Caroline Sumpter

My research specialisms include the nineteenth-century press and the history of reading, the history of science and fantasy fiction. My first monograph The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale (2008, paperback 2012) won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award (2011) and was shortlisted for the Esse First Book Award (2011) and the Katherine Briggs Award (2010).  I am the author of articles on late Victorian literature, journalism, politics  and science in journals including ELH, Victorian Studies, Victorian Literature and Culture and Literature and History, and have published on Andrew Lang, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde and Richard Jefferies in the context of evolutionary debates. I am completing a book on evolution, ethics and democracy in the fiction and journalism of the late nineteenth century.

I am a submissions editor for the journal Victorian Periodicals Review. In 2025 I was chair of the Judging Panel for the Colby Book Prize.

I lead the cross-faculty interdisplinary Science and Culture Reasearch Group with Leonie Hannan (HAPP) and Diarmid Finnegan (NBE).

I am the convenor of the level 3 course 'Literature and Science in the Nineteenth-Century: Evolution, Degeneration and the Mind', and convenor of the stage 2 course 'Utopia/Dystopia: The Future in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature'.  At stage 1, I have taught and lectured on 'Adventures in the History of Ideas' and lecture on ENG1001 ('English in Transition'). I also supervise undergraduate and MA dissertations. At MA level, I am the convenor of the MA course 'Popular Fiction at the Fin de Siecle', and have previously taught on the MA course 'The Child in Literary History, 1600-1900'. I currently supervise PhD students on literary projects across the Victorian period, and have seen students through to completion in a range of interdisciplinary areas including literature and science, periodical culture, speculative fiction and the history of reading.