Dr Helen Brookman
Academic Background
I read English Language and Literature at Wadham College, and stayed there to take my MSt in medieval English literature. I moved to Cambridge to become a doctoral researcher with the Cambridge Victorian Studies Group, a Leverhulme Trust-funded research group investigating the uses of the past in the nineteenth century. My PhD explored translations and editions of medieval English literature by nineteenth-century women scholars.
Undergraduate Teaching
Old English, Middle English, Course II.
Research Interests
My research interests include modern scholarly, literary, and popular responses to medieval English literature, particularly the translation and editing of Old and Middle English texts, with a focus on women and the history of medieval scholarship. These are part of my broader interests in translation, the material text, and authority and authorship.
My current research focuses on a woman called Anna Gurney (1795-1857), a disabled Quaker scholar of languages who lived with her female partner in Norfolk. She produced the first modern English translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1819. I am also currently writing about Arthurianist Jessie L. Weston (1850-1928) and her treatment of the figure of Sir Gawain, and about the scholarship of historian and scholar of drama, Lucy Toulmin Smith (1838-1911).
Links
Subject notes for courses taught at Jesus College:
Classics and English
English Language and Literature
English and Modern Languages
History and English
See also Faculty of English website.
