Carolyn Oulton

Prof Carolyn Oulton is Co-Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers and teaches across Creative and Professional Writing and English.

Carolyn Oulton is Professor of Victorian Literature and teaches across Creative and Professional Writing and English. She is Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers (ICVWW) and Co-Lead for the Digital Humanities project Kent Maps Online at https://kent-maps.online/, in collaboration with JSTOR Labs.

I have taught at CCCU since 2002, on undergraduate and postgraduate courses as well as supervising and acting as external examiner for PhD students.

My publications include poetry and biography, as well as monographs and essay collections on Victorian literature and literary culture. My research interests include: the New Woman; the Victorian seaside; Dickens and literary pilgrimage; place-based reading. My current research is on the Victorian culture of shared reading.

Research Projects

'An Orphic exploration of the ineffable through the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Researcher(s): Ms Sinead Fitzgerald. Supervisor(s): Dr Peter Watts, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
A cross disciplinary practice-based historical investigation of trans-masculinity by use of archive and case studies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.. Researcher(s): Ms Jan Dunn. Supervisor(s): Dr Mitch Goodrum, Dr Dave Hitchcock, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
Creative Practice Research Approaches to Alter Ego, Narrative Identity and Individual Capability. Researcher(s): Mr Simon Fox. Supervisor(s): Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project (past)]
Doctoral Research Project. Researcher(s): Dr Nihad Laouar. Supervisor(s): Dr Andrew Humphries, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project (past)]
Doctoral Research Project. Researcher(s): Dr Alyson Hunt. Supervisor(s): Dr Susan Civale, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project (past)]
Doctoral Research Project. Researcher(s): Mrs Lizzy Duffield-Fuller. Supervisor(s): Dr Susan Civale, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project (past)]
Going in Circles: Changing perceptions of the Arctic through literary and visual representations in the Long Nineteenth-Century. Researcher(s): Dr Jacqueline Stamp. Supervisor(s): Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dr Peter Merchant, Professor Peter Vujakovic. [Postgraduate Research Project (past)]
How might a new approach to the production of Neo-Victorian writing, using experimental creative writing, historic material research, and ‘reenactment’, help resolve the tensions between creativity, imagination, and historical accuracy in the genre? What does the personal experience of neurodivergence add to the processes and outcomes of this approach to historical creative writing?. Researcher(s): Miss Elizabeth Waterman-Scrase. Supervisor(s): Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
Moving through uncertainty with George Meredith. Researcher(s): Mrs Sylvia Hornsby. Supervisor(s): Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dr Simon Wilson. [Postgraduate Research Project]
Quantifying and Qualifying Inventorised ‘Heirlooms’: A reconstruction of the material legacy of the Hammond Family of St Albans Court Nonington 1551 – 1938 including a searchable dataset.. Researcher(s): Mrs Victoria Stevens. Supervisor(s): Dr Claire Bartram, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
The ‘Strange’ Disappearance of Henrietta Stannard: Rediscovering the Life and Work of John Strange Winter, a fin de siecle celebrity. Researcher(s): Mrs Toni Atkinson. Supervisor(s): Dr Susan Civale, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
The Mission of Mary Eliza Haweis (1848-1898). Researcher(s): Miss Laura Allen. Supervisor(s): Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dr Susan Civale. [Postgraduate Research Project]
The New University in Post-War British Literature. Researcher(s): Mr Daniel Vince. Supervisor(s): Dr Andrew Palmer, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
The Persistent Scribblers Society: an 1870s writing society and its association with Canterbury and the Church of England.. Researcher(s): Mrs Michelle Crowther. Supervisor(s): Dr Susan Civale, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project]
The Pilgrim-Writer: The transformative potential of the language arts and pilgrimage – an embodied investigation of self, drawing on theory and practice, including my own direct experience of contemporary pilgrimage and ‘languaging’.. Researcher(s): Ms Victoria Field. Supervisor(s): Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project (past)]
The Voices of Ellen Courtenay- the Life and Work of Ellen Courtenay as Madame Helene Steinberg- Actress, Appeal Memoirist, Lecturer and Poet.. Researcher(s): Mrs Trina Willis. Supervisor(s): Dr Susan Civale, Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Postgraduate Research Project (past)]
We have advised Haley to consider a title that signposts the spatial focus. (See details in Joint Report.). Researcher(s): Miss Hayley Smith. Supervisor(s): Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dr Christian Beighton. [Postgraduate Research Project]

Partnership with JSTOR Labs on https://www.kent-maps.online/. Museum partners include the Dickens Museum in Broadstairs. Trustee of the Canterbury Commemoration Society.

