I'm thrilled to share that I've been granted permission by the British Library to examine selected autograph manuscripts and personal effects of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Christina Rossetti, two of the most acclaimed poets of Victorian England and among the most talented in the English language.
As a teacher and literary scholar I take great interest in Victorian poetry and the works of Hopkins, Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Alfred Tennyson. The Victorian period was a time of both traditionalism and significant innovation in poetry and offers fascinating issues to wrestle with in the areas of poetics, gender norms, and social change.
I'll be sure to post reports of my encounters with these artifacts, and probably a picture of me screaming and crying as if I were a teenager at a Beatles concert.