University of Hull

Faculty Member, English

Professor in English

About

I have been researching the lives and theatre work of the Victorian performer, Ellen Terry (1847-1928) and her daughter, Edith Craig (1869-1947) for the last twenty years.  I have also written on women's suffrage literature and contemporary fiction and poetry.  My first book was the biography of Edith Craig (Cassell 1998), a lesbian theatre director who was active in the British women's suffrage movement.  My second book was a monograph on the Pioneer Players 1911-25, the London-based theatre society founded by Edith Craig (Palgrave 2001).  I am now editing Ellen Terry's letters (8 volumes) to be published on an annual basis from 2010.  ***Volume Three is in press ***

Other interests include science (in) fiction, Law and Literature and literary representations of the North of England.  I have edited The Literary North (forthcoming Palgrave, 6 July 2012), a collection of essays drawn from the conference held at the University of Hull.

I am convenor of the MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Hull.  The programme covers literature from 1900 to the present day, and includes an interdisciplinary, team-taught module on Law and Literature, a collaboration with colleagues in the Law School.

I was invited by Equity, the Actors' Union, to give a talk on Edith Craig for LGBT History Month.  This took place on 12 Februrary 2010 at the Phoenix Artists' Club at the Phoenix Theatre, London.

On 7 May 2011 the University of Hull hosted a production of Cicely Hamilton's A Pageant of Great Women (with additional 'great women' of Hull, Amy Johnson, Mary Murdoch and Mary Wollstonecraft), produced and directed by Dr Anna Birch, Fragments and Monuments.

Women's suffrage literature is covered on Open Book (BBC Radio 4) in Mariella Frostrup's four-part series on women's writing.  I'm interviewed (very briefly!) in the first programme ten minutes in(broadcast on Sunday 10 July 2011).  See the link on 'websites' below.

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