Eighteenth-Century and Romantic-Era Studies
Eighteenth-century and Romantic-era literature is an important area of research at Newcastle.
Several members of staff work in this area:
- Dr Matthew Grenby
- Dr Sarah Haggarty
- Dr Meiko O'Halloran
- Dr Michael Rossington
- Professor Claire Lamont (Emerita)
These colleagues share expertise in the poetry, drama and prose of the eighteenth century and Romantic period. Areas of particular specialism include book history, textual editing, writing for children, the novel in the 1790s, gifts and theories of exchange, William Blake, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, James Hogg, William Godwin, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley. Republican writing is a further area of research interest which links colleagues working in this area and Renaissance and Early Modern Literature and Culture.
Staff working in this area have published several books. The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies is edited from the School by Dr. Matthew Grenby.
The School hosted the 2005 BARS (British Association for Romantic Studies) Biennial International Conference, 'Romanticism's Debatable Lands', and the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual conference was organised from the School from 2004 to 2006. In 2012, a major conference on 'Crabbe's Tales' will be held at the University.
Staff working in this area help to organise, and contribute to, the North East Post-Graduate Forum for the Long Eighteenth Century, which brings together staff and students from Durham, Northumbria, Sunderland and Newcastle universities. Within the School, staff and postgraduates are active in the Long Nineteenth-Century Reading Group.
The University Library has excellent resources to support this area. It subscribes to Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO). The Library's Special Collections department holds the White Collection (4,400 volumes) which is especially rich in English literature from this period, particularly in ballads and chapbooks.The Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, founded in 1793 and the largest independent library in the UK outside London, holds unique manuscript and print records from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Other important archives are held at the Newcastle City Library, particularly material on the history and literature of Newcastle and North-East England and including the celebrated Pease Bequest of material connected to Thomas Bewick and his school.
Postgraduates
The School has a very successful group of home and international postgraduate students working on Eighteenth-Century and Romantic-era Literature, and we have been particularly successful at securing AHRC-funded scholarships in recent years. Staff working in this field contribute to the MA in English Literature 1500-1900.