We're baaa-aack. It's the Dysfunctionally Literate reboot that no one was asking for. Start here to learn who the hell I am, where the hell you are, and what I've done with your liver!*

Sound effects from ZapSplat.com.

* OK, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Hi, friends! I'm back with a Very Special Episode: a material object analysis about the use of black currant jelly in Ellen Wood's East Lynne. We'll go over sensation novels, the medicinal history of black currants, and what this all means for the two Mrs. Carlyles of the novel. Hope you enjoy.

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Full Bibliography:

Baker, Henry. “Some Observations Concerning the Virtue of the Jelly of Black Currants, in Curing Inflammations in the Throat. By Henry Baker, F. R. S.” Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), vol. 41, 1739, pp. 655–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/104345.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "currant". Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Jan. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/plant/currant.

Carpenter, Mary Wilson. Health, Medicine, and Society in Victorian England. Praeger Publishers; ABC-CLIO, 2010. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.libproxy.nau.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mlf&AN=2011582221&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Kennedy, Meegan. “Medicine and Sensation.” A Companion to Sensation Fiction, edited by Pamela K. Gilbert, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 481–92. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.libproxy.nau.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mlf&AN=2014140648&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Metropolitan Working Classes’ Association for Improving the Public Health. The Rearing and Training of Children. J. Churchill, 1847. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/60203229.

Sweet, Matthew. “Sensation Novels.” British Library, 15 May 2014, https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/sensation-novels.

“Uses of the Black Currant.” Scientific American, vol. 4, no. 30, 1849, pp. 240–240. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24930629.

Wagner, Tamara Silvia. “The Sensational Victorian Nursery: Mrs. Henry Wood’s Parenting Advice.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 45, no. 4, 2017, pp. 801–819., doi:10.1017/S1060150317000225.

Wood, Ellen. East Lynne. Edited by Andrew Maunder, Broadview Press, 2002.

They said we couldn't do it.

Titles reviewed (if you use that word generously):

Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions by Michael Moss

This month's poem is "Leaves" by Deborah Digges.

Sound effects from ZapSplat.com.

* At first I pronounced this title the way I do in my head, and I apologize for that.

The first episode of Dysfunctionally Literate. Get in on the ground floor of this train wreck.

Titles reviewed (to varying extents & degrees of effectiveness):

What It Means When A Man Falls from the Sky - Lesley Nneka Arimah

This month's poem is "You Can Have It" by Philip Levine.

Various music and sound effects from ZapSplat.com. The interlude music is "Dawn Awaits" by Cody Martin, taken from soundstripe.com.