Research supervisors in Nineteenth-Century Literature

We research across the full range of the long nineteenth century, from the Romantic period to the fin de siècle.

Three major themes run throughout our work. The first is the concept of authorship, considering how writers in the nineteenth century saw their own role as authors. Case studies within the department, linked to major new editorial projects, include work on Charles Lamb, George Meredith, Oscar Wilde and Henry James, as well as work on authors’ networks and correspondence across the century. The second is the relationship between literature and the visual arts. Work at this interface within the department runs from the eighteenth century to the present. In the nineteenth century it centres in particular on the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements, looking at their poetry and art criticism alongside their paintings, sculpture and design. The third strand is research into the relationship between literature and science. Here our work includes work on literary and scientific institutions, from museums to the periodical press, on literary forms including poetry and science fiction, and on scientific theories, including Darwinian and non-Darwinian theories of evolution. 

Dr Louise Curran

Dr Louise Curran

Associate Professor in Romanticism and Eighteenth-Century English Literature

  • Samuel Richardson and epistolary fiction
  • Letter-writing and authorial archives
  • Literary fame and celebrity
  • The novel and prose style
  • Life-writing (autobiography, biography, memoir)

Dr Eleanor Dobson

Dr Eleanor Dobson

Associate Professor in Nineteenth-Century Literature

My current work focuses on the reception of ancient Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More broadly, I am interested in the materiality and history of the book, as well as notions of the supernatural and the occult, particularly as these ideas operate at the edges of a range of scientific discourses. I teach literature from the late eighteenth century to the present, with particular ...

Dr John Fagg

Dr John Fagg

Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Cultures

  • American Literature
  • American Art
  • Realism
  • Illustration
  • Visual Culture
  • Print Culture

Dr Oliver Herford

Dr Oliver Herford

Associate Professor in Nineteenth Century Literature

  • Nineteenth-century prose
  • Henry James
  • Life-writing
  • Textual revision
  • Literary editing
  • Quotation and allusion

Dr Andrew Hodgson

Dr Andrew Hodgson

Senior Lecturer in Poetry

  • English Poetry
  • Romantic-period Writing and its Legacies
  • Individualism
  • Lyric Voice

Professor John Holmes

Professor John Holmes

Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture

  • Nineteenth-century literature
  • Literature and science
  • Evolution and ecology
  • Literature and the visual arts
  • Poetic form

Professor Tom Lockwood

Professor Tom Lockwood

Professor of English Literature

  • Early modern literature
  • Romantic literature
  • Reception
  • Poetry
  • Drama
  • Manuscript

Professor Deborah Longworth

Professor Deborah Longworth

Professor of English Literature
Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education)

  • Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Women Writers
  • Modernism
  • The Novel 1880-1940
  • Literature and Visual Arts 1840-1940
  • The Nineteenth and Twentieth Century City

Professor Rebecca N Mitchell

Professor Rebecca N Mitchell

Professor in Victorian Literature and Culture
Head of Department of English Literature

  • Victorian literature and culture
  • Textual editing
  • Affect studies
  • Literature and the visual arts

Dr Sebastian Mitchell

Dr Sebastian Mitchell

Senior Lecturer in English Literature

  • Eighteenth-century literature and art
  • Romanticism
  • Intellectual history
  • Aesthetics
  • Utopianism
  • Scottish literature

Professor Daniel Moore

Professor Daniel Moore

Professor of English Literature
Head of English Drama and Creative Studies

  • Late nineteenth/Early twentieth century literature
  • Victorian and Modernist Art Writing/Criticism
  • John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Henry James 
  • Modernism
  • Postmodernism

Dr Jimmy Packham

Dr Jimmy Packham

Associate Professor in North American Literature

  • Late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century American literature
  • American Gothic
  • Literature of the sea, from the Romantic period to the present day

Dr Fariha Shaikh

Dr Fariha Shaikh

Associate Professor in Victorian Literature

My research focusses on the relationship between the British Empire and Victorian Literature, with specialist interests in migration, settler colonialism, memory and textual and material culture. I have further interests in decolonisation, museums, literature and the visual arts. I teach and work on a wide range of nineteenth-century and neo-Victorian literatures, with an emphasis on decolonial ...

Dr Matthew Ward

Dr Matthew Ward

Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature

  • Romantic-period writing – especially the Wordsworths, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats and the cockney-school
  • Literary afterlives
  • Poetry and poetics across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
  • Humour and comedy
  • Sound studies
  • The environment