Clare Stainthorp

@claregs.bsky.social

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University-Policy Engagement & ARIs at UPEN/UCL ∣ Impact at the RCA ∣ Researches Victorian literature, social history, freethought periodicals ∣ Book: Constance Naden: Scientist, Philosopher, Poet ∣ she/her https://clarestainthorp.wordpress.com/

Graphic that reads ‘What's happening in the world of Areas of Research Interest?’, with photo of me (white women with glasses) smiling in conversation. Orange background branded Universities Policy Engagement Network.
Book cover of Alison Stone’s ‘The Philosophy of Julia Wedgwood: Imperfect Antithesis‘ - painterly umber background
A photo of an open book crammed with overlapping cuttings of poetry taken from nineteenth century radical newspapers. Caption reads J. M. Wheeler, Freethought Readings and Secular Songs (1892), 828 WHE. Conway Hall Library. Plus a QR code to support Conway Hall via a crowdfunder
A photo of a diverse crowd of people talking outside the brick frontage of the historic Conway Hall Ethical Society in London
Clare Stainthorp, “Recording Secularist Lives: Multiplicity and Collectivity in J.M. Wheeler’s A Biographical Dictionary of Freethinkers of All Ages and Nations (1889),” Secular Studies 7, no. 1 (2025): 58-80. This article argues that the biographical dictionary was a crucial form through which nineteenth-century secularists conceptualised their own history as a movement that spanned time, place, and class, and envision themselves as part of this multitude. By illuminating how J.M. Wheeler negotiated gender, nationality, and contemporaneity in A Biographical Dictionary of Freethinkers of All Ages and Nations (1889), it identifies how biographical compilation—a form commonly associated with nation building—was co-opted for radical ends.
They’ve been so respectful and so understanding of the decision, but profoundly sad,” she said. “I spoke to one 80-year-old woman who has been in our organisation for decades, who said it was one of the greatest experiences of her life, and the only place in her 80 years where she’s been treated as a woman with respect.”
Nineteenth-Century Carols in Context With short talks by Queen Mary scholars of Victorian culture, carol singing, mulled wine, and mince pies! Friday 5 December 2025 6.15pm to 8pm The Octagon, Queen Mary University of London, E1 4NS All welcome from some festive cheer, with an ecological focus!
Red book cover. Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women by Hetta Howes
UPEN graphic that reads: MEET THE TEAM: Dr Clare Stainthorp, Policy Engagement Coordinator (UK-wide Areas of Research Interest), University College London. Photo inset of Clare smiling in front of large green banner that says ‘William Morris was Right’
Photo of three speakers sitting in armchairs on a small stage - Rusty the dog is sitting on one of the women’s laps
Cover of Michael Warner’s Publics and Counterpublics. A colour photo of four joyful (trans) women with bobbed hair crowded together, three taking photos of a subject beyond the photo, one pointing at the camera that has taken the cover photo.
UPEN: Our mission UPEN's mission is to facilitate a connective and collaborative ecosystem where organisations can work together to strengthen the use of academic research in public policy.
Episode 3 - Two heads are better than one: Networking and mentors in academia. Screenshot of podcast page banner with photo of three women (including me) in green tops smiling and talking in a relaxed podcast studio.
Seminario Feliciano Montero de Historia Religiosa Contemporánea The feminization thesis under scrutiny: the case of the freethinking women of Ghent (late 19th - early 20th century). Speaker: Nyala Karla Nauwelaers, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Commentator: Clare Stainthorp, Royal College of Art & Queen Mary University of London Session: Tuesday, September 30, 2025, 6:00 p.m. (Central European Time) Location: virtual seminar To participate, please contact: aehrc.asociacion@gmail.com Organized by: Spanish Association for Contemporary Religious History (AEHRC) in collaboration with the Secular Studies Association Brussels (SSAB) and the TheoFem project: Lay Women: International Experts and Theologians avant-la-lettre. Legacies and Entangled Histories (1945-1962), Grant No. 101108049. Information and coordination: natalia.nunezbargueno@kuleuven.be
Hark! The wild west wind rattles yonder casement, and autumn's own breath chills the under-insulated pedestrian trudging the pavement outside. These things betoken the return of hats and overcoats, umbrellas and germs, and of course students... but also the London 19th Century Studies Seminar! Please find the programme below, lovingly curated by myself, Mary Shannon and Briony Wickes. All events will be held from 6pm to 8pm in Room 243 at Senate House. 14th October: Andrew King (Greenwich), "Periodicals and the Materiality of Marketing", and Clare Stainthorp (Royal College of Art), "The British Freethought Movement and Periodical Form". 25th November: Kate Hext (Exeter) and Catherine Maxwell (QMUL) on Decadent Flowers and Gardens. 9th December: Peter Bryden (Exeter) and Robert Hampson (RHUL) on New Perspectives on Late Victorian Art.
Sepia photograph of Julia Wedgwood. A young white woman with dark hair sitting in profile wearing a buttoned dress with lace collage and a ribbon choker with cameo pendant
Dark blue title slide: The EC Festival: Ecological Citizenship in Action Thursday 18 September 2025 - Museum of Making, Derby "And then what happened?" Thinking about Impact Clare Stainthorp, Research Impact Manager, Royal College of Art
Lime green poster: EC Festival Ecological Citizenship in Action A free festival of talks, workshops & conversations that explore multi-disciplinary perspectives on what it means to be an ecological citizen! 18 September 2025 10:00 - 16:30 The Museum of Making, Derby
Me (white woman in a crochet top) grinning in front of a green fabric banner that reads William Morris was Right
Photo of people waiting for an outdoor yoga class, in square in front of town hall with motto Fellowship is Life and the lack of fellowship is death above the columns. People sitting cross legged on yoga mats beneath a blue sky
Screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation: it is like getting back with the toxic ex boyfriend He sleeps with you but he doesn't want anything serious, laughing emoji
Poster for Building Bigger Worlds, Troubadour Gallery London, W1D 7DW. AN EXHIBITION OF PUBLISHED LARGE-FORMAT ORIGINAL PAINTINGS BY STUDIO-ENDORSED ARTIST JOHN R. MULLANEY DEPICTING SOME OF SCIENCE-FICTION CINEMA'S MOST ICONIC HARDWARE. Star Wars Day open view, Sunday 4 May 12-5pm. Special cosplay appearances and meet the artist. Screen accurate drawing of yellow Alien loader prop
Photo of a group of people running a marathon on a sunny day. A white man with blue hat and vest and coral shorts is waving and smiling as he runs past
TABLE 1. The top ten countries ranked by number of entries in Wheeler's Biographical Dictionary All entries (in descending order): France, Britain, Germany, USA, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Ancient Greece C19 entries (in descending order): France, Britain, Germany, USA, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Russia. Table includes raw numbers and percentage for each category. These figures do not include individuals categorised as dual nationality, for example Thomas Paine (Britain/USA) and Ernestine Rose (Poland/USA), of which there are 23, all from the nineteenth century.
Recording Secularist Lives: Multiplicity and Collectivity in J.M. Wheeler's A Biographical Dictionary of Freethinkers of All Ages and Nations (1889) Clare Stainthorp c.stainthorp@qmul.ac.uk Published online 14 April 2025 Abstract: This article argues that the biographical dictionary was a crucial form through which nineteenth-century secularists conceptualised their own history as a movement that spanned time, place, and class, and envision themselves as part of this multitude. By illuminating how j.M. Wheeler negotiated gender, nationality, and contemporaneity in A Biographical Dictionary of Freethinkers of All Ages and Nations (1889), it identifies how biographical compilation— a form commonly associated with nation building— was co-opted for radical ends. In contrast to longer-form secularist (auto)biographies that privileged the individual over the collective, the biographical dictionary did not impose a singular narrative and so enabled freethinkers to navigate a tension at the heart of the secular movement: the desire to work together to effect social change while upholding the right to draw their own conclusions about what constituted freethinking principles and exemplary lives.
Photo of two expressive portraits of older women with quite piercing gazes - Peggy Guggenheim and Meret Oppenheim - propped on wooden bookshelf.
A framed print consisting for text in two columns, which repeats the sentences: “William Morris designed wallpaper, natural patterns repeating, soothing rhythms to civilise, a bourgeoisie's background beauty. He agitated too, though obituaries said 'poet', dismissing his socialist revolution.” The text spacing means that there is a sense of vines or other plant shapes winding between the words.
