Professor Dirk Van Hulle

I work mainly on twentieth-century writers such as Samuel Beckett and James Joyce. My research concentrates on the study of liteary writing processes or 'genetic criticism'. As Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History, my aim is to reunite the compartmentalized fields of Bibliography, Book History, Textual Criticism, Scholarly Editing and Genetic Criticism.

The digital medium is a great catalyst for this rapprochement. For instance, the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (www.beckettarchive.org) is a scholarly edition that reunites all of Samuel Beckett's manuscripts held in scattered collections on both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from scans, transcriptions, search and collation engines, it also includes the author's personal library, enabling users to discover the connections between Beckett's reading and his writings.

With Mark Nixon, I edit the Oxford Handbook of Samuel Beckett (Oxford UP) and The Critical Writings of Samuel Beckett (Faber and Faber). Apart from my work on scholarly editions and authors' libraries (for Cambridge UP, Bloomsbury, Michigan UP, Routledge), I am writing a monograph on genetic criticism for Oxford University Press and organizing conferences on 'Writers' Libraries', 'Creative Revision' and 'Histories of the Holograph' in September 2020.