Douglas-Fairhurst, Dr Robert

Job Title: CUF Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow
College: Magdalen
Period/ Subject: Victorians

Email address: Robert.Douglas-Fairhurst@ell.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

I completed my BA at the University of Cambridge in 1990, before spending a year as a Procter Visiting Fellow at Princeton University. In 1992 I started a PhD at Cambridge, which I completed in 1998. I was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Fitzwilliam College in 1995, and the following year I joined Emmanuel College as a Fellow in English. I moved to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 2002 as a Fellow and Tutor and CUF Lecturer in English Language and Literature.

I have published widely in the field of nineteenth-century literature, with particular emphasis on the work of Tennyson and Dickens. My most recent book, Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist (Harvard University Press, 2011), was featured on ‘The Review Show’ (BBC2), and won the 2012 Duff Cooper Prize for biography; it was also selected as a book of the year in the Irish Times, Library Journal, New Statesman, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, TLS, and Wall Street Journal, and was an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times. I am currently contracted to write a book for Princeton University Press with the working title of The Book of Shadows: Victorian Magic and the Making of the Modern World.

Teaching Areas:

I teach across the undergraduate syllabus, including Paper 1 (Introduction to Literary Studies), English Literature 1740-1832, English Literature 1830-1910, and English Literature 1910-present, plus various special authors and special topics. At graduate level, I currently teach on the 1800-1914 MSt, co-convene the Victorian Graduate Seminar, and supervise a number of doctoral students. I was Chair of Moderators from 2010-12, and at Magdalen I served as a Dean of Arts from 2005-2011.

Recent Publications:

Books:

•    Victorian Afterlives: The Shaping of Influence in Nineteenth-Century Literature (OUP, 2002; paperback 2004)

•    (ed.) Charles Dickens, ‘A Christmas Carol’ and other Christmas Books (OUP World’s Classics, 2006)

•    (ed.) Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (OUP World’s Classics, 2008)

•    (ed. with Seamus Perry, and introduction), Tennyson Among the Poets (OUP, 2009)

•    (ed.) Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor: A Selected Edition (OUP, 2010)

•    Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist (Harvard University Press, 2011)

•    (ed.) Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies (OUP, forthcoming 2013)

Chapters and articles:

•    ‘Tennyson’s Weeds’, in Victorian Shakespeare, ed. Gail Marshall and Adrian Poole (Palgrave, 2003), 2:114-130.

•    ‘Making Sense of Victorian Endings’, The Use of English 54:3 (Summer 2003), 199-210.

•    ‘Young Tennyson and ‘Old Fitz’’, Tennyson Research Bulletin 8:2 (November 2003), 69-84.

•    ‘I. A. Richards’s Practical Criticism’, Essays in Criticism 54:4 (October 2004), 373-89.

•    ‘Old bags and ‘the old style’: a new source for Beckett’s Happy Days?’, Notes and Queries NS 52:4 (December 2005), 502-505.

•    ‘A. C. Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy’, The Use of English 57:2 (Spring 2006), 126-36.

•    ‘I. A. Richards’, Oxford Encyclopaedia of British Literature (OUP, 2006)

•    ‘A. E. Housman’s Rejected Addresses’, Proceedings of the British Academy 151: 2006 Lectures (2008)

•    ‘Tragedy and Disgust’, in Tragedy in Transition, ed. Sarah Brown (Blackwell, 2007)

•    ‘Alexander Pope: renowned in rhyme’, in Literary Milieaux, ed. David Womersley and Richard McCabe (University of Delaware Press, 2008)

•    ‘Dickens’ in The Cambridge Companion to English Novelists ed. Adrian Poole (CUP, 2009)

•    ‘Tennyson’ in The Cambridge History of English Poetry ed. Michael O’Neill  (CUP, 2010)

•    ‘Tennyson’s Beginnings’, Essays in Criticism (January 2010)

•    ‘Dickens’s Rhythms’ in Dickens and Style ed. Daniel Tyler (forthcoming, 2012)

•    ‘Address’ in The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry ed. Matthew Bevis (forthcoming, 2013)

Other Information:

•    Editor of The Tennyson Research Bulletin (2004-2011)

•    Series editor of Anthem Press Nineteenth-Century Studies (2002-present)

•    Reviewer for journals including the Review of English Studies and Notes and Queries, and advisor on book proposals and manuscripts for OUP, Anthem Press and other publishers

•    Regular reviewer and features writer for the Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, Guardian, TLS and THES

•    Historical advisor on recent BBC adaptations of Jane Eyre (2006), Emma (2009), and Great Expectations (2011)

•    Regular appearances on radio and television for the BBC and other broadcasters; recent programmes include ‘Start the Week’ (2010), ‘Mrs Dickens’s Family Christmas’ (BBC, 2011), ‘Lingua Franca’ (ABC Radio National Australia, 2012) and ‘The Charlie Rose Show’ (PBS, 2012).

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