Exploring De Morgan
Welcome to the Substack!
Welcome to ‘Exploring De Morgan’.
I will try to keep this brief.
Over the next three years, possibly more, the aim of ‘Exploring De Morgan’ is to document my journey as a PhD student exploring the literary world of William De Morgan, the context in which he was writing, and potential interdisciplinary research across his ceramics and the worlds of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts movement.
So, who am I and why am I here?
A teacher by trade, I studied for my BA(Hons) at Sheffield Hallam University, graduating with a degree in English and Education Studies and a CertTESOL (accredited by Trinity College London) in 2011. After five years of working in different roles, mainly in secondary education, I moved to teaching and gained my PGCE in Secondary English in 2017 at the University of Leeds before eventually leaving teaching in summer 2021. Since then, I have worked in Academic Representation and Community Organising in Higher Education and have completed my MA in English Literature, again at the University of Leeds. As part of my work in HE, I have also gained FHEA status. I seem to enjoy collecting postnominals…
The MA at Leeds was brilliant. When I applied, the only compulsory module was the Research Project; everything else was elective so I could create my own curriculum. As there was no module on the Pre-Raphaelites, my curriculum looked to contextualise them to support with my own research. I was able to study Romantic Identities and Romantic Ecologies, both important as pre-cursers to the Pre-Raphaelites and the research I sought to conduct around ecologies and urban environments. I also studied the Brontës, specifically writing about isolation and queerness represented in the relationships between Heathcliff, Cathy, and Jane Eyre, and the countryside around them. And my final module, over two semesters, was Medieval English, exploring language and literature from both Old and Middle English which held influence on the work of the Pre-Raphaelites.
My dissertation looked specifically at the relationships between William De Morgan’s characters in Joseph Vance: An Ill-Written Autobiography and Alice for Short: A Dichronism, his first two published works, and their environments based on social class. My research also included archival research through materials held by the De Morgan Foundation and made use of source material that has never before been cited in academic research. It is this research that forms the basis of my PhD thesis whereby I aim to research the socioecologies of each of De Morgan’s novels, specifically in relation to class. I hope that through my research, I can help bring to light De Morgan’s literary works; begin placing them within the literary canon alongside similar authors like Dickens, Meredith, and Arthur Morrison; open his novels up to further research; and, with lofty ambitions, aid in bringing his work back into publication.
With this Substack, you can expect updates on my research, musings on my readings, and reflections on anything I find interesting in relation to De Morgan and his world.
On a side note, I’m also particularly interested in the Titmarsh Club so there may well be some ramblings and thoughts on De Morgan’s interest in Thackery as a try to find out more about the elusive members and their meetings.
If you’re interested in joining me on this exploration of De Morgan, please subscribe - I aim to publish twice a month.