#criphd

just did a four-day research trip to the british library to look through undigitised issues of a scottish socialist newspaper. it was very tiring obviously but pretty successful - I managed to look through the paper from its beginning in october 1906 until 1910 or so & the column I was looking for, not only did I find the beginning of but also what I think is the end too (in about mid 1909). I did also look ahead and saw that by 1914 there is another column focused on women but specifically women’s suffrage (ugh lol so boring imo) which is interesting. anyway it eally helped that I brought this beautiful rock with me tbh !! also I’m such a dork about microfilm, I just think it’s neat !!

as part of the piece of work i just finished i had to fill in some inane forms about my progress and stuff and in doing that i did come to realise the things i had~ acheived (something i continuously struggle to focus on / celebrate, especially this yr!) which was good bc ive spent such a large proportion of time feeling overwhelmed, extremely behind & frustrated with myself about lack of progress / + being chronically ill forever [i.e.... chronically...... duh anna marie]

anyway, i was a little humbled when i wrote out some of the things ive done this yr for the form so here's a little overview of the main things i did in the past year:

moved to a totally new city!

read everything in the ethel williams archive

sorted all this annoying beurocracy about disability support stuff & my dsa stuff

got [re]diagnosed with dyslexia

learnt a bit about marxist literary criticism

got to grips [to some degree !] with periodical studies as a field, something totally new to me before i started this phd

applied [very intensely!!] for some funding & got totally crushed by rejection [lol]

went from a full time student to part time which was a hard but good decision to have made

audited a history module on reproductive rights history in britain and ireland

went to the british library for two (2!) research trips (which were both like.... soooooo useful !! & the second one i was very efficent with which was great if exhausting)

made a spreadsheet that is boring but extremely helpful of the columns i've read

read about half of the first longer term/consistent women's columns in forward & i think maybe two difficult but useful novels

had around 11 supervisions with my two supervisors

did not kill myself [always something to celebrate!!] lol

& finally did my apr!! [basically reviewing my progress] which included writing 5000 fairly excruciating words to submit and probably another 5000+ of words that were disposed of/ might be used for other things .... altho probably not lol lbr

non fiction

*the passion projects, melanie micir (2019)

the fury archives, jill richards (2020)

wayward lives,beautiful experiments, saidiya hartman (2019)

the five, hallie rubenhold (2019)

*the new woman, sally ledger (1997)

*concieved in modernism, aimee armande wilson (2015) (i read some of the phd version of this because i couldnt access the book)

rebel crossings, sheila rowbotham (2016)

*the outside thing, hannah roche (2019)

wisps of violence, eileen sypher (1993)

dreamers of a new day, sheila rowbotham (2010)

i also read some of the phd thesis of sarah emily blewitt, hidden mothers and poetic pregnancy in women’s writing (1818-present day) (2015)

& a little of helen charman's phd thesis, george eliot's generative economies: transactional maternal sacrifice in social realist fiction, 1853-1894 (2019) (definitely going to go back to this when i've read all of eliot's work that's mentioned in it!)

as well as the article "in the centre of a circle”: olive moore’s spleen and gestational immigration by erin m. kingsley (2018)

& the article ' what does a socialist woman do?' birth control and the body politic in naomi mitchison’s we have been warned by mara dougall (2021)

fiction

attainment, edith ellis (1909)

lolly willowes, sylvia townsend warner (1926)

mr fortunes maggot, sylvia townsend warner (1927)

the true heart, sylvia townsend warner (1929)

*summer will show, (1936)

the quarry wood, nan shepherd (1928)

the tree of heaven, may sinclair (1917)

passing, nella larsen (1929)

cane, jean toomer (1923)

quicksand, nella larsen (1928)

the return of the soldier, rebecca west (1918)

jacob's room, virginia woolf (1922)

madame bovary, gustave flaubert translated by eleanor marx (1857/1885-6)

all passion spent, vita sackville-west (1931)

reuben sachs, amy levy (1888)

ruth, elizabeth gaskell (1853)

middlemarch, george eliot (1871)

anyway planning to take an interruption of studies or whatever it’s called for three months or something bc i rly can’t do this i just can not keep up. when i have deadlines im constantly ill on top of my regular illnesses at the end of them & so i dont get any real rest time just ‘recovering’ from being ill which is not the same as actual rest :( had sooo many flair ups recently and its evidently not getting better especially considering my mental health is kinda rough at the moment / for a while / ??!! so rly think its the thing to do and i had hoped to actually basically sort it out at that meeting today but my supervisors didn’t rly want it to be for that… & it was much shorter than i thought it would be anyway & not in person which i always find makes it harder to communicate how i want to + more awkward

i am rly glad w the progress i made on my christian socialism section tho !! spent a chunk of time on that, w some quotations & wrote like another 600+? words so that's great bc i need a bit under a thousand to get to 12 000 which is where i need it to be to send off

i also didnt do much actual writing but i did go thru the places i marked to add stuff abt gutterella & then went to the story & have placed some quotes i will write / add / make new paragraphs out -> this is what i will be working on tomorrow first i think [30] [30] [hopefully add at least 800 words]

-> didnt get to any reading but i guess tomorrow i will give myself half an hour to look over the economy of short stories book or whatever its called & i do also kinda wanna read the periodical replication chapter i printed out... :)

-> also tomorrow i will need to keep working on my cs section & edit it to be [much !! hopefully] better than it is atm..