Dr Helen Williams

Associate Professor

Department: Humanities

Helen Williams is Associate Professor of English Literature, Acting Deputy Director of Cultural Partnerships, and leads the Scholarly Editing and Print Cultures Research Group.

Helen received her BA from Northumbria University and her MA from Durham University. She then returned to Northumbria, completing a PhD in collaboration with the Laurence Sterne Trust at Shandy Hall in 2014. She joined the faculty at Northumbria in 2012.

In collaboration with the Worshipful Company of Stationers, she holds a British Academy Innovation Fellowship entitled 'Communicating Women's Work in the Historical Archive' (2022-2023), exploring the history of eighteenth-century women in the book trades.

Campus Address

Office: Lipman 024

Email Helen

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Helen’s research interests broadly lie in eighteenth-century book history, professional authorship and literary heritage, and she is particularly interested in heritage collaboration. Her publications undertake a feminist recovery of women's work in book production and explore the effects of writers’ relationships with their patrons and publishers on the production of bestselling literary texts.

Helen is the author of Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth-Century Book (Cambridge University Press, 2021), co-director of Laurence Sterne and Sterneana (Cambridge Digital Library, 2019), and co-editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Correspondence of John Cleland (2023).

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth-Century Book, Williams, H. 1 Apr 2021
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, Williams, H., Terry, R. 23 Jul 2018
Printing, Publishing and Pocketbook Compiling: Ann Fisher’s Hidden Labour in the Newcastle Book Trade, Williams, H. 2022, Print Culture, Agency, and Regionality in the Hand Press Period, Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan
Communing with the Fictional Dead: Grave Tourism and the Sentimental Novel, Williams, H. 2021, British Sociability in Enlightenment Europe , Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan
Reading Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure against Cleland's life and letters, Terry, R., Williams, H. 1 Apr 2019, In: Eighteenth-Century Life

PGR Supervision

Malcolm Clements The Makers, The Buyers, and the Users: Taste and Display in the Eighteenth-Century Elite Houses of Sir Lawrence Dundas and his Inner Circle 1712-1781 Start Date: 01/03/2023
Laura Sadler Laurence Sterne in France through the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Start Date: 01/10/2022
Joanne Edwards Women, the Arts and Patronage: The Delavals of Seaton Delaval Hall Start Date: 01/10/2020

Qualifications

English Literature PhD June 24 2014
English Literature MA June 30 2009

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