Dr Beth Palmer

Biography

Beth completed her doctorate at Trinity College, Oxford, in 2007-8. She then taught at Keble College, Royal Holloway, and the University of Leeds before moving to the University of Surrey in 2010.

Her published work includes a monograph, Women's Authorship and Editorship in Victorian Culture: Sensational Strategies, (Oxford University Press, 2011) and a co-edited volume entitled A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850-1900  (Ashgate, 2011). She has also written an undergraduate guide entitled Victorian Literature: Texts, Context, Connection (York Press, 2010). 

Research Interests

My research interests include: 

• Victorian fiction
• The periodical press
• Nineteenth-century popular culture
• The nineteenth and twentieth-century theatre
• Readership
• The Neo-Victorian novel
• Women's writing
• Contemporary fiction
• Postcolonial writing

Research Collaborations

I have co-edited a book entitled A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850-1900 (Ashgate, 2011) with Adelene Buckland (University of East Anglia).

I was asked to be guest editor of the online postgraduate journal Victorian Network for their special issue on 'Theatricality and Performance' (2011)

Publications

Books:

• Women's Authorship and Editorship in Victorian Culture: Sensational Strategies (Oxford University Press, 2011)
• A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850-1900 (Ashgate, 2011)
• Victorian Literature: Texts, Context, Connection (York Press, 2010)

Articles

• ‘Charles Reade’ in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Victorian Literature, ed. Juliet John. (Oxford University Press, 2012). www.oxfordbibliographies.com  

• ‘Ella Hepworth Dixon and Editorship’, Women’s Writing (forthcoming, 2012).

• ‘Reading at the Royal Colonial Institute’ in A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, eds. Adelene Buckland and Beth Palmer. (Ashgate, 2011).

• ‘Introduction’ (co-written with Adelene Buckland) in A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, eds. Adelene Buckland and Beth Palmer. (Ashgate, 2011).

• ‘Victorian Sensation Fiction and Its Legacies in the Twenty-First Century’. Victorian Studies. 51:4 (Autumn 2009): 80-88.

• ‘Performing editorial identities in Florence Marryat’s London Society magazine’. Victorian Periodicals Review. 42:2 (2009): 136-154.

• ‘Florence Marryat, Theatricality and Performativity’. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century. 8 (April 2009) http://www.19.bbk.ac.uk/

• ‘“Dangerous and foolish work”: evangelicalism and sensation in Ellen Wood’s Argosy magazine’. Women’s Writing. 15:2 (August 2008): 187-198.

• ‘Sensationalising the City in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Belgravia Magazine’. Literary London. 6:1 (March 2008)  http://www.literarylondon.org/

• Several contributions to the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, eds. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor. Academia Press, in association with The British Library and Proquest. 2008.

Reviews

Review of Caroline Sumpter, The Victorian Periodical Press and the Fairy Tale for Victorian Periodicals Review 43:3 (2010): 343-345.

Review of Molly Youngkin, Feminist Realism at the Fin de Siècle: The Influence of the Late-Victorian Woman’s Press on the Development of the Novel for Victorian Periodicals Review 42:2 (2009): 196-197.

Review of Kirstie Blair, Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart for Peer English: The Journal of New Critical Thinking 2 (2007): 152-154.

Review of Isobel Hurst, Victorian Women Writers and the Classics: The Feminine of Homer for Review of English Studies 58:235 (2007): 419-420.

Review of Stephen Prickett, Modernity and the Reinvention of Tradition: Backing into the Future for Modern Language Review (forthcoming)

Review of Alberto Gabrielle, Reading Popular Culture in Victorian Print:  Belgravia and Sensationalism for H-France (forthcoming)

I also provide annotations for the Routledge Annotated Bibliography of English Studies.

Teaching

In Semester 1 I am co-ordinating 'Contemporary Literature: Gender and Sexuality' (Level 2)

Departmental Duties

I am Admissions Tutor for English

Affiliations

I am a Member of the British Association for Victorian Studies and of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. 

Conferences organised:

• ‘Print Culture and the Novel: 1850-1900’, University of Oxford (20th January 2007)
I co-organised a conference that reviewed the relationships between various forms of print culture and the novel, using the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Altick’s The English Common Reader as a focal point. This conference provided the impetus for the co-edited volume A Return to the Common Reader (forthcoming from Ashgate).

•  'Dickens and the Visual Imagination', University of Surrey and Paul Mellon Centre (Summer 2012)

Conference papers given:

• 'Writing for the stage and the page: compositional practices in the early works of Charles Reade', British Association of Victorian Studies Annual Conference, University of Birmingham (1-3rd September 2011)

• ‘Working through the Era and the Stage’, Research Society for Victorian Periodicals Annual Conference, Canterbury Christ Church University, (22-23rd July 2011)

• Invited lecture: ‘Sensational Strategies in the Victorian Periodical Press’, University of Regensberg, Germany (May 18th 2010)

• ‘Florence Marryat’s Performances on Stage and Page’, Popular Victorian Novelists Association annual conference, Institute of English Studies, London. (10-12th September 2009)

• ‘Victorian Sensation Fiction and Its Legacies in the Twenty-First Century’, Joint Conference of the British and North American Associations for Victorian Studies, Cambridge University (13th-15th July 2009)

• ‘Being ‘Dickensy’ in the Victorian periodical press’, Dickens Day 2008, Birkbeck College, London (18th October 2008)

• ‘Colonial Characterisations: The Royal Colonial Institute and its Periodicals’, Research Society for Victorian Periodicals annual conference, Roehampton University (4th-5th July 2008)

• ‘Editorial Performance in the Mid-Victorian Periodical Press: Florence Marryat and London Society magazine’, British Association of Victorian Studies annual conference, University of Salford (30th August-1st September 2007)

• ‘“How little do we Londoners know of London!” Sensation Monthlies Navigating the City’, Research Society for Victorian Periodicals annual conference, CUNY, New York (15th-16th September 2006)

• “Dangerous and foolish work”: evangelicalism, the sensation novel and critical conflict’, British Association for Victorian Studies annual conference, University of Liverpool (7th-9th September 2006)

• ‘Recuperating Sensation through Religion in Ellen Wood’s Argosy magazine, Victorian and Edwardian Popular Culture Seminar Series, IES, University of London (26th April 2006)

• ‘“Strong Measures” in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Belgravia magazine’, Mary Elizabeth Braddon Symposium, University of Swansea (22nd April 2006)