Dr Alder completed her PhD in September 2021 at the University of Exeter and the University of Reading. Her thesis explores the relationship between informal literary censorship and the Victorian novel with a particular focus on Mudie’s Select Library and how its brand of informal censorship, far from silencing the literary community, galvanised writers such as George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Ouida to radically engage with issues of sexuality, class, patriotism, and the concept of realism itself.
She has published on Thomas Hardy, censorship and education in the Thomas Hardy Society journals and The Conversation and on Mudie’s Select Library for the University of Nottingham’s ‘Florence Nightingale Comes Home for 2020’ project. Her article rethinking Geraldine Jewsbury’s moral censorship is forthcoming with Victorian Periodicals Review.
She currently holds an Early Career Research Fellowship at the Institute of English Studies and is the editor of the Thomas Hardy Society Journals. Her latest research examines the global impact of Mudie’s Select Library, 1842-1937 and will draw on the British Publishing Archives to build a picture of the international publishing landscape within which Mudie’s operated.