Amy Wells

Thesis title: Reading Childhood: Collections, Texts, and Visions of Play in the British Country House c. 1780-1914

Supervisor: Professor Sophie Ratcliffe, Dr Siân Pooley and Nicola Thwaite

Research Interests: Book History, Histories of Reading, Libraries, Book Collecting, Childhood, Play, Information Behaviour

Doctoral Research: My DPhil research is an AHRC-funded collaboration with the National Trust, exploring the stories within and around children's books in country house collections from the long nineteenth century. By drawing on my comparative and interdisciplinary background in Comparative Literature (BA), Library Science (MA) and English Literature 1830-1914 (MSt), I seek to uncover histories of reading, childhood and book culture from within the National Trust collections through looking at the intersections between the life of a book and the life of its reader.