About
Professor Jenny Hartley's most recent book is her edition of The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens, published by Oxford University Press in 2012, as part of the bicentenary celebrations. She serves on the editorial board for the Dickens Letters Supplement.
Her previous book, Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women, came out in hardback from Methuen in 2008 and paperback in December 2009. Described as 'brilliant' by Claire Tomalin, Jenny's book follows the progress of the young women whom Dickens rescued from the streets and prisons of London, and welcomed into the Home for Fallen Women, which he set up and ran for over a decade in Shepherd's Bush.
Jenny is working with colleague Sarah Turvey their prison reading groups project. They have both run reading groups in prisons for many years, and have received funding from the AHRC, in a Knowledge Transfer Fellowship in partnership with the Prisoners' Education Trust, to set up more groups in prisons around the country. They have supported well over thirty groups in a variety of prison settings, and now receive funding from Give A Book, and support from Randdom House. For more on Prison Reading Groups., see wwww. Roehampton.ac.uk/prison-reading-groups
Jenny has published in a number of journals, magazines and newspapers. She has also appeared on BBC radio book programmes, and given papers at conferences in Australia, France, Finland, as well as here in the UK.