Charlotte Brontë, embodiment and the material world
- Submitting institution
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University of Southampton
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 40215039
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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10.1007/978-3-030-34855-7
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- ISBN
- 978-3-030-34854-0
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- As lead editor, I worked with Eleanor Houghton—a dress historian and History PhD student (completed 2020)—to bring the book to publication. The impetus for the volume arose from a bicentennial celebration she had organised at Chawton House in 2016, and from which several chapters of the book are drawn. Having just joined English at Southampton, I was uniquely positioned to collaborate on and help mentor Houghton through the publication process. Aspects of my research address embodiment in Brontë’s work and my article on ‘Atmospheric Exceptionalism’ in Jane Eyre had appeared in PMLA earlier that year.
Comprising an Introduction and nine original essays by literary scholars, museum curators, and specialists in material culture and book history from across the UK and US, this 258-page volume is the first to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to embodiment and material culture in Brontë’s life and work. Its successful publication required experience speaking across disciplinary divides (a skill relevant to my own research on literature and climate science) and, after an initial reader’s report by a literary scholar resistant to the volume’s multidisciplinary approach, I undertook extensive rewriting of the Introduction to ensure the book’s methodology was apparent to a wider readership. The final version of this chapter, which garnered a strong second reader’s report and allowed us to secure the final contract with Palgrave Macmillan, charts the evolution of Brontë studies from the rise of New Historicism to the recent ‘material turn’ in literary studies.
I was responsible for composing the book proposal, overseeing authors’ revisions, securing the final publication contract, implementing all copy-edits, and indexing. The co-authored Introduction is substantively my own and I am the sole author of Chapter 3 on physical comedy in Shirley (9,976 words), which represents original research on an underexplored area of the author’s work.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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