I write with an update on BRANCH. As many of you know, I have purposively slowed down production on BRANCH while I complete the million-word Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature for Blackwell, which follows Fred Burwick's three-volume Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature. Production on BRANCH will ramp up again starting next summer. Even so, some articles are wending their way through copy-editing and revision. I write to let you know that I have published five new articles in BRANCH, all on significant events. They arrive just in time for inclusion in your winter/spring syllabi:

· Priti Joshi (U Puget Sound), “1857; or, Can the Indian ‘Mutiny’ Be Fixed?”

· Christopher Keep (Western U), “The Introduction of the Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer, 1874″

· Isaac Land (Indiana SU), “On the Foundings of Sierra Leone, 1787-1808″

· Barbara Leckie (Carleton U), “‘The Bitter Cry of Outcast London’ (1883): Print Exposé and Print Reprise”

· Lesa Scholl (Emmanuel College, U of Queensland), “Irish Migration to London During the c.1845-52 Famine: Henry Mayhew’s Representation in London Labour and the London Poor“

Priti Joshi's piece joins a strong cluster on India (with previous BRANCH articles by Anne Clendinning, Judith L. Fisher, Julie Codell, and Aviva Briefel); Isaac Land's joins a growing cluster on Africa (with previous articles by Timothy Johns, Anne Clendinning, Jo Briggs, Dane Kennedy, and Matthew Rubery). Chris Keep's article on the typewriter joins a large cluster on new technologies and pairs well with John Picker's article on the telegraph; Leckie's joins a large cluster on class. Lesa Scholl's piece on the Irish Migration is, surprisingly, the first BRANCH piece on Ireland. Others will follow. Lesa Scholl's piece pairs nicely with Barbara Leckie's.