Movement Library (http://www.wcml.org.uk/) and I’m really excited about that. I also read over the essays submitted to the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association prize competition (http://www.keats-shelley.co.uk/ksma%20awards.html), and there were some really very good ones. It’s a tough job being one of the two judges for the prize.

Finally, can I encourage everyone to take a look at the resources page that Cris da Costa has put together for event three: http://www.litscimed.org.uk/page/learning. On this page, you can see Paul Craddock’s excellent filming from the two days, plus reading lists, slides used in presentations, and much more. The website will act as a resource once the face-to-face teaching on the programme has faded into the dim and distant past, and I do hope people find it useful.

All best,

Sharon