Nineteenth-Century Literature
Nineteenth-century literature is an important and expanding area of research at Newcastle. These members of staff work in this area:
- Dr James Annesley
- Professor John Batchelor (Emeritus)
- Dr Ella Dzelzainis
- Dr Abbie Garrington
- Dr Matthew Grenby
- Dr Sarah Haggarty
- Dr Rosalind Haslett
- Dr Kirsten MacLeod
- Dr Meiko O'Halloran
- Professor Kim Reynolds
- Dr Michael Rossington
- Dr Andrew Shail
- Professor Terry Wright (Emeritus)
Particular areas of research expertise include scholarly editing, Romantic-era writing, feminist and economic history and literature, print culture, Aestheticism and Decadence, early cinema, children's literature, and the writing of (among many others) James Hogg, Thomas Malthus, Harriet Martineau, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw and Herman Melville.
Newcastle has rich resources for research into nineteenth-century subjects. The Robinson Library's Special Collections include remarkable archives of nineteenth-century novels, travel literature, chapbooks and other forms of popular literature, children's books, political tracts and pamphlets, ephemera, diaries and letters and a number of important named collections, such as the Trevelyan Family Papers and the Spence-Watson Papers. The Newcastle City Library holds a substantial collection of nineteenth-century material and is particularly strong on the history and literature of Newcastle and North-East England. The Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, founded in 1793 and the largest independent library in the UK outside London, contains manuscript and print archives from across the nineteenth century. The Tyne and Wear Archives also hold a wealth of valuable material for researchers into nineteenth-century literature and culture, including private papers, institutional archives and book trade records.
The School hosts a new Long Nineteenth Century Research Seminar for staff and postgraduate students. In 2012, the School will host a major international conference, 'Taking Liberties: Sex, Pleasure, Coercion (1748-1928)'.
Staff working in this area have published several books.
Postgraduates
The School has a very successful group of home and international postgraduate students working on nineteenth-century literature, and we have been particularly successful at securing AHRC-funded scholarships in recent years. Staff contribute to the MA in English Literature 1500-1900.