Research

Jenny is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to nineteenth century literature and culture, in particular in how emerging debates in psychology - on identity, consciousness and unconscious mental activity -  were appropriated and transformed in fictional narrative.  She has published widely on nineteenth century psychology and literature, including In the Secret Theatre of Home:  Wilkie Collins, Sensation Narrative and Nineteenth-Century Psychology and in the co-editor, with Sally Shuttleworth, of Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts. She is interested, too, in the legal and cultural constructions of 'illegitimacy' in the nineteenth century, and is also the co-editor, with Martin Ryle of George Gissing: Voices of the Unclassed and the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Wilkie Collins.  She is also co-editor, with John Kucich, of The Oxford History of the Novel in English, vol 3 1820-1880. She is currently preparing a new edition of Sarah Grand's The Beth Book.