An Open University: Public lecturing in the Romantic period. This project aims to investigate and account for an under-researched and radically underestimated aspect of our intellectual and literary culture, the public lecture, focusing specifically on public lecturing in the Romantic period and on the lecture institutions that sprang up in the early nineteenth century. It will examine, amongst other things, the role public lectures played in the (self-) education of women and the development o ....An Open University: Public lecturing in the Romantic period. This project aims to investigate and account for an under-researched and radically underestimated aspect of our intellectual and literary culture, the public lecture, focusing specifically on public lecturing in the Romantic period and on the lecture institutions that sprang up in the early nineteenth century. It will examine, amongst other things, the role public lectures played in the (self-) education of women and the development of 'English' as a discipline. The first ever comprehensive study of an extensive pedagogical practice that was also a popular diversion. This project will position public lecturing in the history of education and the knowledge economy of the early nineteenth century.Read moreRead less
Jane Austen and maternal disinheritance: The Leigh family archive. This project aims to research Jane Austen’s (1775-1817) mother’s family, the Leighs. Family relationships are central to Austen’s novels, but little is known about the women of her own family. The Leighs left extensive archival materials pertaining to their history, which Austen scholars have largely ignored. This project will use detailed archival research to recover and reposition the Leigh family in Austen biography, and read ....Jane Austen and maternal disinheritance: The Leigh family archive. This project aims to research Jane Austen’s (1775-1817) mother’s family, the Leighs. Family relationships are central to Austen’s novels, but little is known about the women of her own family. The Leighs left extensive archival materials pertaining to their history, which Austen scholars have largely ignored. This project will use detailed archival research to recover and reposition the Leigh family in Austen biography, and read Austen’s juvenilia and novels as informed by and contributing to this history. The project aims to better understand the influence of family history on Jane Austen’s novels, contributing to our knowledge of British women’s literature and history.Read moreRead less
Anglo-Saxon literary patronage: origins and development. Literature in English began more than a thousand years ago with the Anglo-Saxons, whose greatest work, the epic poem 'Beowulf', marked the transition from an oral poetic tradition to written literature. This project is the first to examine the relationship between patrons and writers in the creation of the earliest English literature and its books.
Literature and Science in the Early Middle Ages. This project aims to investigate the interplay between early medieval science and the literary imagination. The project focuses on Anglo-Saxon England, which provides a fully developed and well-preserved vernacular literary record, beside a learned Latin literary culture. It aims to investigate an important reciprocal relationship at a transitional moment in Western culture: the ways scientific learning influenced the early medieval literary imagi ....Literature and Science in the Early Middle Ages. This project aims to investigate the interplay between early medieval science and the literary imagination. The project focuses on Anglo-Saxon England, which provides a fully developed and well-preserved vernacular literary record, beside a learned Latin literary culture. It aims to investigate an important reciprocal relationship at a transitional moment in Western culture: the ways scientific learning influenced the early medieval literary imagination, and how the literary imagination influenced early medieval science. Study of the relationship between science and literature provides an insight into how people have understood the world around them and their relationship with it, interpreted in the light of inherited knowledge and the imagination.Read moreRead less
The modern Athenians: Francis Jeffrey's Edinburgh Review (1802-1829) in the 'knowledge economy' of the early nineteenth century. This study of the multi-disciplinary nature and influence of the Edinburgh Review under Francis Jeffrey and its contribution to the organisation and dissemination of knowledge in the early nineteenth-century utilises developments in web design and technology to create a comprehensive website dedicated to Edinburgh Review.
Eliza Haywood and Daniel Defoe: gender, genre and nation in the Eighteenth-Century novel. This is the first study of the significant, but unaccounted for, parallels between Defoe and Haywood's careers. This research provides a new perspective on the origins of the eighteenth-century novel by challenging the binary of realism and romance that organises its critical history and interrogating the relation between novel and nation.