Photo from the pov of me wearing a baggy cream cardigan sitting on an office chair looking to the side. A small black cat on her hind legs has her front paws on the edge of the chair. My hand is stroking the top of her head - Etta’s head is tipped back, eyes closed, very boopable nose
Photo of a dining table set for 2 , with serving bowls containing slow cooker beef, salsa, guacamole, pickled onions, sweet potatoes, cheese, sour cream plus roasted corn cobs and a tea towel containing tortillas
Photo of a small black cat lying on her side on a sofa, back resting against my thigh. She has big alert eyes and ears, tummy floof, and paws at a jaunty angle
Screenshot of journal contents page, indicating that all articles are open access. titles and authors: “19th-Century Secularist Poetry: Form and Formation of a New Worldview: Forum Introduction”, Clare Stainthorp, Carolin Kosuch “Satan's Luckless Harp: Antebellum Freethought Poetry in The Boston Investigator”, Michael Keller “Cremation Poetry: Probing Secularism in Verse”, Carolin Kosuch “Secular Community and Identity in the Poetry of British Freethought Periodicals”, Clare Stainthorp “Secularism and its Discontents: Forms of Freethought in Mathilde Blind's Periodical Poetry”, James Diedrick “Secularist Implications in the Satirical Poetry of 19th-Century Greece: The Case of Andreas Laskaratos and His Criticism of the Orthodox Christian Establishment”, Alexandros Sakellariou
Slide with red bound cover of Rosa Amorosa on the left - it is embossed with large stained peacock feather. On the right the ‘explanatory note’: It has been suggested to me that owing to the appearance of another book of love-letters, I sbould volunteer some explanation as to these of mine. Arrangements for their publication were concluded early in last year, and most of she letters were obviously written before the ar-nouncement even of any other book of love-letters was made. Personally, I cannot see any probability of comparison, as I have heard from competent judges that the other book belongs to the region of exquisite literature; this pretends to be no more than the veracious expression of the thoughts and love of one little woman, of value only as truthfully buman.
Love is religion”: spiritual, esoteric, and epistolary connections in Rosa Amorosa “Love is religion. But you have so many forms of belief that one has to confess oneself a heretic to escape being torn to pieces in the interest of some special form of the True Faith. One has to step out of the pale of orthodoxy in order to find a quiet fane where one can commune with one’s God at the altar of one’s own form of worship. (Egerton, Rosa Amorosa 12).” In Rosa Amorosa: The Love-Letters of a Woman (1901), George Egerton used versions of her own love letters to express her undefined but nonetheless unorthodox religious and spiritual beliefs more overtly than in her earlier, more well-known works. The epistolary form enabled her to articulate her experiences of love and faith that compressed the physical and spiritual, transcended space and time, and blurred the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. Drawing upon the wealth of scholarship that has identified “the dialogic, dynamic, and historically contingent relationships between shifting understandings of the sexual and the spiritual” during this period (Dixon “Introduction” 42), in this essay I consider the contours of this individualistic faith and conception of love as a universal force by placing it in dialogue with multiple forms of esoteric belief circulating at the fin de siècle.
Foreword: 'Encountering George Egerton in the Scandinavian Context' Gerd Karin Bjorhovde Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Isobel Sigley and Whitney Standlee Part 1 Cosmopolitanism and Globalism 1 'A Foreign Element': George Egerton, Scandinavian Literature and Knut Hamsun's Hunger Peter Sjolyst-Jackson 2 The Flagrancy of the Flâneuse: George Egerton's Rejection of the Ideology of Gendered Spheres Sravya Bhupatiraju 3 Between Nietzsche and Wagner: George Egerton's 'Wounded Modernism' Paul March-Russell Part 2 Sexual Identities and Queer Form 4 George Egerton, John Lane and Radical Friendship Heather Marcovitch 5 The Wheel of God: An Irish Modernist Bildungsroman Niels Caul 6 'Love Is Religion': Spiritual, Esoteric and Epistolary Connections in Rosa Amorosa Clare Stainthorp 7 Between Feminism and Conformity: Staging Female Individuality in The Backsliders (1911) Rachel O'Nunain Part 3 Feminist Geopolitics 8 'How We Women Digress': Modernism, Feminism and Deviation in George Egerton's Short Fiction of the 1890s Nathalie Saudo-Welby 9 Medical and Legal Discourse and Varieties of 'Unnatural' Parenthood in the Works of George Egerton Whitney Standlee
Point of view photo - the book I’m reading is in the foreground, a view of the sofa with a curled up black cat at the other end and small Christmas tree in the background
Photo of the Albert Memorial in wintery Kensington Gardens taken from 8th floor window looking down. Quite dramatic cloudy but bright sky.
