Research at the Nineteenth-Century Centre

Three major themes run throughout our work on the nineteenth century

1. The first is the concept of authorship, especially as it pertains to literary production, textual editing, networks and correspondences, and forms of influence and inheritance. Case studies within the Centre, linked to major projects in press or in progress, include work on Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Meredith, Oscar Wilde, and Henry James.
2. The second is the relationship between literature and the visual arts. Work at this interface within the Centre runs from the eighteenth century to the present, and considers the picturesque and literary landscapes, the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements, and exploring the relationship between at poetry and art criticism alongside paintings, sculpture, and design.
3. The third strand is research into literature, science, and the environment. Here our work includes the role of the periodical press, cultural heritage sites and museums, and scientific institutions of Great Britain. We engage with questions of experimentation in literary form (from poetry to science fiction) alongside or in relation to scientific investigations and discoveries, and in recent years have focused in particular on the natural sciences and environmental concerns and crises. Inspired by the period's own developing sense of our complex relation to nature, we think in an interdisciplinary way about the role of literature in approaching the issues facing our planet.