The University of Sheffield

Graduate Student, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics

Thesis Title: Persona and the Fiction of Periodical Identity in Joseph Addison's 'The Free-Holder' and the Early Eighteenth-Century Newspaper, 1679-1735.

About

I am currently studying towards a PhD at the University of Sheffield, where I also completed a BA(Hons) degree in English Literature and a combined English and History MA in Eighteenth-Century studies.

My PhD focuses on the construction of persona and periodical identity (as distinct from authorial identity) in a series of early Eighteenth-Century newspapers; predominantly Joseph Addison's periodical The Free-Holder. The project builds on a long standing interest in the literary value of paratexts and ephemera in print culture, which I first discussed in my undergraduate dissertation (an investigation of the form and function of early modern dedicatory poetry after the decline of patronage) and later in my MA dissertation (a study of the prefatory truth claims utilised by the early novel).

In addition to my PhD I also work as a researcher on a  collaborative project between the University of Sheffield and the National Trust, which endeavours to use letters, subscription lists and book seller receipts to contextualise books found in an Eighteenth-Century library at Nostell Priory; hoping to reconstruct the reading communities operating in and around Eighteenth-Century Wakefield.

I also recently furthered my interests in  popular print by co-organising an interdisciplinary research seminar series about the role of travel literature during the long Eighteenth-Century.

I am currently teaching undergraduate seminars, and until recently I was convenor or 'Work in Progress'; a post-graduate research seminar series/think tank at the University of Sheffield.

Contact Information