Dr. Tara Lyons

@tarallyons.bsky.social

2133 Followers 1952 Following

Professor; Bibliography, women and libraries, early modern books and storage; book trade, histories of information; playbooks; Shakespeare; English literature, drama, cats, horses, bees, and little furry critters

miniature vellum volume

My Ben Jonson Epigrammes essay won the ELR Outstanding Essay Award (Senior Scholars Division) for 2023-2024. This prize is really meaningful to me because ELR was the first journal that I submitted to as a scholar, and it also gave me my first rejection letter back in 2010 or 2011 (typed by Arthur Kinney himself). There were a lot of rejections early in my career and not a lot of funding or resources to do the work that I wanted to do. I was one of the lucky ones, though, who landed a tenure-track job out of grad school in 2011. Fast forward to 2019--the Bodleian Library offered me a one month fellowship in Oxford, and I worked my tail off to write about what I found there, while teaching 2/3 and doing my fair share of service. I also had mighty friends like Megan Heffernan and Claire M. L. Bourne to offer smart, rigorous feedback on my writing and my amazing writing group who shared resources with me when my Uni library couldn't get them. Perhaps I would have had a different career trajectory had I gone to fancy graduate program and landed a job at a wealthy institution that offered more than $1000/year total for conference travel and research. But, I'll just say that being a stubborn and somewhat spiteful midwesterner may have some of its own advantages in academia. I guess more time will tell. I've had a very good year professionally in 2024 and am so deeply grateful for the time and resources the Huntington Library has given me to do my work this year. And if you haven't read about Jonson's Epigrammes and Jonson's little book in print, you can check it out here.

title page of London’s catalogue from 1658

A List of the names of the Hounds, May ye 18th, 1725

Large Red leather binding, gilt.