We are delighted to announce that this year’s essay prize, offered jointly by the JLS and the British Society for Literature and Science, has been won by Emilie Taylor-Brown of the University of Warwick for her essay ‘(Re)Constructing the Knights of Science: Parasitologists and Their Literary Imaginations’. The judges commented:

“This is an excellent essay which is well-researched, clearly argued, lively and informative. In attending to both the literary and cultural mythologizing of turn-of-the-century parasitology and its practitioners, it adds a fascinating dimension to literature and science scholarship. In particular the committee were impressed with the original archival research, thorough historicist analysis and continually engaging prose of the article. From the beginning it made a compelling case for parasitology’s significance and for the role that literary culture played in promoting this work. The essay illuminates, through a rich account, another example of the complex intertwining of literature and science in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain.”

The JLS extends its congratulations to Emilie on her excellent essay, which will be published in a forthcoming issue, and also our thanks to all the BSLS members who submitted essays to this competition, maintaining both the high standard and wide field set by last year’s entries.

May – June 2014

Most Downloaded Articles (all issues):
1. Rachel Crossland, ‘”Multitudinous and Minute”: Early Twentieth-Century Scientific, Literary and Psychological Representations of the Mass’ (Vol 6, No. 2)
2. Josie Gill, ‘Science and Fiction in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth’ (Vol 6, No. 2)
3. Leigh Wilson, ‘”there the facts are”: Andrew Lang, Facts and Fantasy’ (Vol 6, No. 2)

Most Downloaded Reviews (all issues):
1. Ben De Bruyn, Review of Jay Clayton’s “The Ridicule of Time: Science Fiction, Bioethics and the Posthuman” (Vol 6, No. 2)
2. Lisa Coar, Review of Jessica Kuskey’s “Our Mutual Engine: The Economics of Victorian Thermodynamics” (Vol 6, No. 2)
3. Katharine Easterby, Review of C. R. Resetarits’s “Experiments in Sex, Science, Gender, and Genre: Hawthorne’s ‘Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,’ ‘The Birthmark,’ and ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’” (Vol 6, No. 2)

March – April 2014

Most Downloaded Articles (all issues):
1. Rachel Crossland, ‘”Multitudinous and Minute”: Early Twentieth-Century Scientific, Literary and Psychological Representations of the Mass’ (Vol 6, No. 2)
2. Ruth Murphy, ‘Darwin and 1860s Children’s Literature: Belief, Myth or Detritus’ (Vol 5, No. 2)
3. Josie Gill, ‘Science and Fiction in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth’ (Vol 6, No. 2)

Most Downloaded Reviews (all issues):
1. Martin Willis, Review of Ellen Burton Harrington’s ‘Nation, identity and the fascination with forensic science in Sherlock Holmes and CSI’ (Vol 1, No. 1)
2. Ben De Bruyn, Review of Jay Clayton’s “The Ridicule of Time: Science Fiction, Bioethics and the Posthuman” (Vol 6, No. 2)
3. Ben Winyard, Review of Kay Young’s “’Wounded by Mystery’: Dickens and Attachment Theory” (Vol 6, No. 1)

January – February 2014

Most Downloaded Articles (all issues):
1. Rachel Crossland, ‘”Multitudinous and Minute”: Early Twentieth-Century Scientific, Literary and Psychological Representations of the Mass’ (Vol 6, No. 2)
2. Josie Gill, ‘Science and Fiction in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth’ (Vol 6, No. 2)
3. Leigh Wilson, ‘”there the facts are”: Andrew Lang, Facts and Fantasy’ (Vol 6, No. 2)

Most Downloaded Reviews (all issues):
1. Ben De Bruyn, Review of Jay Clayton’s “The Ridicule of Time: Science Fiction, Bioethics and the Posthuman” (Vol 6, No. 2)
2. Amanda Mordavsky Caleb, Review of Carolyn Burdett’s “Sexual Selection, Automata and Ethics in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and Olive Schreiner’s Undine and From Man to Man” (Vol 3, No. 1)
3. Martin Willis, Review of Catherine Wynne’s “Sherlock Holmes and the Problems of War: Traumatic Detections” (Vol 3, No. 1)

Following the success of the inaugural JLS/BSLS essay prize in 2013, The JLS and the British Society for Literature and Science would like to announce the 2014 prize for the best new essay by an early career scholar on a topic within the field of literature and science.

Essays should be currently unpublished and not under consideration by another journal. They should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words long, inclusive of references, and should be send by email to both John Holmes, Chair of the BSLS (j.r.holmes@reading.ac.uk), and Martin Willis, Editor of JLS (m.willis@westminster.ac.uk), by 12 noon on Tuesday, 1st April, 2014. The prize is open to BSLS members who are postgraduate students or have completed a doctorate within three years of this date. (To join BSLS, go to http://www.bsls.ac.uk/join-us/). The prize will be judged jointly by representatives of the BSLS and JLS.

