Amy Wells

Thesis title: Reading Childhood: Collections, Texts, and Visions of Play in the British Country House c. 1780-1914

Supervisor: Professor Sophie Ratcliffe, Dr Siân Pooley and Nicola Thwaite

Research Interests: Libraries, Victorian Literature, Childhood, Play, Histories of Reading, Book History, Information Behaviour

Doctoral Research: My DPhil research is an AHRC-funded collaboration with the National Trust, exploring playfulness in the development of reading behaviours from childhood to adulthood through the study of nineteenth-century book collections in country houses. By drawing on my comparative and interdisciplinary background in Comparative Literature (BA), Library Science (MA) and English Literature 1830-1914 (MSt), I hope to shed light on the seriousness of play's impact in the history of reading, and how 'childishness' is something to be celebrated rather than derogated in literary encounters both at the level of the organisation of books as material objects, and within texts themselves. Alongside my DPhil I am also a Junior Dean at Pembroke College as a part of the decanal team.