MA (Cantab), PhD (University of East Anglia)

Professor of English Literature;
Course Leader, BA (Hons) English Literature and BA (Hons) Writing


Room: Hel 146

Email: valerie.purton@anglia.ac.uk

Telephone: 0845 196 2496
International: +44 1223 363271 ext 2496


Professor Valerie Purton's research activity

Valerie teaches modules on the Victorians, on the Medieval period (she designed and now runs the very popular Year 2 module Myth and Medievalism) and on critical theory. She is fascinated by myth, not only in the Classical and Medieval periods but in contemporary fiction, especially in the twentieth century novel, and has published on Iris Murdoch, Kazuo Ishiguro and Tony Harrison.

Valerie read English at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she was an Exhibitioner, and then spent several years travelling and teaching, first in Ghana, West Africa, and then in Canada, where she taught at the Universities of Alberta and Saskatchewan. She also worked for a time in local radio in Canada, presenting her own radio talk slot. On returning to England she worked on an immigrant teaching scheme in Nottingham while gaining a Distinction in the University of Nottingham's PGCE programme. She taught in schools and with the Open University and then designed and ran the English Honours Degree Pathway at City College, Norwich, under the auspices of what was then Anglia Polytechnic University. She was appointed to a full time post at Anglia Ruskin University in 2006, promoted to Reader in 2008 and then to Professor in 2012.

Valerie's principal research interests are in the Victorian period and in the works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Charles Dickens. She is a member of the Executive Committee and the Publications Board of the International Tennyson Society and has recently been asked to succeed Dr Robert Douglas-Fairhurst of Oxford as editor of the Tennyson Research Bulletin. In 2009 she produced a celebratory bicentenary CD of readings of Tennyson's poetry by such figures as Sir John Mortimer, Lord Healey, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the then Poet Laureate Andrew Motion and Lynn Truss, which has been sold worldwide.

Valerie is currently editing a collection of essays on Victorian science and literature, including contributions from Professor Dame Gillian Beer and Professor George Levine. Her Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Tennyson, co-authored with Professor Norman Page, came out in 2010. She is working with an undergraduate research assistant, Juliet Binns, on a biography of the minor Victorian poet, Owen Meredith. In 2012 she published a monograph on Dickens and Sentimentalism.

Valerie is supervising dissertations on Edmund Gosse, Oscar Wilde and Constance Naden and organised a bicentenary conference on Charles Dickens in 2012. She is now planning a conference on John Ruskin in 2015. She is keen to supervise research in any aspect of the Victorian period, on myth and on critical theory.

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