Storying Sheffield 2012
Back in June I found myself on a train reading the following passage from George Eliot’s Middlemarch: [Bulstrode] felt the scenes of his earlier life coming between him and everything … Continue reading
Book Chapter: Contradictory Woolf
Just a quick post to announce the publication of my book chapter on Virginia Woolf’s Roger Fry (1940), the Omega Workshops and her contradictory theorising of biography: “But something betwixt … Continue reading
Nineteenth-Century Memory: On Biography, Forgetfulness and Not Knowing
In March this year I attended a conference at Leeds Trinity University College on the theme of Nineteenth-Century Memory: Approaches and Appropriations. Papers ranged broadly, from Victorian accounts of the … Continue reading
Review Essay on Victorian Life-Writing (JVC 17.1)
A quick post to announce the publication of my review essay on recent studies of Victorian life-writing in the Journal of Victorian Culture. I was asked to review Max Saunders’ … Continue reading
Virginia Woolf Birthday Lecture, 28 January 2012
Last Saturday I travelled down to London for the annual Virginia Woolf birthday lecture organised by the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain. Fittingly, the event was held in the … Continue reading
Objects and Material Things II: Souvenirs and Collecting
Last week I blogged about two very different life-narratives emerging from two very similar items: Victorian decoupage screens — one created by a man, Charles Dickens, and the other created … Continue reading
Objects and Material Things I: Reading Screens
Charles Dickens has been in the news a lot recently. With his bicentenary in 2012, events and celebrations are being announced with increasing frequency (such as a BFI film festival … Continue reading
Crossing Over
I was particularly struck by an article in this week’s Times Higher Education: ‘Through the eyes of others’ (27 Oct–2 Nov 2011). It asked what the positives and pitfalls are … Continue reading
Allusive Biography: The Life of Charlotte Brontë
I’ve just finished re-reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1857 biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë. The book caused widespread controversy on its first publication; lawsuits were threatened and readers were scandalised by … Continue reading
