The Journal of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association
click on the issue links below to access
Future issues
issue 5.1 (Spring 2023), a general issue, is now closed for submissions.
issue 5.2 (Autumn 2023), a special number on “Religion and Victorian Popular Literature and Culture” will be guest edited by Naomi Hetherington and Clare Stainthorp. Download the CFP here. Submissions to this issue are now closed.
issue 6.1 (Spring 2024), a general issue, is open for submissions (closing date 31 January 2024).
issue 6.2 (Autumn 2024), a special number on “Victorian Transfictions and Transmedia Storytelling” will be edited by Erica Haugvedt and Beth Palmer. CFP will open shortly.
issue 7.1 (Spring 2025), a general issue, is open for submissions (closing date 31 January 2025).
issue 7.2 (Autumn 2025), a special number on “Re-Articulating ‘The Third Sex’: Victorian and neo-Victorian Engagements with LGBTQIA+” will be guest edited by the VPFA “Third Sex” Reading Group organisers: Helena Esser, Mollie Clarke, Matt Crofts, and Claire O’Callaghan. CFP to follow.
Editors: Prof. Mariaconcetta Costantini and Dr Helena Ifill
Associate Editors: Dr Janine Hatter and Dr Fiona Snailham
Book Review Editors: Brian Jukes, Dr Mara Mattoscio and Dr Fiona Snailham
Victorian Popular Fictions is the journal of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association. The VPFA was established in 2009 in order to offer a regular forum for the dissemination and discussion of new research into nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century popular narrative. Mariaconcetta Costantini and Andrew King launched Victorian Popular Fictions (the VPFJ) in Spring 2019 to publish the new research of the organisation on an Open Access online platform to a wider audience.
VPFJ comes out twice a year, in Spring and Autumn.
Scope of the VPFJ
Focussing on popular narrative in all its forms, VPFJ solicits articles which help us re-evaluate our view of Victorian culture as a whole and how that might be considered, including debates about canonicity and hybridity, digitisation, and the identification of pedagogical issues in the teaching of Victorian popular fictions. We also invite critical annotated editions of short nineteenth-century texts that will be of interest to our readers.
VPFJ takes it for granted that “Victorian” means the long nineteenth century and that “popular” means widely disseminated, but at the same time it welcomes challenges to those definitions. It invites the identification and analysis of tropes that coalesced into tales for a few years and subsequently dissolved to make new solutions. It also welcomes discussions of Neo-Victorian re-imaginings of nineteenth-century popular fiction.
VPFJ encourages the critical examination of now neglected fiction, forgotten creators, disseminators and interpreters of stories ‑ poets, dramatists, novelists, journalists, journals, publishers, artists, critics and readers.
Remembering that the American Harriet Beecher Stowe and the French Dumas were amongst the most widely read and adapted “Victorian” writers, VPFJ urges submissions on the trans-Atlantic and transnational circulation and translation of narrative.
Submission, Peer Review, Copyright, Open Access
Believing that rigorous peer-review and scrupulous editing are essential to forwarding exploration of our field, the VPFJ benefits from a distinguished international Editorial Board. Each submission is at least double blind peer reviewed and undergoes a careful editorial process based on the VPFJ Style Guide (downloadable here). Where we feel it is appropriate, we shall not hesitate to screen for plagiarism.
We are proud to maintain the highest standards in the VPFJ and edit and select accordingly, but we do not think rigour is antithetical to civil communication and friendly council. Alert to the necessity of working to reduce the physical, social and economic barriers to academic participation and to fostering an environment where all persons enjoy equal respect, we are committed to Open Access and fostering new talent as well as new ideas.
This commitment is underpinned by an Ethical Code which can be downloaded here.
For the same reasons, we have also chosen to make public the VPFJ Peer Reviewer Check List which lists the basic criteria our readers use when evaluating a submission.
Authors retain their own copyright and there are no submission or processing charges. The cost of the DOIs is borne by the VPFA. We operate according the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The normal length of article is 7-8,000 words, but every issue starts with a longer polemical piece which seeks to redefine how we think of “Victorian Popular Fictions.” These longer pieces may be either single- or joint-authored, and, subject to scholarly rigour and readability, may be more experimental in form. Please do not hesitate to contact us at an early stage if you wish to submit one of these longer pieces.
In all cases, please follow the VPFJ Style Guide for all submissions, whether articles or reviews.
Finally, when you think of the VPFJ, don’t think of the squabbles in the Athenaeum Club or the oracular pronouncements of the Higher Journalism, but the energy, ambition, range and conversation of the Beetons, Braddon and Eliza Cook.
Archiving, Depositing, Indexing
The VPFJ is archived by the British Library.
Contributors are encouraged to deposit their pieces in their institutional repositories. As research managers in the Humanities ourselves, we think depositing published versions is preferable, though contributors are at liberty to deposit accepted and submitted versions on the understanding that these will not have complete data (such as page numbers or DOIs), and that, in the case of pieces simply submitted, there is no guarantee that submissions will be accepted for publication in the VPFJ. If you choose to submit pre-published versions to your repository, we ask you to make all this clear to your repository managers.
The VPFJ is, as of 2021, indexed by SCOPUS, DOAJ and ROAD. It is also recognised as an “academic journal” by the Italian Government (it has “riconoscimento scientificità” according to the “Delibera del Consiglio Direttivo n. 155 del 14 luglio 2021 ANVUR”).
Contact
Enquiries as well as submissions are welcomed by the editors, Mariaconcetta Costantini and Helena Ifill, at VPFJournal@gmail.com.
Offers to review books should be addressed to Brian Jukes, Mara Mattoscio and Fiona Snailham, also at VPFJournal@gmail.com.
ISSN: 2632-4253 Journal DOI: https://doi.org/10.46911/vpfj.2019.1000
Hosted by Victorian Secrets
The headpiece of the VPFJ was kindly created by Dr Ann M. Hale, based on a section heading in the Stationery Trade Review for 1887 (courtesy of http://www.blt19.co.uk/periodicals/stationery-trade-review/)
The VPFJ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.