Thomas Robertson

Thesis title - Jane Austen, Poet: A Study of the Novelist's Poem Manuscripts

Supervisor - Professor Fiona Stafford

Doctoral research - Everybody knows that Jane Austen was a novelist, but she wrote occasional poems throughout her life, the majority of which survive in her own hand. Primarily bibliographical, my research focuses on this small group of autograph manuscripts to reconsider the poems as being of greater importance to Austen's writing life than her critics have generally held.

Research interests - Eighteenth-century and Romantic literature; bibliography and textual criticism; editorial theory and practice. In addition to Austen, authors of particular interest include: Cowper, Keats, Southey, and Sterne.