This author specializes in Victorian literature, exploring the intricate relationships between history, legend, place, and identity. Her work delves deeply into the literature and culture of the long nineteenth century. She teaches courses on women's writing and British children's literature, reflecting her broad engagement with literary history. Her research examines how the past is incorporated into contemporary perception and narrative.
From investigations of caves and megaliths to canals and airspace, Joanne Parker reveals a country with countless competing centres and ceaselessly shifting borders - a land where one person's sleepy, unexceptional province will always be the busy heart of another's map.
In the nineteenth century, Alfred the Great was a figure who rivalled King Arthur in the popular imagination. This book asks why Alfred was so important in Victorian Britain, examines the ways in which he was rewritten by authors and artists of the time, and investigates how Alfred is no longer a national icon. -- .