I am currently writing a monograph entitled ‘Men, Women, History: Constructions of Gender and Domesticity in Victorian Historical Cultures’. This will examine the construction of middle-class Victorian gender and domestic ideologies through the medium of historical paintings and other texts such as history books, textbooks and historical novels. Both the construction of, mediation of, and the audience response to gendered stereotypes will be considered, the latter being examined through the evidence of art and book reviews and other similar sources. I aim to demonstrate that such constructions remained unstable and flexible, focusing on tensions within gendered representations of the roles of men and women and the family and home. A chapter on John Everett Millais's Sir Isumbras at the Ford (1857) has already been published, and papers on the representation of Sir Thomas More and his family, and Cavalier children have also been given in a variety of venues.
My second project, which is in its early stages, is ‘The Past Laugh: Historical Comedy in Victorian Culture’. This will examine the role of historical comedy in subverting and critiquing contemporary historical cultures and discourses – such as the picturesque, the antiquarian, and the positivist – in the Victorian period. It will build on research undertaken for my first book, on the text and images of historical novels of W.P. Thackeray and Gilbert A’Beckett’s The Comic History of England. An article on historical comedy in R. H. Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends has been delivered as a conference paper in Malibu, London, and St Deiniol’s Library in North Wales, and is currently being revised for publication in Victorian Review. Further work will focus on examples of historical comedy in Punch and the work of illustrators such as John Leech.
A third minor project, examining the historical works of Charlotte M. Yonge, has recently been undertaken: a paper on Yonge’s Anglo-Catholicism in her Anglo-French novels has been delivered to the Charlotte Mary Yonge Fellowship, while a further paper on her utilization of Scott’s historical fiction in her autobiographical novel, Chantry House, was delivered in March 2008 at a symposium on ‘Reading the Past in the Nineteenth Century’ at King’s College, Cambridge: this paper has been published in a special issue of Nineteenth-Century Contexts, which I co-edited. An article on C. M. Yonge’s historical publications has been accepted and revised for publication in a special issue of Women’s History Review on nineteenth-century women’s contribution to national historiographies.
Publications
Books, Articles and Chapters
'A Stitch in Time: Women, Needlework, and the Making of History' in the Journal of Victorian Culture, 1/2 Autumn 1996.
''The Busy Daughters of Clio': Women Writers of History from 1820 to 1880', in Women's History Review, 7/1 Spring 1998.
Picturing the Past: Approaches to English History in Text and Image, 1830-1870 (OUP, 2000)
‘The Red Queen and the White Queen: the Exemplification of Medieval Queens in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ in G. Cubitt and A. Warren, ed., Exemplary Lives (MUP, 2001).
‘Sir Isumbras at the Ford: Portrait of the Young Artist as a Knight’, in M. Hewitt, ed., The Pre-Raphaelite Ideal (Leeds Working Papers, 2004)
‘Every Picture tells a Catholic Story: the 1854-55 Illustrated Edition of John Lingard’s History of England’, in P. Phillips, ed., Lingard Remembered (Catholic Recusant Society, 2004)
142 articles for The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP, 2004 - ), mainly on nineteenth-century women writers (fiction and non--fiction), Roman Catholics, and historians. They include Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland, Charles Knight, the art historians Julia Cartwright, Emilie Barrington, and Maria Callcott, the illustrator Kate Greenaway, and the author of Our Island History, Henrietta Marshall.
‘Women Writers of History in Great Britain’, in M. Spongberg, ed., Companion to Women’s History Writing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
‘The Nine Lives of the Nine Days Queen: From Religious Heroine to Romantic Victim’, in L. Felber, ed., Clio’s Daughters: Victorian Women Making History (University of Delaware Press, 2007).
‘French and Female: Engendering National Identity in the Works of Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland’, in O. Boucher-Rivalain and C. Hajdenko-Marshall, eds., Anglo-American Views of France in the Long Nineteenth Century (L’Harmattan, 2008)
‘Sir Isumbras at the Ford: Portrait of a Young Artist Becoming an Old Knight’, in H. Ellis and J. Meyer, eds., Masculinity and the Other (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).