The winning essay will be announced on the BSLS website and published in JLS. The winner will also receive a prize of £100. The judges reserve the right not to award the prize should no essay of a high enough standard be submitted.

The winning essay for 2013 was Rachel Crossland’s ‘”Multitudinous and Minute”: Early Twentieth-Century Scientific, Literary and Psychological Representations of the Mass’ which was published in issue 6.2 in December 2013. Also published in that issue was Josie Gill’s essay, ‘Science and Fiction in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth’, which received an honourable mention from the judges.

At the end of 2013 the JLS became the latest open access journal to join the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
DOAJ provides a platform for searching all journals that comply with the latest regulations on open access provision and which offer the best practice in open access publishing.
DOAJ can be found at www.doaj.org

The new year honours for 2013’s most downloaded articles go to:

1) Josie Gill, ‘Science and Fiction in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth’ (Vol 6, No 2)
2) Martin Willis, Keir Waddington and Richard Marsden, ‘Imaginary Investments: Illness Narratives Beyond the Gaze’ (Vol 6, No 1)
3) Leigh Wilson, ‘”there the facts are”: Andrew Lang, Facts and Fantasy’ (Vol 6, No 2)

November – December 2013

Most Downloaded Articles (all issues):
1. Josie Gill, ‘Science and Fiction in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth’ (Vol 6, No. 2)
2. Leigh Wilson, ‘”there the facts are”: Andrew Lang, Facts and Fantasy’ (Vol 6, No. 2)
3. Rachel Crossland, ‘”Multitudinous and Minute”: Early Twentieth-Century Scientific, Literary and Psychological Representations of the Mass’ (Vol 6, No. 2)

Most Downloaded Reviews (all issues):
1. Lisa Coar, Review of Jessica Kuskey’s “Our Mutual Engine: The Economics of Victorian Thermodynamics” (Vol 6, No 2)
2. Josie Gill, Review of Uppinder Mehan’s “Postcolonial Science, Cyberpunk and The Calcutta Chromosome” (Vol 6, No 2)
3. Paola Villa, Review of Tami I. Spector’s “From the Molecular to the Machine” (Vol 6, No. 2)

September – October 2013

Most Downloaded Articles (all issues):
1. Martin Willis, Keir Waddington and Richard Marsden, ‘Imaginary Investments: Illness Narratives Beyond the Gaze’ (Vol 6, No. 1)
2. Hazel Morrison, ‘Conversing with the Psychiatrist: Patient Narratives within Glasgow’s Royal Asylum, 1921-1929’ (Vol 6, No. 1)
3. Justin Sausman, ‘Science, Drugs, and Occultism: Aleister Crowley, Henry Maudsley, and Late Nineteenth-Century Degeneration Theories’ (Vol 1, No. 1)

Most Downloaded Reviews (all issues):
1. Chris Daley, Review of Daniel Cordle’s “Protect/Protest: British Nuclear Fiction of the 1980s” (Vol 6, No 1)
2. Ben Winyard, Review of Kay Young’s “’Wounded by Mystery’: Dickens and Attachment Theory” (Vol 6, No 1)
3. Chris Daley, Review of Jonathan Hogg’s “’The Family that Feared Tomorrow’: British Nuclear Culture and Individual Experience in the late 1950s” (Vol 6, No. 1)

One article from the forthcoming issue is now available in preview.
Click on the issue in the left-hand menu to view Leigh Wilson’s ‘”there the facts are”: Andrew Lang, Facts and Fantasy’

The next issue of the JLS will be published in mid-December 2013.
This issue will include the JLS/BSLS Prize-winning essay by Rachel Crossland

In mid-November the JLS will trial an ‘online early’ version of this issue, providing one or two articles in preview ahead of the official publication date.

Look out, therefore, for the earliest information on the next issue in a few weeks.

July – August 2013

Most Downloaded Articles (all issues):
1. John Holmes, ‘Literature and Science vs History of Science’ (Vol 5, No. 2)
2. Justin Sausman, ‘Science, Drugs, and Occultism: Aleister Crowley, Henry Maudsley, and Late Nineteenth-Century Degeneration Theories’ (Vol 1, No. 1)
3. Thijs van den Berg, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four and “1984”: Apple’s Use of Dystopian Poetics in iCommodification’ (Vol 5, No. 1)

Most Downloaded Reviews (all issues):
1. Gavin Budge, Review of Andrea Henderson’s “Magic Mirrors: Formalist Realism in Victorian Physics and Photography” (Vol 5, No 2)
2. Courtney Salvey, Review of Diarmid A. Finnegan’s “Exeter-Hall Science and Evangelical Rhetoric in Mid-Victorian Britain” (Vol 5, No 2)
3. Rob Boddice, Review of Bruno Strasser’s “The Experimenter’s Museum: GenBank, Natural History, and the Moral Economies of Biomedicine” (Vol 5, No. 1)

JLS 6.1 (2013) was published on September 8 – click on the issue in the left-hand menu to view the articles and reviews.

