Nicholas Smart

Supervisor: Dr. Hannah Sullivan

Doctoral Research: My thesis traces the compositional and archival processes of T. S. Eliot, arguing that throughout his career Eliot sought to control the critical reception of his work through a meticulous shaping of its publication landscape. I am interested more broadly in the ways in which writers consider both the practical and theoretical repercussions of textual preservation, including the economics of publishing, approaches to revision, and the arrangement of literary estates. Other writers I consider in relation to Eliot include Thomas Hardy, Henry James, W. B. Yeats, A. E. Housman, E. E. Cummings, I. A. Richards, Virginia Woolf, and W. H. Auden.

My research is funded by All Souls College, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Clarendon Fund, and in 2022-23 I will be a Stipendiary Lecturer in English at New College.

Publications:

"T. S. Eliot and the Problem of the Archive", ELH (forthcoming, 2023)

"Arnoldian Contempt: Matthew Arnold and Zadie Smith", Matthew Arnold Memorial Prize, Oxford University Gazette (forthcoming, 2022)