‘Charlotte M. Yonge: Reading, Writing, and Recycling Historical Fiction in the Nineteenth Century’, in a special issue 'Reading the Past in the Nineteenth Century', Nineteenth Century Contexts, 31.1 (March 2009), co-edited with Anna Vaninskaya.
‘Healing the Wounds of War: (A)mending the National Narrative in the Historical Works of Charlotte M. Yonge’, Women’s History Review, forthcoming 2010.
'Penelope Boothby', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online supplement, forthcoming May 2010.
Victorian Childhoods, edited with S. Anderson and K. Sayer, Leeds Working Papers series, forthcoming 2010.
Book Reviews
Recent reviews include:
‘The Liquid Fairy: the Nineteenth-Century Fairy and Cultural Anxieties – review of N. Bown’s Fairies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Art’, Cambridge Quarterly, 33/1 (Spring 2004), 63-66.
‘D. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England’, American Historical Review 109/2 (April 2004), 469-70.
‘M. Burstein, Narrating Women’s History in Britain, 1770-1902’ in Clio, 35/2 (Spring 2006), 298-303.
‘Millais as Modernist’, review of Paul Barlow, Cambridge Quarterly, 35/2 (Spring 2006), 181-84.
‘B. Melman, The Culture of History: English Uses of the Past, 1800-1953’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 12/2 (Autumn 2007), 349-54.
‘N.C. Smith, A Manly Study?’, American Historical Review, 113/1 (February 2008), 255-56.
Conference and seminar papers
Recent papers include:
2006: ‘Old Boars and Time-Worn Cloisters: Comic Attacks on Historical Discourses and Heritage Tourism in R.H. Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends’, VISAWUS Conference: The Presence of the Past in Victorian Culture, Pepperdine University, Malibu.
2007: ‘French and Female: Engendering National Identity in the Works of Agnes and Elizabeth Strickland’, British Views of France in the Long Nineteenth Century Conference, Cergy-Pontoise University, Paris
2007: ‘The Past Laugh: Comic Attacks on Historical Discourses and Heritage Tourism in R.H. Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends’, Literary Tourism and Nineteenth-Century Culture Conference, University of London.
2007: ‘Sir Isumbras at the Ford: Portrait of the Artist as an Old Knight’, Masculinity and the Other conference, Balliol College, Oxford.
2007: ‘Faith and the French: Anglo-Catholicism in the Anglo-French historical novels of C.M. Yonge’, the Charlotte Mary Yonge Fellowship Annual Meeting (keynote address).
2007: ‘Henrietta Marshall and the Edwardian Children’s History Book’, Modern Book Society Conference, English Faculty, Oxford.
2008: ‘Reading, Writing, Recycling: C. M. Yonge’s use of Scott’s historical fiction in Chantry House’, Reading the Past in the Nineteenth Century Symposium, King’s College, University of Cambridge.
2008: ‘Faith and the French: Anglo-Catholicism in the Anglo-French historical novels of C.M. Yonge’, Mutual Incomprehensions: France in Anglophone Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century, Leeds Trinity and All Saints College.
2008: ‘Household History: Representations of Sir Thomas More and his Family as Domestic Icons’, Forms of History in the Nineteenth-Century Symposium, King’s College, University of London.
2008: ‘The Past Laugh: Comic Attacks on Historical Discourses and Heritage Tourism in R.H. Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends’, The Victorians and Heritage Conference, St Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden/University of Liverpool.
2009: 'Books as Buildings and Buildings as Books: Reconstructing and Reading the Pictureque Past of London and Paris in the historical novels of Victor Huog and William Harrison Ainsworth', The City and its Environs, Cergy-Pontoise University, Paris
2009: 'Henrietta Marshall and the Edwardian Children's History Book', Leeds Modern History Seminar, Leeds Metropolitan University and the University of Leeds.
2009: 'Cavalier Children: Sentimental History and the Stuarts', University of Hertfordshire Humanities Research Seminar.