Reanna Brooks

reanna brooks
Post-Award Member
St Hilda's College
reanna.brooks@ell.ox.ac.uk

Thesis Title: Beyond the Manuscript: Exploring the Materiality and Craftsmanship in Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press

Supervisor: Professor Rebecca Beasley, Professor Michael Whitworth

 

My research examines the material properties of publications produced by the Hogarth Press between 1917 and 1921, investigating how their physical forms illuminate Virginia Woolf’s engagement with book production, craft, and the broader cultural significance of publishing. By situating the Hogarth Press within the fine printing tradition and the early twentieth-century literary marketplace, this study analyzes how Woolf’s hands-on involvement in printing and bookbinding shaped both the identity of the Press and her approach to literary production. Drawing on theories of analytical bibliography, cultural production, and the history of reading, my thesis explores the Press’s editorial and design decisions, marketing strategies, and Woolf’s evolving understanding of books as material objects. By connecting these historical practices to contemporary artistic interventions, this study highlights the enduring influence of Woolf’s material experimentation on modern book arts.

This work has been supported by the Kojo Minta Fund (2024) and the Sir Richard Stapely Educational Grant (2024-26), alongside various bursaries and travel stipends. My recent article 'Not One Kew Gardens But Many' has been awarded the 2026 Gordon Duff Prize, and in 2024 I was awarded the Romilly Award by St. Peter's College, Oxford.

 

Conference Presentations

  • "Who's Afraid of Gender?" Roundtable at the Modernist Studies Association / British Association of Modernist Studies International Conference, Loughborough University, July 2026
  • "The Archive as Practice: An Exploration of the Winifred Gill Archive," 4th Annual Postgraduate Symposium, Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP), University of Reading, May 2026
  • "Virginia Woolf's Bookmaking as Aesthetic Dissent." 34th Annual International Woolf Conference, University of Sussex, July 2025.                                                              
  • “Cutting through Aesthetics: Craft, Materiality, and the Language of Making in Virginia Woolf’s Works.” 52nd Annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture, University of Louisville & Online, February 2025.
  • “Echoes of Childhood: The Hogarth Press, the Hyde Park Gate News, and Virginia Woolf’s Material Legacy.” British Association for Modernist Studies (BAMS) International Conference, University of Leeds & Online, June 2024.
  • “The Legacy of Woolf: Reading Woolf in the Digital Age.” New Works in Modernist Studies Conference 13, University of Liverpool & Online, December 2023.

Selected Publications

Forthcoming Publications

  • Review of 'The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modernist Archives, ed. by Jamie Callison, Matthew Feldman, Anna Svendsen, and Erik Tonning (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024),' International Yeats Journal (Clemson: Clemson University Press, 2026).
  • (book chapter) 'Handmade and Reimagined: Virginia Woolf’s Bookbinding as Embodied Art and Feminist Practice,' Embodied Knowledge and Making Texts: A Handbook ed. by Georgina Wilson and Helen Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2027).
  • (article) 'Ephemeral Inscriptions: Skywriting, Typesetting, and Language in Mrs. Dalloway,' in Woolf Selected Papers (Clemson: Clemson UP, 2027).

Teaching

I teach at the University of Oxford, primarily through the Faculty of English, college tutorials, and access and outreach programmes. My main teaching areas include modernism, post-modernism, and material studies. I was a graduate teaching assistant for Paper 6 (the Avant-Garde) in Michaelmas 2025, and for Paper 4 (1910-present) in Hilary 2026. 

I have served as a DPhil Facilitator for the Vice-Chancellor’s Colloquium (2024–2025) (2025-2026), where I led interdisciplinary undergraduate discussions on climate change and AI, and oversaw the summer consultancy sprints. I have also developed and delivered seminars and tutorials for Key Stage 4 and 5 students as part of Balliol College’s Discovery and FLOREAT Access Programmes, Pembroke College’s OxNet programme, and served as a teaching assistant for the English Faculty's summer UNIQ program.

 

You can connect with me on Twitter and BlueSky, @123REANNA, or LinkedIn. 

Research Interests: history of the book, bibliography, materiality, print cultures, modernism, reading and reception, business history, bibliometrics, economic humanities, sociology