Dr Jane E Wright

Jane's research interests span the nineteenth century but focus on Victorian literature, and especially poetry. She has a long-standing interest in the literary fortunes of sincerity in Victorian poetry and poetics, and has published work in this area on authors including Coleridge, Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins, and Wilde.

With James Vigus (QMUL), she has co-edited a collection of essays on Coleridge’s Afterlives, and she has recently begun work on a new edited collection: The Victorian Renaissance.

Alongside this, Jane is working on two related books. The first is an anthology of poems about bees, with an introduction explaining the literary associations of bees and their products through the ages. The second, building on work for the anthology, will become her next monograph, Victorian Poets and Bees. Thinking towards this includes articles on 'Browning's Honeycomb', 'The Princess and the Bee', and 'Barrett Browning's Enduring Bees', and number of talks and lectures (delivered at Birmingham, Cambridge, Clevedon, Cologne, Lincoln, Manchester, and York). Jane can be heard talking about the literary salience of bees, alongside experts in biology and apiculture, in an episode of Radio 4's Natural Histories programme, 'Bee'.

Jane welcomes postgraduate research proposals on all aspects of nineteenth-century poetry, and/or on the following authors: S. T. Coleridge, Jane Austen, Thomas Carlyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, George Eliot, Arthur Hugh Clough, Matthew Arnold, C. G. Rossetti, A. C. Swinburne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Michael Field.

Contact details

Room 2.15, 3-5 Woodland Rd.   Tel: +44(0)117 92 89196.   Email: jane.wright@bristol.ac.uk

Teaching

Jane has taught literature, from 1550 to the present, across a wide range of units. Recently taught units include:

• Approaches to Poetry (level 1)
• Literature 1740-1900 (level 2)
• Aesthetic Possibilities (level 3 / MA)
• Victorian Materialities (level 3 / MA)
• Victorian Literature and Place (MA)
• Animal Planet: Humans and Other Animals in Modernity (MA)

In 2008, she received the Bristol Faculty of Arts 'Rising Star Award' for excellence in teaching, and in 2010 she was student-nominated a 'Best of Bristol' lecturer. In 2017, she was nominated in the Outstanding Teaching category of the student-led Bristol Teaching Awards.

Academic service

Since 2006, Jane has served on many committees, panels, and working parties at Department, School, Faculty, and University levels. She has convened units in the English Department, served as Department Library Officer and Web Officer, and coordinated the English Department Research Seminar. More recently, she has been a member of the Committees for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity, in the School of Humanities and the Faculty of Arts. She has also served in the following roles:

• 2019-2022 - Academic Member of Senate
• 2015-2017 - Deputy Head of School and Education Director (Humanities)
• 2012-2014 - Director of Exams (English)
• 2010-2012 - Tutor for Admissions (English)

Other activities

• Since 2016: Co-founder and member of the Arts Research Cluster 'Global Feminisms' (please see link at top of page).
• Since 2014: Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
• Since 2012: member of the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU).
• Since 2002: member of the Editorial Board of The Tennyson Research Bulletin (Reviews Editor 2004 - 2010). You can find out about The Tennyson Society here.