Jane, Senior Lecturer in English and Director of MA Programmes in the Department of Humanities at Leeds Trinity & All Saints, has accepted the Society’s invitation to deliver the 2009 Virginia Woolf Birthday Lecture in London.

The lecture is held each January in the Keynes Library at 47 Gordon Square on the Saturday nearest to Virginia Woolf's birthday. Gordon Square was Woolf's home for several years and a meeting place for members of the Bloomsbury Group. 

Jane’s work on Virginia Woolf includes a series of scholarly articles and in 2006 a book Virginia Woolf's Novels and the Literary Past, Edinburgh University Press, which sold well worldwide and is due out in paperback this September.

Jane said, “The invitation is a great honour, and I will be following in the footsteps of distinguished Woolf scholars Dame Gillian Beer and the late Professor Julia Briggs. I continue to work on Woolf, and the Virginia Woolf Birthday Lecture will draw on my new research into Woolf and Spirituality.”

Joyce Simpson, Head of the Department of Humanities at Leeds Trinity, said, “We are thrilled and delighted to see Jane's work so deservedly honoured. This is clear proof of Jane's standing as a leading international authority on the life and works of Virginia Woolf.”