Dr Jonathan Dent

Dr Jonathan Dent's research addresses the literature and culture of the eighteenth century and Romantic period. Jonathan has particular interests in women’s writing, the Gothic, the Enlightenment, historiography, and Romanticism. Within these areas, his work has focused more specifically on marginalised women writers, the rise of the Gothic novel, the philosophy of history, and canon formation. Jonathan has published essays on Gothic fiction and the creative legacies of the French Revolution, and he is the author of Sinister Histories: Gothic Novels and Representations of the Past, from Horace Walpole to Mary Wollstonecraft (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming in 2015). Jonathan is currently working on his next monograph, which is provisionally entitled Samuel Rogers and the Romantic Imagination. This book will argue for the restoration of the writings of Rogers to the canon of Romantic literature and situate his texts within the context of the work of Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley, with whom he was acquainted. Jonathan's monograph will debate Rogers’s place within Romanticism and examine how his works anticipated the concerns and techniques of his more renowned contemporaries.

Centre for Textual Studies

Sinister Histories: Gothic Novels and Representations of the Past, from Horace Walpole to Mary Wollstonecraft (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming in 2015).

‘Contested Pasts: David Hume, Horace Walpole and the Emergence of Gothic Fiction’. Gothic Studies. Special Issue on Eighteenth-Century Gothic. 14.1 (May 2012): 21-34.

‘“[T]he anguish and horror of her mind defied all control:” the Fragmented Manuscript and Representations of the Past in Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest (1791)’. Victoriographies: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing, 1790-1914. 2.1 (May 2012): 15-30.

Gothic, Romanticism, historiography, the past, the sublime, the French Revolution. Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, Sophia Lee, Ann Radcliffe, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Samuel Rogers.

• Eighteenth-century, Romantic and Victorian Literature
• The Gothic
• Critical Theory
• Feminism and Gender

• Ph.D. English (Loughborough University, 2012)
• MA English (Loughborough University, 2007)
• BA (Hons) English (University of Leicester, 2006)

• ENGL1011: Introduction to the Novel
• ENGL1012: Introduction to Drama
• ENGL3097: Sex and Death in Romantic Writing

• BSECS (British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) Postgraduate Bursary to support presentation of a paper at the 2012 Annual Conference, ‘Landscapes and Environments’.

• BSECS Postgraduate Bursary to support presentation of a paper at the 2010 Annual Conference, ‘Time and Space’.

• Loughborough University Ph.D. Studentship (2008).

‘Fragmentation and Femininity: Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest (1791) and Edmund Burke’s Gendered Aesthetics’. Radcliffe at 250: Gothic and Romantic Imaginations Conference. University of Sheffield. 27-29 June 2014.

‘History’s Other: Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and David Hume’s The History of England’. Gothic: Culture, Subculture, Counterculture Conference. Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham. 8-9 March 2013.

‘Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest, the Ruined Abbey and the French Revolution’. BSECS 41^st Annual Conference: Landscapes and Environments. St Hugh’s College, Oxford. 4-6 January 2012.

‘Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest (1791), the Past and the Sublime’. BSECS 40^th Annual Conference: Emotions. St Hugh’s College, Oxford. 5-7 January 2011.

‘Giving History a “new dress:” Horace Walpole, David Hume and Eighteenth-Century Historiography’. History and English Joint Seminar: Challenging the Old, Discovering the New. Loughborough University. 3 March 2010.

‘Sophia Lee’s The Recess, the Gothic and Concealed Writings’. Women and Gothic Conference. Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. 23 January 2010.

‘Sophia Lee’s The Recess, the Epistolary and the Past’. BSECS 39^th Annual Conference: Time and Space. St Hugh’s College, Oxford. 5-7 January 2010.

‘Contested Pasts: David Hume, Horace Walpole and the Emergence of Gothic Fiction’. Eighteenth-Century Gothic Conference. University of Sheffield. 25 October 2008.

• Invited Guest Speaker: ‘Deeds of Darkness: Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron (1778), the Gothic and Whig History’. Loughborough University. 18 March 2015.
• Peer Reviewer for Manchester University Press
• Secretary of the Midlands Romantic Seminar (MRS)
• Editorial board member for the journal Victoriographies