PhD Project: A study of popular writing in 1922 through the lens of the publishing industry, in relation to modernism.
Supervisors: Dr Nicola Wilson, Dr Madeleine Davies (Reading).
My thesis is a study of popular writing in 1922 partly through the lens of the publishing industry and in relation to modernism. My discussion is particularly based on issues of value; considering how publishers valued a manuscript they were considering for publication, how readers valued the books they took up and how the values of modernism impinged on these. My focus has been on the writers Aldous Huxley and Beverley Nichols and I intend to write subsequently about detective fiction, romance writing including the work of Elinor Glyn, and popular poetry and T. S. Eliot. Part of my aim is to give a more balanced picture of the literary scene in 1922 which has too often simply been labelled the year of ‘high modernism.’
I obtained a first degree from Swansea University in 1986 and an MPhil in the Early Poetry of Seamus Heaney in 1989. I taught English at secondary level for a number of years and studied publishing as part of an MA in Library and Information Studies at UCL.