This special issue was themed around the topic of illness narratives and is titled ‘Rethinking Approaches to Illness Narratives’

There are also reviews of journal articles by Dan Cordle, Jonathan Hogg, Gowan Dawson, Janine Rogers & Charlotte Sleigh, Cristina Hanganu-Bresch & Carol Berkenkotter, and Kay Young.

May – June 2013

Most Downloaded Articles (all issues):
1. John Holmes, ‘Literature and Science vs History of Science’ (Vol 5, No. 2)
2. Peter Middleton, ‘Dark Matters: Historicizing Science and Poetry Since 1950’ (Vol 5, No 2)
3. Matthew Chiasson & Janine Rogers, ‘Beauty Bare: The Sonnet Form, Geometry and Aesthetics’ (Vol 2, No 1)
= Keir Waddington, ‘More Like Cooking Than Science: Narrating the Inside of the British Medical Laboratory, 1880-1914’ (Vol 3, No. 1)

Most Downloaded Reviews (all issues):
1. Martin Willis, Review of Catherine Belling’s ‘A Happy Doctor’s Escape from Narrative: Reflection in Saturday‘ (Vol 5, No. 2)
2. Gavin Budge, Review of Andrea Henderson’s “Magic Mirrors: Formalist Realism in Victorian Physics and Photography” (Vol 5, No 2)
3. Courtney Salvey, Review of Diarmid A. Finnegan’s “Exeter-Hall Science and Evangelical Rhetoric in Mid-Victorian Britain” (Vol 5, No 2)

The winner of the Journal of Literature and Science and British Society for Literature and Science Essay Prize 2013 was announced publicly on May 23rd by the BSLS Chair, John Holmes.

The winner of the 2013 prize is Rachel Crossland for her essay titled “‘Multitudinous and Minute’: Early Twentieth-Century Scientific, Literary and Psychological Representations of the Mass”.

The judges also awarded an Honourable Mention to a second outstanding essay by Josie Gill titled “Science and Fiction in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth”

Both Rachel Crossland’s winning essay and Josie Gill’s essay will appear in one of the forthcoming issues of the Journal of Literature and Science.

See the BSLS website – www.bsls.ac.uk – for a citation on both essays.

March-April 2013

Most Downloaded Article from recently published issue (5.2):
John Holmes, ‘Literature and Science vs History of Science’

Most Downloaded Articles (all issues):
1. John Holmes, ‘Literature and Science vs History of Science’ (Vol 5, No. 2)
2. Keir Waddington, ‘More Like Cooking Than Science: Narrating the Inside of the British Medical Laboratory, 1880-1914’ (Vol 3, No. 1)
3. Sam George, ‘Epistolary Exchange: The Familiar Letter and the Female Botanist, 1760-1820’ (Vol 4, No. 1)

Most Downloaded Review (all issues):
Martin Willis, Review of Catherine Belling’s ‘A Happy Doctor’s Escape from Narrative: Reflection in Saturday‘ (Vol 5, No. 2)

The deadline for the Journal of Literature and Science and British Society for Literature and Science Essay Prize for postgraduate and early career researchers closed on April 1, 2013. There were a high number of submissions, ranging across all periods of literary and scientific history.

The JLS can now announce that the judges for the essay prize will be:

Professor Martin Willis (JLS Editor)
Professor Sharon Ruston (JLS Advisory Board Member)
Dr John Holmes (Chair of the BSLS)
Professor Peter Middleton (BSLS Executive Committee Member)

Judging will take place throughout April and early May 2013, with the winner announced in late May.

The winning essay will be published in the JLS near the end of 2013 or in the first part of the 2014 volume.

In collaboration with the British Society for Literature and Science the JLS is sponsoring a postgraduate and early career essay prize. The winning entry, decided upon by judges from both the BSLS and the JLS, will be published in issue 6.2. The deadline for submissions is 1 April 2013. For further information see: http://www.bsls.ac.uk

The next issue of the JLS will be 6.1 (2013). This is due for publication during Summer 2013. It is a special issue on illness narratives, edited by Keir Waddington and Martin Willis.