Dr Zachary Garber
Thesis Title: ‘Such Acts to Chronicles I Yield’: Scottish Romanticism’s Adaptation of the Chronicle and the Harnessing of Indigenous History
Supervisor: Professor David Womersley
Research Interests: Historiography and fiction; eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British novel; book history; historicism; literary and intellectual history
Doctoral Research: My dissertation explored the emergence of novels self-identifying as chronicles in early nineteenth-century Scotland and argued that the employment of the chronicle for fictional purposes enabled Scottish Romantic authors to interrogate the material and philosophical developments of the previous century and to participate in their era's debate over parliamentary reform.
Current Projects: I am under contract with Edinburgh University Press to produce a scholarly edition of The Spaewife (1824), a historical novel by John Galt which features prominently in my doctoral work. My next book-length project is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of the 'historical novel' between 1814–32. The project will incorporate literary and historical methodologies to show how authors utilized the genre to engage in contemporary polemic and how readers were aware of—and equal participants in—this topical double-coding of the national past.
Peer-Reviewed Articles:
'Tyranny and Liberty, Resistance and Regicide: Political Assassination in John Galt’s The Spaewife', English: Journal of the English Association 71 (Summer 2022). https://doi.org/10.1093/english/efac011