‘”You can’t marry your grandmother”: face and place in Lady Adelaide’s oath.’ Professor Carolyn Oulton, Victorian Popular Fiction Association Annual Conference. [Conference paper]
British women’s writing: Brontë to Bloomsbury. Vol 3. 1880s-90s., (Jul 2024). Basingstoke. [Book]
Catching up with the Victorians in The Caravaners and The Enchanted April Professor Carolyn Oulton, New Readings of Elizabeth von Arnim: The Unexpected Modernist. [Book chapter]
Coarse, vulgar and happy? Writing Dickens on sea Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dickens Fellowship Annual Conference. [Lecture]
”[T]he reader will probably not object to accompany me”: walking with Dickens and the late Victorian guide Professor Carolyn Oulton, Victorian Literary Languages Research Network: Mobility and Communication. [Conference paper]
‘”A fragment flung on life’s retreating sea’: writing Dickens into the local’. Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dickens Fellowship, Canterbury Branch.. [Lecture]
Lindow, Ella Amalia [pseud. Gabrielle Wodnil, Ella Wodnil] Professor Carolyn Oulton, (11 May 2023), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. [Book chapter]
Middlemass, Mary Jane [Jean] Professor Carolyn Oulton, (11 May 2023), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. [Book chapter]
"...all flirtations and curates": selling the seaside to railway readers Professor Carolyn Oulton, Canterbury Festival 2022. [Conference paper]
‘”The lights and the shadows of clouds”: going through the glass with Dickens.’ Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dickens Day 2022. [Conference paper]
‘”Why were you silent when I spoke tonight?”: coming to terms in Tennyson’s “Sea Dreams” and Swinburne’s A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems.’ Professor Carolyn Oulton, (19 Aug 2022): Victorians. [Journal article]
Down from London: Seaside Reading in the Railway Age Professor Carolyn Oulton, (01 Mar 2022). [Book]
Kent Maps Online: Beyond Dickens Professor Carolyn Oulton, Mrs Michelle Crowther, Medway History Showcase. [Conference paper]
Literary and film pilgrimage Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dr Jane Lovell, Pilgrimage as Transformation Symposium. [Conference paper]
‘Fat persons bathing whose appearance was most disgusting’: Entertaining Thanet in the Age of Steam Professor Carolyn Oulton, (Oct 2021), Maritime Kent Through the Ages: Gateway to the Sea. [Book chapter]
British women’s writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940. Volume 2: 1860s and 1870s Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Book]
Introduction Professor Carolyn Oulton, British Women’s Writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940 Volume 2: 1860s and 1870s. [Book chapter]
Railway fiction or seaside sensation? Journeys to the sea in Lady Audley’s Secret and No Name. Professor Carolyn Oulton: Studies in the Novel. [Journal article]
Mary Cholmondeley Professor Carolyn Oulton, (26 Sep 2019), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing. [Book chapter]
Secret writing in Margate Caves Dr Sonia Overall, Professor Carolyn Oulton, Being Human Festival. [Conference or workshop item]
“licking the chops of memory”: plotting the social sins of Jekyll and Hyde’ Professor Carolyn Oulton, (28 Mar 2018): Humanities. [Journal article]
‘”And yet these things were done by educated and kindly men”: negotiating change in Mary Cholmondeley’s 'The Romance of His Life’ Professor Carolyn Oulton, International Centre for Victorian Women Writers Conference 2018: Reassessing Women's Writing of the 1920s and 1930s. [Conference paper]
‘”The ideal was not there”: making peace with Dickensian Kent’ Professor Carolyn Oulton, Victorian Popular Fiction Association Conference: War and Peace. [Conference keynote]
‘I was in the condition of mind to be shocked at nothing’: losing the plot in Wuthering Heights Professor Carolyn Oulton, (12 Jul 2018), British Women’s Writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940 Volume 1: 1840s and 1850s. [Book chapter]
