Professor Joanne Shattock

I read English and History at the University of New Brunswick, Canada and came to the UK on a Commonwealth Scholarship to do my MA at the University of Leeds followed by my PhD at University College London where I held a Canada Council Scholarship. I taught at the Universities of York and Warwick before moving to the Victorian Studies Centre and English Department at Leicester. My research focuses on the nineteenth-century periodical press, nineteenth-century women's writing, book history, and bibliography. 

My most recent publication is a collection of nineteenth-century essays on Authorship Journalism and the Nineteenth-Century Press, published by Routledge in 2021. Prior to that my major project was a 25 volume edition of the work of the Scottish novelist biographer and critic Margaret Oliphant which I co-edited with Elisabeth Jay (Pickering & Chatto/Routledge 2011-6).  This was funded by a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship 2011-13. Other recent research was funded by a grant from the British Academy. My latest project is a study of the professionalization of journalism and the ways in which this mapped onto the professionalization of authorship in the nineteenth century. Currently I am Academic Co-editor of a web resource on Culture, Literature and the Arts in the Long Nineteenth Century, part of Routledge Historical Resources.

Books and Editions

Authorship, Journalism and the Nineteenth-Century Press, vol. 3 of Literary and Cultural Criticism from the Nineteenth Century, eds Joanne Shattock, Katherine Newey, Valerie Sanders and Joanne Wilkes.  4 vols. Routledge, 2021 

Journalism and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Britain (ed). Cambridge University Press, 2017, pbk 2019.

Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant 25 vols. General editor with Elisabeth Jay, Pickering & Chatto/Routledge, 2011-16. Editor of vol. 1 Literary Criticism 1854-69. (2011); vol. 5 Literary Criticism 1887-97 (with V. Sanders and J. Wilkes 2012); vol. 13 Essays on Life-Writing and History (2013), vol. 17 The Perpetual Curate (2014).

The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1830-1914 (ed). Cambridge University Press, 2010. Includes The Culture of Criticism pp. 71-90.

The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell, general editor, 10 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2005-6. Editor of vol. 1 Journalism, early fiction and personal writing. 2005.   CHOICE Academic Title of the Year 2006

Women and Literature in Britain 1800-1900 (ed). Cambridge University Press, 2001. Includes The Construction of the Woman Writer, pp. 1-34.

The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature 3rd edition Vol. 4, 1800-1900. (ed). Cambridge University Press, 2000.

The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pbk 1994.

Politics and Reviewers: the Edinburgh and the Quarterly in the early Victorian Age. Leicester University Press, 1989.

Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolff, (eds). The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings. Leicester University Press, 1982.

Recent Articles and Chapters

Essays in the ‘Golden Age’ of the British Newspaper, in the Cambridge History of the British Essay, eds Jason Child and Denise Gigante.  Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. 

Mary Howitt and Howitt’s Journal, Journal of European Periodical Studies 6.1 (Summer 2021), 42-55.

The Challenge of Longevity: Blackwood’s as a Post-Romantic Periodical, in Nicholas Mason and Tom Mole, eds, Romantic Periodicals in the Twenty-First Century.  Edinburgh University Press, 2020, pp. 227-43

Cultural Agents and Contexts: The Professionalization of Journalism, in David Finkelstein, ed. Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, 1800-1900.  Edinburgh University Press, 2020, pp. 153-76

Margaret Oliphant and the Changing World of Victorian Journalism, Yearbook of English Studies 49 (2019), 67-81

The Feminization of Literary Culture, in The History of British Women’s Writing 1830-1880, vol.6, ed. Lucy Hartley. Palgrave  2018, pp. 23-38.

Literature and the Expansion of the Press, in The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture ed. Juliet John. Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 507-21

Becoming a Professional Writer, The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women’s Writing, ed. Linda H. Peterson.  Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 29-42

Contexts and Conditions of Criticism in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. 6. ed Rafey Habib. Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 21-45

Publishers and Publication and Editions, George Eliot in Context. ed. Margaret Harris. Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp.12-33

The Publishing Industry, The Oxford History of the Novel in English. Vol. 3.  ed. Jenny Bourne Taylor and John Kucich. Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 3-21.

The Professionalisation of Authorship in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 60.1 (2012), 65-76.

Professional Networks: Masculine and Feminine, Victorian Periodicals Review. 44:2 (Summer 2011), 128-40.

Bessie Rayner Parkes, William Empson, Macvey Napier, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004.

As an Emeritus Professor I am not accepting new research students.  Recent successful doctoral students have worked on ‘Harriet Martineau’s Domestic Fiction and Hartleian Psychology’ ‘The Early Journalism of Eliza Meteyard’ ‘An Edition of the Journals of Adlard Welby’ and‘”An Entirely Different Order of Writer” . A Re-evaluation of Dinah Maria Craik’.

I no longer teach on undergraduate modules.

History of journalism nineteenth century women writers Margaret Oliphant

Editor, with Julian North and Vincent Newey, The Nineteenth Century series Ashgate and Routledge 1994—

Academic Co-editor, Culture, Literature and the Arts in the Long Nineteenth Century, Routledge Historical Resources 

Director, Centre for Victorian Studies, University of Leicester 1990-2009

Dean of Arts, University of Leicester 2003-8

Founding President British Association of Victorian Studies 2000-2003 

President Research Society for Victorian Periodicals 2013-16 

Moser Fellowship Humanities Research Centre Keele University 2008-11 

Visiting Professor, Department of English, University of Keele 2011-2021

Editor-in-Chief 19th Century U.K. Periodicals Online. Gale Cengage Publishing 2007-11. 

Associate Editor Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004

Fellow of the English Association 2003

Hon. D. Litt University of New Brunswick 2004

Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship 2011-13 

With Dr Claire Wood I organized the International George Eliot Bi-Centenary Conference held at College Court University of Leicester in July 2019.

BA University of New Brunswick • MA University of Leeds • PhD University College London