Speakers

Ian Brinton was formerly Head of English at Leeds Grammar School, Sevenoaks School and Dulwich College. He is Chair of the Secondary Schools’ Committee for the English Association and edits The Use of English. He recently published a book on Great Expectations and has a book on reading the poetry of J.H. Prynne coming out in the next few weeks. He is also at work on a book about British poetry since 1990 for the C.U.P. series Contexts in Literature.

 

Helen Cooper moved to Magdalene College, Cambridge, three years ago, as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English (the Chair founded for C.S Lewis), after spending 26 years as a Tutorial Fellow in English at University College, Oxford. She has written extensively on the links between medieval and early modern literature, including The English Romance in Time, and on Chaucer, in particular The Canterbury Tales.

 

Heather Glen's first degree was from the University of Sydney, Australia. She is now Reader in Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of books on Blake and Wordsworth and on Charlotte Bronte, and edited The Cambridge Companion to the Brontes (2002). Her most recent publication is an edition of Charlotte Bronte's Tales of Angria for Penguin Classics in 2006.

 

Hester Lees-Jeffries teaches Shakespeare and early modern literature in Cambridge, where she is a Newton Trust Lecturer in the Faculty of English and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. Her first book, England's Helicon: Fountains in Early Modern Literature and Culture, will be published by Oxford University Press in the autumn. She is passionate about theatre and about teaching, and particularly enjoys introducing students to interdisciplinary methodologies.

Raphael Lyne went to St Edward's School, Oxford, before studying as undergraduate and graduate at St John's College, Cambridge. After two years as a Research Fellow at Magdalene, he became a College Lecturer at New Hall, and then a University Lecturer (still at New Hall) in 2002. He teaches sixteenth-and seventeenth-century literature. His first book, Ovid's Changing Worlds: English Metamorphoses 1567-1632 came out in 2001.  His second, Shakespeare's Late Work, came out this year.

 

Robert Macfarlane is Fellow in English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and specialises in British and American Literature since 1945. He is the author of Mountains of the Mind (2003), and Original Copy (2007) and writes for the Guardian and Sunday Times on literature, landscape, and the environment.

Sarah Meer teaches American and nineteenth-century literature in the English Faculty and at Selwyn College, Cambridge. She has written a book on minstrels and responses to Uncle Tom's Cabin, and articles on slave narratives, African American writers and melodrama. She is currently working on the scandalous Irish/American melodramatist Dion Boucicault.

Fred Parker, was educated at St Dunstan’s College, London and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he is now a Fellow and Tutor; he is also a University Senior Lecturer in English. He teaches too many things, often including English Literature in the period between Milton and Byron. His most recent book was entitled Scepticism and Literature; he is, however, currently working on the Devil.

Deana Rankin was born and went to school in Portadown, N. Ireland. She studied Modern Languages at St John's College, Oxford, then worked in theatre management and completed a part-time MA in English before returning to St John's to do a PhD in English. She is now Fellow and Director of Studies at Girton College, Cambridge where she teaches mainly Renaissance literature with some modern drama. She is author of Between Spenser and Swift: English Writing in Seventeenth-century Ireland, (2005) and has recently coordinated a series of education festivals for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Corinna is Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where she teaches and researches in Romantic and Victorian literature. She has published articles on Keats and Hopkins, Byron, Wordsworth, and the Romantic Period Novel, and an edited collection of writings on Dickens. Her particular interests lie with writing and thought between 1750 and 1870, and especially with the dialogues between literature and moral philosophy, religion, music and antiquarianism in that period.  She is currently completing a monograph, Romance and the Ethics of Response, 1765-1837, as well as writing A Beginner's Guide to Romanticism in the series by Oneworld, and working on a new project concerning the idea of repetition in nineteenth-century culture.

Daniel Wakelin attended Ixworth Middle School, where his father is caretaker, and Thurston Upper School, both in Suffolk. He studied English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and is now University Lecturer in English and a Fellow in English at Christ's College, Cambridge. He teaches Medieval and Tudor literature, the history of the English language and the criticism of poetry. His research concerns the transition from medieval to Renaissance literature.