‘Smothered under rose-leaves’: violent sensation and the location of the feminine in Eliza Lynn Linton’s sowing the wind' Professor Carolyn Oulton, British Women’s Writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940 Volume 2: 1860s and 1870s: Palgrave Macmillan. [Book chapter]
British women’s writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940 Volume 1: 1840s and 1850s Professor Carolyn Oulton, (12 Jul 2018). [Book]
Volume introduction Professor Carolyn Oulton, British Women’s Writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940 Volume 1: 1840s and 1850s. [Book chapter]
'From “Boy” to “Britain”: popular fiction and the Folkestone Free Library 1881-1902' Professor Carolyn Oulton, Institutions of Literature: Institutions as Curators workshop. [Conference paper]
‘Making literature ridiculous’: Jerome K. Jerome and the new humour Professor Carolyn Oulton, (20 Oct 2017): Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction. [Journal article]
‘Reading, ephemera and the seaside library’ Professor Carolyn Oulton, Victorian Popular Fiction Association conference. [Conference paper]
British seaside fiction Professor Carolyn Oulton, (2017), Literary Encyclopedia: Literary Encyclopedia. [Journal article]
Femininity and deviance in Mary Cholmondeley’s The Lowest Rung Professor Carolyn Oulton, Reassessing Women’s Writing of the 1900s and 1910s. [Conference paper]
Jerome K. Jerome, sexual panic and degeneration at the fin de siècle Professor Carolyn Oulton, (18 Feb 2017): Structo. [Journal article]
“He pronounced it gurl“: Mary Cholmondeley, class and gender at the fin de siècle’ Professor Carolyn Oulton, Inaugural lecture. [Lecture]
“he’d let me turn the house into a theatre”: rewriting the domestic in the sensational world of East Lynne Professor Carolyn Oulton, (2016): Wilkie Collins Journal. [Journal article]
”I write this with my hands in a basin of water”: Dickens, letters and readers Professor Carolyn Oulton, (2016): The Dickensian. [Journal article]
‘”Coquetting amid incredible landscapes”: Women on the river and the railway’ 1862-1922 Professor Carolyn Oulton, (Sep 2016): BRANCH. [Journal article]
‘”Literary Champagne”: or the fiction of seaside reading’ Professor Carolyn Oulton, Victorian Popular Fiction Conference. [Conference paper]
Accidental fruit Professor Carolyn Oulton, (Sep 2016). [Book]
Dickens and the myth of the reader Professor Carolyn Oulton, (02 Dec 2016). [Book]
Shams and shadows: meta-fiction and the upper class woman writer Professor Carolyn Oulton, Reassessing Women Writers of the 1880s and 1890s. [Conference paper]
”A coverless book without a title-page”: Heritage and the modern in the Dickens centenary year Professor Carolyn Oulton, Victorian Modernities. [Conference paper]
”If only there would pass away the horror of those hands!” Cholmondeley, Jerome and the woman’s touch in the fin de siècle city Professor Carolyn Oulton, (Nov 2015): Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies. [Journal article]
“see if I don’t you poor old book”: Repositioning the reader in Mary Cholmondeley’s diaries Professor Carolyn Oulton, (2015), Lifewriting Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies. Brooklyn, New York: Life Writing Annual. [Book chapter]
‘“No magic dwelling-place in magic story”: time, memory and the enchanted children of Dombey and Son’. Professor Carolyn Oulton, (2015), Dickens and the Imagined Child. [Book chapter]
Dickens, letters and readers Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dickens Fellowship. [Lecture]
Mary Cholmondeley Professor Carolyn Oulton, (2015), Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature. [Book chapter]
Sensations of loss: Eliza Lynn Linton’s Sowing the Wind Professor Carolyn Oulton, ICVWW Conference: Reassessing Women’s Writing of the 1860s and 1870s. [Conference paper]
"I suppose we insensibly invented the rest": Adelaide Procter and the legend of the female poet Professor Carolyn Oulton, Reassessing Women’s Writing of the 1840s and 1850s. [Conference paper]
"Your own feelings will enable you to imagine”: sustaining the Dickensian reader Professor Carolyn Oulton, BAVS conference 2014. [Conference paper]
‘”It is a pity but what bad men could be turned inside out sometimes”: Victorian Scandal on the Kent Coast‘ Professor Carolyn Oulton, Public lecture series. [Lecture]
‘Missed Vocation? The Failed Writer in Late Victorian Women’s Fiction.’ Professor Carolyn Oulton, International Conference on Women and Vocation. [Conference paper]
Introduction Professor Carolyn Oulton, (19 Aug 2014), Three Men on the Bummel. [Book chapter]
Ouida and Victorian popular culture Professor Carolyn Oulton, (2014): SHARP News. [Journal article]
"An exacting public": Jerome K. Jerome and the new humour Professor Carolyn Oulton, Victorian Comedy Conference. [Conference paper]
"An immense quantity of clever and thoughtful rubbish"?: Twentieth century Victorians and the problem of history Professor Carolyn Oulton, (22 Jul 2013): Life Writing. [Journal article]
“Andromeda is having a rather bad time of it just now”: stories of sacrifice in Caird’s The Wing of Azrael. Professor Carolyn Oulton, (20 May 2013): Nineteenth Century Gender Studies. [Journal article]
Cruel cities in 'Geoffrey’s Wife’ and 'The Fawn Gloves' Professor Carolyn Oulton, The Victorian Tactile Imagination. [Conference paper]
'A misunderstood generation': Victorians and the Twentieth Century peepshow Professor Carolyn Oulton, Arts and Humanities Faculty Conference. [Conference paper]
'A rendezvous for literary London'. Jerome K. Jerome on the Strand Professor Carolyn Oulton, Strandlives: Strand Lives Day. [Conference paper]
'C. L. Pirkis (not “Miss”)’: public women, private lives, and the experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective A. Gavin, (2012), Writing Women of the Fin de Siècle: Authors of Change. Basingstoke. [Book chapter]
'Evil thought is a dangerous pet.' Jerome K. Jerome and the dark side of passion Professor Carolyn Oulton, British Association of Victorian Studies Conference 2012: Victorian Value: Ethics, Economics, Aesthetics. [Conference paper]
'lest I, too should remain chained here': Jerome K. Jerome’s London Professor Carolyn Oulton, Talk and Book Signing. [Lecture]
'Let him remember it in that room, years to come!’: myths of childhood and memory in Dombey and Son and The Haunted Man Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dickens and the Idea of 'the Dickensian': A Tale of Four Cities: A Bicentenary Traveling Conference. [Conference paper]
‘Shall memory be the only thing to die?' Fictions of childhood in Dickens and Jerome K. Jerome Professor Carolyn Oulton, (2012): Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction. [Journal article]
Below the fairy city: a life of Jerome K. Jerome Professor Carolyn Oulton, (30 Sep 2012). Brighton. [Book]
Introduction Professor Carolyn Oulton, Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog. [Book chapter]
Jerome K. Jerome Professor Carolyn Oulton, International Centre for Victorian Women Writers Book of the Month series. [Lecture]
Weeds: a story in seven chapters Professor Carolyn Oulton, (31 Oct 2012), Edited collection of articles. Brighton. [Book]
'a pot of ink that she would come to hate the smell of': banishing the beast in Jerome K. Jerome’s New Woman journalists Professor Carolyn Oulton, (2011): Critical Survey. [Journal article]
‘going on before me, an innocent romantic boy’: David Copperfield’s Canterbury tale Professor Carolyn Oulton, Dickens Fellowship 105th Annual Conference: Dickens and Kent. [Lecture]
'I am not by nature domestic': Mary Cholmondeley and the politics of home Professor Carolyn Oulton, (Nov 2011), Writing Women of the Fin de Siècle: Authors of Change, Dickens Fellowship Annual Conference. [Book chapter]
'I had perpetrated a book': reading Victorian women writers in the 21st Century Professor Carolyn Oulton, Folkestone Book Festival. [Lecture]
‘now to the home of which you are the sunbeam': telling stories in The Wing of Azrael Professor Carolyn Oulton, Victorian Popular Fiction Association 3rd Annual Conference: Theme: Sex, Courtship and Marriage in Victorian Popular Fiction. [Conference paper]
‘She would write… in invisible ink.’ An introduction Professor Carolyn Oulton, (Nov 2011), Writing Women of the Fin de Siècle: Authors of Change, Dickens Fellowship Annual Conference. [Book chapter]
'Trained to perfection in the lax morals and prurient literature of my day': the metafictional New Woman and her readers Professor Carolyn Oulton: The Latchkey. [Journal article]
‘you had an idea that we were rather frivolous': Jerome K. Jerome’s editorial strategies Professor Carolyn Oulton, RSVP Conference. [Conference paper]
A child, a death and the making of the fairy tale woman Professor Carolyn Oulton. Langley, Canada. [Book]
Mary Cholmondeley, "Red Pottage". London. [Book]
Ouida The Massarenes (1897) A. King, (2011), New Woman Fiction, 1881–1899. London. [Book chapter]
Writing women of the fin de siècle: authors of change A. Gavin, Professor Carolyn Oulton, (Nov 2011). Basingstoke. [Book]
'I am not by nature domestic': Mary Cholmondeley and the politics of home Professor Carolyn Oulton, Women Writers of the Fin de Siècle International Conference. [Conference paper]
'Which he never meant to be published on any account': the hidden archive in David Copperfield and Paul Kelver Professor Carolyn Oulton, The British Comparative Literature Association XII International Conference: 'Archive'. [Conference paper]
Child sacrifice and the crisis of gender in Mary Cholmondeley's major fiction Professor Carolyn Oulton: English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920. [Journal article]
New woman fiction 1881-1899: Pt.2: 4-6, (23 Sep 2010). London, UK. [Book]
''But why write them down[?]'': Mary Cholmondeley's diaries and the violation of the female artist Professor Carolyn Oulton, Victorian Popular Novelists' Conference. [Conference paper]
''Murderous impulse'': Children as victims of violance in Mary Cholmondeley's major fiction Professor Carolyn Oulton, Childhood in it's time: The Child in British Literature International Conference. [Conference paper]
''The bad women are better than the good ones'': the new woman and sexual fall in Cholmondeley's short fiction Professor Carolyn Oulton, (20 Sep 2009), Mary Cholmondeley Reconsidered. London, UK. [Book chapter]
''The shadow which I call pain'': Mary Cholmondeley and the dilemma of bodily weakness Professor Carolyn Oulton, (Dec 2009): Life Writing. [Journal article]
Introduction to 'Mary Cholmondeley reconsidered' Professor Carolyn Oulton, Mary Cholmondeley Reconsidered. London. [Book chapter]
Let the flowers go: a life of Mary Cholmondeley Professor Carolyn Oulton, (30 Jul 2009). London. [Book]
Mary Cholmondeley reconsidered, (20 Sep 2009). London. [Book]
Mary Cholmondeley, "Diana Tempest". Kansas City, Mo.. [Book]
“ain’t goin’ to have any beastly Erickin'”: the problem of male friendship in Stalky & Co Professor Carolyn Oulton: The Kipling Journal. [Journal article]
“What a comrade she would make”: the limits of romantic friendship in Jude the Obscure Professor Carolyn Oulton: Thomas Hardy Journal. [Journal article]
‘ain’t goin’ to have any beastly Erickin’: the problem of male friendship in Stalky & Co Professor Carolyn Oulton, The Kipling Conference. [Conference paper]
Romantic friendship in Victorian literature Professor Carolyn Oulton, (Jun 2007). [Book]
''Never be divided again'': Armadale and the threat to romantic friendship Professor Carolyn Oulton, (2005): Wilkie Collins Society Journal. [Journal article]
'My undisciplined heart': romantic friendship in David Copperfield Professor Carolyn Oulton, (Sep 2004): Dickens Quarterly. [Journal article]
Literature and religion in mid-Victorian England: from Dickens to Eliot Professor Carolyn Oulton. Basingstoke. [Book]
'The Good Angel of Our Lives': subversive religion in The Woman in White Professor Carolyn Oulton: Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction. [Journal article]
A vindication of religion: Wilkie Collins, Dickens and The Frozen Deep Professor Carolyn Oulton: The Dickensian. [Journal article]
Left past the moon Professor Carolyn Oulton. [Book]
Wilkie Collins: an interpretation of Christian belief Professor Carolyn Oulton: Wilkie Collins Society Journal. [Journal article]

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