Dr Maureen Bell BA MA PGCE MLS PhD

After leaving University I taught in comprehensive schools and trained as a librarian. Work for my PhD on women's roles in the early modern book trades led to a Leverhulme postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Leeds, working on the quantification of British book production before 1700 (part of the History of the Book in Britain project). I worked for the Open University and the University of Nottingham’s Department of Adult Education before moving to Birmingham in 1992. I retired from full-time work in 2008.

Early printed books - and the men and women involved in their production - are the focus of my research. I have a particular interest in women as booksellers, publishers, printers, hawkers and distributors of books; and in the development of the provincial book trade. I have recently completed work on an early C18 Derbyshire reader and his access to books: A Catalogue of the Library of Titus Wheatcroft of Ashover. I am currently working on the papers of the Franklin family of Lincolnshire.

Research groups

As Director of the British Book Trade Index I have collaborated with many colleagues - librarians, archivists, local historians as well as academics from other universities - to establish the biographical details of those in the book and allied trades before 1851. I am a member of the Bibliographical Society, and of the editorial panel of Publishing History. I have been on the advisory groups of other funded projects, such as the BookHAD Project (London College of Printing) and the Beyond the Book Project. In 1998 I was a co-founder of the Book History Research Network which supports research into the history of the book nationwide. I am a member of several Birmingham research networks, including the Centre for Reformation and Early Modern StudiesCentre for Reformation and Early Modern Studies (CREMS).

I undertook a variety of administrative roles at Birmingham, including acting as both Deputy and Head of the English Department, and supervised successful graduate work on such topics as Spenser's Faerie Queene, the early Quaker writer Martha Simmonds, the Victorian publisher Henry Colburn, medieval English and Portuguese drama, and women writers of romance fiction. I am currently a member of the academic team at the Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre.