Cardiff School of English Communication and Philosophy

Research Opportunities

The Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research (CEIR) offers a number of opportunities for postgraduate and advanced research, at various levels: as part of the MA programme in English Literature, through doctoral research projects and through the Visiting Scholars scheme. Members of CEIR offer expertise in fields such as Medieval studies, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Victorian studies, the early twentieth century and postmodernism. Students working within CEIR can hope to benefit not only from the many resources available within the Centre, but also from the interdisciplinary activities we are promoting. Specific training in textual editing, bibliographical research, book history and the scholarly use of IT are also available within the Centre.

MA Courses

CEIR’s MA provision covers core bibliographical and textual scholarship, covering five centuries of English literature, from the Renaissance to the Victorian period, and include: Bibliography and textual studies; Anthony Trollope and serial fiction; British Romanticism and satire; Reading/theory; Victorian visual cultures; Constructing Shakespeare; Credit and commerce in the eighteenth century; London and literature in the nineteenth century; and the Popular novel in the age of Austen.

Doctoral Research

Since its founding, CEIR has formed the base for a number of doctoral research projects focusing on history of the book and material cultures. In addition to individual supervision by members of staff based in CEIR, the Centre offers further support in the form of a Material Cultures Discussion Group, which meets on an informal basis three times per semester. This has been supplemented by the development of various research networks on illustration studies and material cultures.

Doctoral projects based in or drawing upon the research opportunities offered by CEIR include:

• Anthony Mandal, ‘Jane Austen and the Production of Fiction, 1785–1817’ (2001)
• Andrew Davies, ‘ “The Reputed Nation of Inspiration”: Representations of Wales in Fiction of the Romantic Period, 1780–1829’ (2001)
• Tim Killick, ‘The Rise of the Tale: Collections of Short Fiction in Britain, 1820–1829’ (2003)
• Rachel Howard, ‘Domesticating the Novel: Didactic Fiction from 1820 to 1836’ (submitted 2007)
• Jessica Webb, ‘What Lies Beneath: Explaining the Inexplicable in Victorian Literature' (2010)
• Victoria Gibbons, ‘A History of Titles from Manuscript to Print: A Study of Titular Form, Function, Purpose and Significance in Some Middle English Lyrics of the Late Middle Ages’ (2010)
• Roberta Magnani, ‘Victorian and Edwardian School Editions of Chaucer: translatio imperii et studii as Palimpsest’ (due for submission 2011)
• Peter Roberts, ‘Gabriel Harvey: A Critical Edition of the Anti-Nashe Pamphlets’ (due for submission 2010)
• Kara Tennant, ‘Fashion and the Feminine Ideal, 1856–1870’ (due for submission 2010)
• Liz Ford, ‘Revision in Shakespeare's Early Tragedies’ (due for submission 2010)
• Nicola Lloyd, ‘Sentimentalism and the British Novel, 1800–1836’ (due for submission 2011)
• Marianne Fisher, ‘Insular Romance: Genre, Literature and Society’ (due for submission 2011).
• Katie Garner, ‘The dialect of Romantic medievalists’ (due for submission 2011).
• Rebecca Garner , ‘Constructions of Insanity in Victorian Gothic Literature, 1860–1900’ (due for submission 2012)
• Dewi Evans, ‘The Idea of the Book at the Fin de Siècle’ (due for submission 2012)
• Shayne Wilson, ‘The Roxburghe Club: Its Cultural and Literary Legacy’ (due for submission 2012)
• Lizzie Wainwright, ‘Restoration Drama and the Cardiff Books Collection’ (due for submission 2013)
• Helen Mckenzie, ‘The idea of authorship in Victorian fiction’ (due for submission 2014)

Visiting Scholars Scheme

Postgraduate researchers and experienced scholars are welcome to visit the Centre and benefit from its unique combination of expertise and resources in the areas of history of the book, editorial theory and practice, intertextuality and popular literatures, and material cultures. A variety of opportunities are available via the School's Visiting Scholars Scheme, which provides various options that accommodate the differing research requirements of interested scholars.

Key Resources

CEIR has been working closely with Cardiff’s Special Collections and Archives (SCOLAR) service in targeting acquisitions in order to develop its rich and vibrant research base, particularly focused in the long nineteenth century.

Key resources include:

• the Corvey Microfiche Edition (CME), consisting of 3290 titles comprising 2 million printed pages by 1280 different writers (approximately 80% of fiction published 1796–1834 is held in this collection)
• an extensive collection of periodicals, including the All the Year Round, Annual Register, Art Journal, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Cornhill, the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, Gentleman's Magazine, Illustrated London News, Longman's Magazine, Macmillan's Magazine, Strand, The Yellow Book
• the Salisbury Library, comprising about 50,000 books, pamphlets and periodicals relating to Wales
• the Carmarthen Collection, consisting of around 5000 volumes on theology, science and philosophy from the 17th and 18th centuries
• the Reece Collection, which holds about 3000 volumes spanning the 16th to the 20th centuries
• Archives of the House of Longman on microfilm
• Archives of the Literary Fund on microfilm
• Women Advising Women: advice books, almanacs, manuals and journals, 1625–1837
• Walter Scott manuscripts on microfilm
• Maria Edgeworth papers on microfilm
• Tennyson Collection, comprising 500 volumes from the 19th century
• History of medicine: 2000 volumes from the 17th to the 20th centuries
• access to online resources such as Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO), Literature Online (LION)

The Centre itself has an abundant collection of reference works and nineteenth-century holdings, which are available for consultation, among them reproductions of around 3000 reviews of fiction from 1800–30, approximately 60 circulating library catalogues, as well as publishing papers and anecdotal records of reading from the first half of the century.