1660 - 1830

Anyone seeking further information about the MSt 1660-1830 should contact Dr Freya Johnston or Dr Matthew Bevis by email.

Faculty members with research and teaching interests in this period include Dr Sharon Achinstein, Professor Ros Ballaster, Dr Christine Gerrard, Dr Nicholas Halmi, Dr Freya Johnston, Dr Margaret Kean, Dr Paulina Kewes, Dr Rhodri Lewis, Dr Peter McCullough, Professor Lucy Newlyn, Professor David Norbrook, Dr Seamus Perry, Dr Diane Purkiss, Professor Fiona Stafford, Professor Kathryn Sutherland, Dr Abigail Williams, and Professor David Womersley.

The English Faculty has expertise in poetry, editorial practice, textual scholarship, the history of the book, intellectual history, women’s writing, prose fiction, and the relationship between literature and politics. Faculty members work in collaboration with the Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book and with the interdisciplinary Besterman Centre for the Enlightenment.

The MSt in English 1660-1830, one of five overlapping period strands, is a new one-year programme offering a broad foundation for further research and a complete, unique course of study in itself. Examples of possible work across the period as a whole might include (say) the influence of Dryden and Milton on the development of epic and mock-epic from Pope to Wordsworth and Byron; the growth of prose fiction from Behn and Defoe to Austen and Scott; or the shape of the journalistic essay from Addison and Steele via Johnson to Hazlitt and the Romantic reviewers.

Oxford possesses unparalleled resources in the literature, history, and culture of this period. Many college libraries contain one-off examples of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century books. The Bodleian Library’s holdings range from single items—the autograph copy of Pope’s ‘Essay on Criticism’, Austen’s ‘Volume the First’ of juvenilia—to archives of printed ephemera, correspondence, diaries, and miscellaneous papers. Many of the Library’s first and early editions show fascinating evidence of ownership and marginalia. The Abinger collection, a major source for British literary history during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, includes Percy Bysshe Shelley’s manuscripts, William Godwin’s notebooks, and a unique autograph draft of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The cultural and intellectual progenitors of Romanticism are represented in extensive collections of antiquaries’ papers (among them John Aubrey, Elias Ashmole, and William Stukeley), and the literary remains of William Gilpin. Francis Douce, Keeper of the Manuscripts at the British Museum (1807-11), bequeathed over 19,000 printed books and 420 manuscripts to the Bodleian; his collection incorporates children’s books, broadside ballads, history, biography, the fine arts, travel, and archaeology.

There is a strong community of graduate students working in the period, with two thriving research seminars: Restoration to Reform (http://restorationtoreform.blogspot.com/) and Romantic Realignments (http://www.romanticrealignments.blogspot.com/).

The MSt has four components:

A. Literature, Contexts and Approaches (Core Course)
The A course seeks to extend students’ knowledge of literature from 1660-1830, and encourages discussion of critical and theoretical readings of that period. It is taught as a weekly seminar in Michaelmas Term and provides a basis for advanced literary-critical study.

B. Bibliography, Theories of Text, History of the Book, Manuscript Studies
This range of lectures and seminars in each of the first two terms is designed to train students for research in English. Within this strand are classes on palaeography, offering students the necessary skills to explore Oxford’s manuscript collections, and on book history, bibliography, and textual criticism. Those wishing to pursue doctoral study in English at Oxford must complete two courses under B (although there is provision for these courses to be picked up in the first year of research).

C. Special Options

These one-term courses are on specialist topics which sometimes relate to the current research interests of the tutor(s). Students normally take one Special Option in each of the first two terms, but may take up to four if they decide to opt out of the B course. Students are free to pursue C courses from any of the overlapping period strands which make up the MSt in English; these courses present an excellent opportunity to develop your research interests.

Possible C options for this strand include: ‘Milton’; ‘Women’s Writing in English Literature, 1660-1789’; ‘English Biography, 1683-1791’; ‘Seventeenth-Century Writing and the New Philosophy’; ‘Swift’; ‘Romantic Autobiography’; ‘Wordsworth’; ‘Hazlitt’; and ‘Writing the Nation: 1750-1830’.

D. Dissertation

All students write a 10,000 word dissertation on a subject of their choice, related to the work they have been doing over the year.  A member of the Faculty is assigned to each student as dissertation supervisor.

Assessment

Students will submit a dissertation and three essays of 5-7,000 words—one at the end of the first term, and two at the end of the second term—relating to the B and C courses they have taken. Students normally take all four components in order to fulfil the requirements of the degree. All course work will be completed by the end of the second term (Hilary), leaving the summer term (Trinity) for the dissertation, which is submitted in early June.