Photo of four Christmas cards lined up, with a Christmas tree in the background. Black and white linocut of a fir tree on a snowy night. Chine colle gives a green flash of colour down the centre of the tree
The panoramic and compilation models, different as they are, sought to deal with a common concern: the question of how to generate an overview on the perceived scale of their contemporary era. The sense of living through times of unprecedented scale and change since the late eighteenth-century Age of Revolutions-has often been summarized under the multifarious category of "modernity" ? The term indicates a period of hugely accelerated growth in technological, geographical, demographic and social scale, which makes it increasingly difficult to gain an overview on these shifts or their results. Here, I examine "modernity" in its temporal and social dimension: the challenge of how to represent historical events and populations that seem too large scale to be shown in their totality. In the nineteenth century, changes that would previously have taken place across centuries now happened within decades. Contemporaries therefore could not comment on these changes from out-side, as if they were happening to some other society. I show how writers, artists and data-collectors tried to get to grips with the unwieldy scale of modernity's contemporaneous events and personnel, and the unnerving speed at which those would be superseded. Our twenty-first-century concern with "unprecedented times" and an "Anthropocene age" ", while recent in its specifics, is the result of a long- standing need to understand our own place in bigger historical timeframes and in the overall arc of history. While we might feel that now is the moment that most urgently needs to seek this understanding, the nineteenth century was arguably the most invested in doing so. Studying their responses to these issues can offer us valuable insights and alternatives to our own approaches.
A small black cat sitting very alert on a windowsill looking out into a garden. On a shelf in the background you can just make out a portrait of the same cat in a similar pose.
Screenshot of Luke Seaber’s tweet: I do slightly wonder whether, if this is Lombroso, it might not be the Italian for 'Long live France and little [French?] pussies.
Screenshot of 2018 tweet: Big fan of the Victorian criminal who had a tattoo saying "long live France and french fried potatoes" Page scan reads: Lombroso made a quantitative study of content in criminal tattoos and found them, in general, lawless ("vengeance") or excusing ("born under an unlucky star," “out of luck"), though he encountered one that read: "Long live France and french fried potatoes." My reply: To cite my sources, this is from Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man.
A cake depicting the cover of Constance Naden: Scientist, Philosopher, Poet by Clare Stainthorp, a yellow and green design with a sepia photo of a Victorian woman sitting at a desk. Also on the table, a copy of the book, a candle, and cupcakes decorated to match.
Bookshop front window, green and gold signs read Unsworths Antiquarian Booksellers, Books Bought and Sold. Books and cacti populate the window.
Photo of a small black cat who is sitting patiently on the carpet, looking up with an intense expression
Photo of Raymond Williams’s novel Border Country, cover image a steam train through rural Welsh landscape - my black and white stripy skirt is the background
Photo of a small black cat on a window sill looking out the window into a autumnal garden
Secular Community and Identity in the Poetry of British Freethought Periodicals. Abstract: The poetry in British freethought periodicals in the second half of the 19th century illuminates how members of this radical secularist movement agitated for change, expressed their ideas, and self-fashioned their collective identity as a community of thought and action. This article examines the role of poetry in the National Reformer, Freethinker, Secular Review/Agnostic Journal, and Secular Chronicle. Their editors published lyrical and reflective poetry alongside poems of protest, expressing freethinkers’ social and political struggles across poetic forms and bringing an often-divided secularist movement together. The article concludes by considering what cuttings in an edition of J. M. Wheeler’s Freethought Readings and Secular Songs (1892) tells us about the value of poetry for secularists.
Flatlay of printed material from the Conway Hall archive, at the centre an early issue of The Freethinker.
Identity and Belief in Victorian Britain. Header image a black-and-white illustration of two sphinxes and tree of history by Patrick Geddes. Developer: Clare Stainthorp Peer Reviewer: Winter Jade Werner Syllabus Cluster Developer: Dana Aicha Shaaban Syllabus Guide: Sophia Hsu Webpage Developer: Ava K. Bindas
Blooming gladioli spears, flowers butter yellow fading to peach. In a cream vase with orange and yellow geometric pattern, next to a blue fruit bowl with nectarines, lemons, and banana.
Screenshot from page linked in post, listing the activities that are part of the family-friendly day of the freethought history festival: Tom Paine’s Bones! A puppet building workshop Great and Good? A plaque-making workshop Sing for Eliza! A singing workshop Doers & Dreamers storytelling Humanist Bloomsbury walk: Download the Go Jauntly app and take a walk through Bloomsbury’s Humanist history with Humanist Heritage’s self-guided free walking tour.
Screen shot of a website homepage 'About Dr Clare Stainthorp' with icons for policy researcher, impact advisor, communicator, writer. Icons are brightly coloured abstract images like starbursts on black backgrounds, illustrations from Besant and Leadbetter's book Thought-Forms.
Red poster for Freethought History Festival. Conway Hall invites you to our Freethought History Festival. A first-of-its-kind weekend featuring discussions, workshops, and family-friendly activities that explore the ideas of Humanism, Secularism, and the inspiring history of the freethought movement. See link in post for full text and further details.
Slide with cover of Clare Stainthorp's book Constance Naden: Scientist, Philosopher, Poet (Peter Lang, 2019), which includes a sepia phoograph of nadern sitting at her desk. Lists: - Oxford Handbook of American and British Women Philosophers in the Nineteenth Century (OUP 2023): Clare Stainthorp, ‘Constance Naden’ & Emily Thomas, ‘Idealisms in Britain: Constance Naden, Victoria Welby, Arabella Buckley, and Beyond’. - Irmtraud Huber (2022) ‘The unity of thought and thing: collapsing mind-matter boundaries in the poetry and prose of Constance Naden’ European Journal of English Studies - Alison Stone (2022) ‘Later Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers on Mind and Its Place in the World’, Journal of the History of Philosophy; Naden also features in Stone’s Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain (OUP 2023) - Emily Thomas (2024) “Constance Naden’s Metaphysics: Hylo-Idealism’s Ideal Known World and Unknown Matter”, Journal of the History of Philosophy
The front page of the spring 2024 British Association for Victorian Studies newsletter. On the left a welcome from the editors, including details of online and in-person EVENT2024 conference sessions, the launch of the BAVS postdoctoral network, and upcoming deadlines for events, research, and engagement funding plus the BAVS Second Monograph Prize. The righthand column lists BAVS executive committee members. Full text via PDF linked in tweet.
A page of the National Reformer. 1.5 columns are the end of an article on Charles Sumner and American Republicanism. Then the opening of THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, with epigraphs from Dante and Leopardi before the Proem begins. “Per me si va nella citta dolente.” “Poi di tanto adoprar, di tanti moti D'ogni celeste, ogni terrena cosa, Girando senza posa, Per tornar sempre la donde son mosse; Uso alcuno, alcun frutto Indovinar non so. Sola nel mondo eterna, a cui si volve Ogni creata cosa, In te, morte, si posa Nostra ignuda natura; Lieta no, ma sicura Dell' antico dolor” PROEM Lo, thus, as prostrate, "In the dust I write My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears." Yet why evoke the spectres of black night To blot the sunshine of exultant years? Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden? Why break the seals of mute despair unbidden, And wail life's discords into careless ears?
Abstract: Chatterton's Commune, the Atheistic Communistic Scorcher (1884–95) was a journal that troubled the boundaries of 19th-century print culture. Ostensibly a periodical, with all the associated markers of form and content (from masthead to ‘To Correspondents' column), it might alternatively be considered an expanded broadside, a pamphlet series, or even a proto-zine. This article's close consideration of this publication elaborates upon what the periodical form enabled for Daniel Chatterton—its impoverished editor, sole author, typesetter, printer & distributor—as a tool of political agitation during the late 19th century. Focusing on the publication's materialities of print and production, its resistance to ephemerality (of both print & working-class lives), and Chatterton's aspirations towards radical communality, it argues that by pushing at the limits of freedom of thought Chatterton's Commune brings into focus the perceived power of periodicals at the end of the 19 century.
Poster for ISHASH Webinar: ‘Libraries and Archives Show & Tell’, 13 March 2024 11.00 PT, 14.00 ET, 18.00 GMT, 19.00 CET. Speakers: Christoph de Spiegeleer from Liberas and Carl Harrison from Conway Hall. To sign up for the webinar and get the zoom link email ishashmail@gmail.com
Front page of issue 14 of CHATTERTON’S COMMUNE, THE ATHEISTIC COMMUNISTIC SCORCHER. Headline reads “BLOW OUT, BLAST OUT, BURN OUT. WAR to the BLOODY KNIFE. Masses, Kill the Classes” by Dan Chatterton. Price one penny.
A double page spread from Chatterton’s Commune, a roughly printed periodical on yellow tissue paper. An article is titled ‘What is Life? What is Death?’, which reflects on the scientific and philosophical meaning of life from an atheist perspective, death is conceived as ‘nothing more than a transmission of the force of heat’. It reflects on the difficulties of illness exacerbated by poverty but boneless ‘our brain is clear and active. Oh do we enjoy life.’ The facing page shows the end of a very different article, expressing his revolutionary zeal: ‘Now is the time for emancipation, revolt, the dagger, the bullet.’ His republicanism is clear, calling Victoria ‘mad murderous queen’ and calling for the proletariat to rise up against her and the aristocracy.