Participant Info

First Name
Emily
Last Name
Middleton
Country
United Kingdom
State
Affiliation
University of Leeds
Website URL
https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/3258/dr-emily-middleton-formerly-bell-
Keywords
authorship, Charles Dickens, digital humanities, life writing, literary networks, media history, nineteenth-century literature, newspapers, periodicals, publishing, reception history, scholarly editing
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

*Formerly Emily Bell.*

I am a digital humanist, literary scholar and cultural historian with research interests in Charles Dickens, scholarly editing, newspapers and periodicals in the nineteenth-century, and life writing, literary circles and commemoration. I am Lecturer in Digital Humanities at the University of Leeds. My most recent publication is the first scholarly edition of Dickens’s verse, co-edited with Lydia Craig for Edinburgh UP: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html. This book presents the most complete record of Dickens’s poetry ever produced.

I’m interested in why certain authors get remembered and how. I’ve published on Dickens’s legacy in different forms, from the word ‘Dickensian’ to Dickens on the big and small screen.

I’m also fascinated by the role new technologies can play in approaching the past. I’ve published on major digital collections of nineteenth-century newspapers, and I’m co-editor of the Curran Index to Victorian Periodicals. I’m developing a social network visualisation of the members of the Society of Authors, and I’m a fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute.

I have acted as a researcher, consultant and guest expert for media projects including History Crush (History Channel), You’re Dead to Me (BBC Sounds, Radio 4), Homeschool History (Radio 4), Horrible Histories (BBC), Opening Lines (Radio 4), Ilkley Literature Festival, and the Audrey Audiobook App.

Recent Publications

The Verse of Charles Dickens (eds. Lydia Craig and Emily Middleton), Edinburgh UP (2025): https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-verse-of-charles-dickens.html.

‘Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens.’ Wilkie Collins in Context. Eds. William Baker and Richard Nemesvari. Cambridge University Press, 2023: 184-89.

‘Writing the Death of Dickens.’ Victoriographies 10.3 (2020): 270-91. https://www.euppublishing.com/toc/vic/10/3.

The Atlas of Digitised Newspapers & Metadata: Reports from Oceanic Exchanges. Ed. M. H. Beals and Emily Bell. Loughborough University, 2020. DOI:10.6084/m9.figshare.11560059.

Dickens After Dickens. Ed. Emily Bell with a foreword by Juliet John. White Rose UP, 2020. DOI:10.22599/DickensAfterDickens.

‘Of Global Reach Yet of Situated Contexts: An Examination of the Implicit and Explicit Selection Criteria that Shape Digital Archives of Historical Newspapers.’ Tessa Hauswedell, Julianne Nyhan, M. H. Beals, Melissa Terras and Emily Bell. Archival Science 20.2 (2020): 139–65.

‘Evidence and Invention: The Materials of Literary Biography.’ A Companion to Literary Biography. Ed. Richard Bradford. Wiley & Blackwell. 309-23. 2018.

Media Coverage
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001ghmv
Country Focus
United Kingdom
Expertise by Geography
United Kingdom
Expertise by Chronology
19th century, 20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Book History, Family, Literary History, Migration & Immigration, Museums, Public History, Technology