Roehampton University
Open Spaces. Open Minds.
School of Arts
Professor Nicki Humble
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Job Title: Professor (English Literature) Qualifications: D.Phil Telephone: +44 (0)20 8392 3059 Email Address: N.Humble@roehampton.ac.uk |
Room number: Fi 108
Office Hours: Mon 12-1, Tue 5-6, Wed 2-3 and 5-6
Nicki specialises in aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and cultural history. She regularly teaches courses on Victorian Literature, Women's Writing, the Literature of Food, Literature and History, and Children's Literature.
She is the convenor of the MA in Women, Gender and Writing.
Her research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century women's writing, food writing, and historical literature.
Her most recent book is Culinary Pleasures: Cookbooks and the Transformation of British Food, which was published by Faber & Faber in 2005. It generated a large quantity of very favourable review coverage, and has been shortlisted for the Andre Simon Memorial Fund Award (award to be announced in March 2006).
Recent publications include:
• The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity and Bohemianism (Oxford University Press, 2001)
• an edition of Mrs Beeton's Household Management (Oxford World's Classics, 2000).
She has regularly reviewed literary criticism, food history and new fiction for the Times Literary Supplement. She is an experienced broadcaster, having been involved in a number of programmes (radio and television) as consultant and interviewee. (These include The Food Programme, Woman's Hour, a radio 4 series on history in children's books, and a BBC2 programme on the history of romantic love).
Indicative bibliography:
• Culinary Pleasures: Cookbooks and the Transformation of British Food (Faber & Faber, 2005), 342pp.
• The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity and Bohemianism (Oxford University Press, 2001), 275pp.
• Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, edited (Oxford University Press, 2000), 666pp.
• Victorian Heroines: Representations of Femininity in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Art (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1993), 195pp.
• 'Little Swans in Luxette and Loved Boy Pudding: Changing Fashions in Cookery Books', in Women: A Cultural Review, vol 13, no 3, 2002.
• 'The Poetry of Architecture: Browning and Historical Revivalism', Victorian Literature and Culture, vol 25, number 2, 1997, pp. 225-239
• 'Children's Books and the Emotions' in The Power of the Page: Children's Books and Their Readers, ed. Pat Pinsent (London: David Fulton, 1993), pp. 74-82.
Publications
(2005) Culinary Pleasures: Cookbooks and the Transformation of British Food, , 342pp.
(2002) Little Swans with Luxette and Loved Boy Pudding: Changing Fashions in Cookery Books, Women: A Cultural Review, 13, 322-338.
(2001) The Feminine Middlebrow Novel 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity and Bohemianism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1-272.
Research Expertise
The Literature of Food - including cookery books and food in literary texts.
Historical literature, historiography, and the relationships between them, particularly in the nineteenth century.
Victorian literature and culture, with particular interests in women.
The poetry of Robert Browning.
Women's Writing of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
The cultural history of the first half of the twentieth century, with a special interest in
George Orwell and Q. D. Leavis.
Middlebrow culture.
Contemporary women's writing, including 'chick lit'.
Crime Fiction.
Teaching Expertise
Victorian Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature, Women's Writing, The Literature of Food, Literature and History, Crime Fiction, Dystopian Literature, Children's Literature, Shakespeare, London in Literature.