Byrne, Dr Sandie

Job Title: Academic Programmer and Tutor, English Literature
College: OUDCE
Period/ Subject: 20th - 21st Century

Email address: sandie.byrne@conted.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

Jane Austen's Possessions and Dispossessions: the social and symbolic significance of ownership, exchange, and loss of material objects in the novels of Jane Austen
‘Some more recondite word’: women and linguistic currency in nineteenth-century fiction
English fiction contains many characters who better themselves by acquiring wealth or higher social standing, or both. The currency of the economy in which they operate is not always property, nor even material. Although for many characters success is measured in terms of tangible assets, many others, especially female characters, even after the Married Woman’s Property Act (1870 and 1882), are denied control of material commodities. They do, however, have access to an economy of the non-material. In many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels language is represented as a kind of commodity, and as such, a tool for self-advancement of both men and women.

Teaching Areas:

 English Literature 1740-1832; 1832-1910; 1910-present; The English Language

Recent Publications:

The Unbearable Saki: H.H. Munro. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Jane Austen, Mansfield Park. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

George Bernard Shaw: Plays. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002.

The Poetry of Ted Hughes. Cambridge: Icon Books, 2000.

H. v. & O: The Poetry of Tony Harrison. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.

Tony Harrison: Loiner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Other Information: