MATTHEW STEPHENS

I am currently undertaking doctoral research at Edge Hill University, working in collaboration with the British Library. My PhD project, which is supported financially by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Collaborative Doctoral Partnership award, aims to reassess orthodox determinations of success and failure in the nineteenth-century press by considering afresh the representative role of short-lived newspapers, especially in the London area, during the century.

Research Interests

• The industrial, political and societal culture of the long nineteenth century
• The development of print culture in the nineteenth century, including the popular press
• The digital humanities, especially as applied to archival research
• The development of crime narratives, including detective fiction as well as factual/journalistic accounts of crime
• Subversives and morally ambiguous characters in English cultural history and literature
• Shakespeare’s work as drama and also how the cultural significance of his work developed, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries