
Dr Beth Palmer
About
Biography
Beth Palmer has published widely on Victorian literature and culture. Her publications include 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 (co-ed with Adelene Buckland, Ashgate, 2011), Sensation Drama, 1860-1880: An Anthology (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and Picturing the Reader: Reading and Representation in the Long Nineteenth Century (Peter Lang, 2021). She has also written an undergraduate guide entitled Victorian Literature: Texts, Contexts, Connections (York Press, 2010) and numerous articles on aspects of nineteenth-century print culture, drama, and Victorian and Neo-Victorian women's writing.
Beth is currently working on a project entitled Sensational Genres which examines the relationship between the sensation novel and the theatre in Victorian Britain.
Areas of specialism
University roles and responsibilities
- Impact Lead for the School of Literature and Languages
- Director of Postgraduate Research for the School of Literature and Languages
My qualifications
Previous roles
Affiliations and memberships
ResearchResearch 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
I welcome enquiries from doctoral students interested in working in any of these areas.
Research collaborations
I have collaborated with colleagues across theatre studies, art history and literary studies on a number of projects including:
A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850-1900 (Ashgate, 2011) co-edited with Dr Adelene Buckland
Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies (2016) - special issue on 'Performing the Victorian' co-edited with Dr Benjamin Poore.
Sensation Drama, 1860-1880: An Anthology (2019) co-edited with Dr Joanna Hofer-Robinson
Picturing the Reader: Reading and Representation in the Long Nineteenth Century (forthcoming) co-edited with Dr Amelia Yeates.
Indicators of esteem
Reader for: Victorian Review, Review of English Studies, Journal of British Studies, Edinburgh University Press, RAVON (Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net), Women’s Writing, LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory, Studies in the Novel, Cambridge University Press, Palgrave.
Editorial board: Victorian Popular Fiction, Key Popular Women Writers and New Paths in Victorian Popular Literature and Culture
Reviewer for Irish Research Council's postdoctoral award scheme
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
I welcome enquiries from doctoral students interested in working in any of these areas.
Research collaborations
I have collaborated with colleagues across theatre studies, art history and literary studies on a number of projects including:
A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850-1900 (Ashgate, 2011) co-edited with Dr Adelene Buckland
Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies (2016) - special issue on 'Performing the Victorian' co-edited with Dr Benjamin Poore.
Sensation Drama, 1860-1880: An Anthology (2019) co-edited with Dr Joanna Hofer-Robinson
Picturing the Reader: Reading and Representation in the Long Nineteenth Century (forthcoming) co-edited with Dr Amelia Yeates.
Indicators of esteem
Reader for: Victorian Review, Review of English Studies, Journal of British Studies, Edinburgh University Press, RAVON (Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net), Women’s Writing, LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory, Studies in the Novel, Cambridge University Press, Palgrave.
Editorial board: Victorian Popular Fiction, Key Popular Women Writers and New Paths in Victorian Popular Literature and Culture
Reviewer for Irish Research Council's postdoctoral award scheme
Supervision
Postgraduate research supervision
Eleanor March, (2018-2021) 'From margin to centre: Prisoner writing as an act of translation' (principal supervisor)
Kate Johnson, (part time, 2016-) 'Necessary Vanity: Historicising Contemporary Constructions of Performative Feminine Beauty in British Female-Authored Advisory Literature' (principal supervisor)
Danielle Dove, (2017-2020), 'Sartorial Spectres: Re-Fashioning the Past in the Neo-Victorian Novel' (co-supervisor)
Garth Wenman-James, (2018-2022) 'Poverty Porn in Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Spectacle, Space, Surveillance and the Victorian Imagination' TECHNE funded (co-supervisor)
Heather Ballantyne, (2018-) 'Eating disorders in contemporary women's literature' TECHNE funded (co-supervisor)
Postgraduate research supervision
Leah Fryer, (Expectations for Women in the Nineteenth Century: Usage in Historical Fiction and Effects in Camille Doncieux as Wife to an Aspiring Painter
Teaching
I convene the undergraduate modules: Victorian Literature and Culture, Understanding Stage and Screen and Life Writing. I also guest lecture across several other BA and MA modules.