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Dr Edmund King

Edmund King photo

Profile summary

  • Central Academic Staff
  • Senior Lecturer In English
  • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
  • School of Arts & Humanities
  • English & Creative Writing
  • edmund.king

Professional biography

I joined the English Department as a Research Associate in February 2010 and was appointed Lecturer in August 2018 with promotion to Senior Lecturer in October 2023. Originally from New Zealand, I hold MA and PhD degrees in English from the University of Auckland. Before moving to the United Kingdom, I worked for three years in digitization (TEI encoding) at the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre at Victoria University of Wellington.

Research interests

My current research areas are the history of books and reading during the First World War and the history of bibliotherapy (again in a First World War context). This involves analysing evidence of reading preserved in a wide range of material: wartime letters, diaries, press articles, and official papers as well as later printed memoirs. What role did the circulation of books and letters play in the experience of war? Did mass mobilization change reading practices? What new opportunities did it provide for the circulation of texts and ideologies across national boundaries?
 
In 2015, I co-edited (with Shafquat Towheed) the essay collection Reading and the First World War: Readers, Texts, Archives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). I am currently working on a study of reading and writing cultures in Britain during the First World War. With Monika Smialkowska, I am co-editor of Memorialising Shakespeare: Commemoration and Collective Identity, 1916-2016 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
 
Outside of First World War Studies, I maintain an active research programme in Shakespeare studies, the histories of reading, editing, and authorship (particularly in the eighteenth century), and the digital humanities. I am Co-Director of HOBAR, the History of Books and Reading research collaboration (formerly the Book History Research Group) and I play an active part in organising HOBAR's annual schedule of conferences and seminar series. I am also responsible for maintaining the Reading Experience Database.
 
I have developing research interests in literature and digital culture, particularly "vernacular criticism" performed online and on social media platforms. What are digital modes of collective judgement and collective intelligence doing to the concepts of literary and canonical value? What is the place of the literary in an age of hyperconnectivity? 
 
 
Selected Recent Publications
 
  • Edmund G. C. King, "Networks," in The Edinburgh Companion to First World War Periodicals, edited by Marysa Demoor, Cedric van Dijck, and Birgit Van Puymbroeck (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023), 32–50.
  • Sally Blackburn-Daniels and Edmund G. C. King, "Introduction: Bookshelves, Social Media and Gaming," English Studies, 103:5 (2022): 653–59.
  • Edmund G. C. King, "Unpacking the Red Flag Bookshelf: Negotiating Literary Value on Twitter," English Studies, 103:5 (2022): 706–31.
  • Sara Haslam and Edmund G. C. King, ‘“Medicinable Literature”: Bibliotherapy, Literary Caregiving and the First World War." Literature and Medicine, 39:2 (2021): 296–318
  • Edmund G. C. King and Monika Smialkowska, eds., Memorialising Shakespeare: Commemoration and Collective Identity, 1916–2016 (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) 
  • Edmund G. C. King, "From Common Reader to Canon: Memorialising the Shakespeare-Reading British Soldier during the First World War," in Memorialising Shakespeare: Commemoration and Collective Identity, 1916–2016, edited by Edmund G. C. King and Monika Smialkowska (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 35–64

A full list of my publications can be found via Open Research Online.

Teaching interests

I currently teach on the following modules:

  • A240: Literature Matters (Chair in production), 2020–
  • A112: Cultures, 2022–

I have previously taught on: 

  • A233: Telling Stories: The Novel and Beyond. Author of chapters on Edmund Blunden's Undertones of War and Shakespeare's Tempest. Module team member in production, 2017–19. Deputy Chair in presentation, 2019–2022.
  • A230: Reading and Studying Literature. Module Chair in presentation, 2019–2022.
  • A893: MA in English Literature (remake). Module team member in production, 2019–2022. Author of chapters on King Lear, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, and Henri Barbusse's Under Fire.
  • A334: English Literature from Shakespeare to Austen. Author of chapters on The Spanish Tragedy and Julius Caesar. Module team member in production/presentation, 2012–19. Deputy Chair, 2018–2019
  • AA306: Shakespeare: Text and Performance. Module team member in presentation, 2011–2015.

I have co-supervised three PhD students to completion at The Open University. I am currently co-supervising two PhD student theses: on aerial combat fiction of the First World War and on late nineteenth-century British scientific romance. I have acted as internal examiner for seven Open University PhD theses in addition to conducting probation vivas and mock vivas. 

I welcome inquiries from prospective PhD students in the fields of book history, the history of reading, Shakespeare studies, and First World War literature. 

Impact and engagement

In 2016, I was an academic consultant (with Prof. David Johnson) on the Living Shakespeare project (British Council/BBC World Service).

I have also worked as an academic consultant for The Open University on two TV programmes:

  • The BBC/RSC/Illuminations/Open University coproduced film of Julius Caesar (BBC4, 2012) 
  • The Sky Arts series My Shakespeare (the second series of Shakespeare Uncovered), a coproduction between The Open University, Blakeway Productions, and Sky Arts (Sky Arts, 2014). This series aired under the title Shakespeare Uncovered: Series 2 in the US on PBS in 2015.

I am an editorial board member of Shakespeare (journal of the British Shakespeare Association) and was an Advisory Group member for the AHRC-funded project, Memories of Fiction (University of Roehampton).

Research groups

NameTypeParent Unit
Book History and Bibliography Research GroupGroupFaculty of Arts

 

Externally funded projects

Reading Communities: Connecting the Past and Present
RoleStart dateEnd dateFunding source
Co-investigator01 Dec 201530 Nov 2016AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

‘Reading Communities: Connecting the Past and Present’ addresses the AHRC 10th-Anniversary Follow-On Scheme Highlight Notice, which invites proposals that will ‘enhance engagement with, and impact from, research funded by the AHRC during the first two years after its establishment in 2005’. This project is intended as a follow on from the ‘Reading Experience Database 1800–1945’ (2006–2009), which was funded by a £292,108 Resource Enhancement grant awarded by the AHRC in 2006. This one-year project builds on the success of the Reading Experience Database (RED) to create a series of city-focused reading outreach events. These will include lectures, oral history interviews and community workshops focused on crowdsourcing from participants' diaries or other documents. Activities will take place in Belfast, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Birmingham and London.

Publications

Reading in Europe—Challenges and lessons learned from the case studies of the READ-IT project (2023-06)
Benatti, Francesca; Vignale, François; Antonini, Alessio and King, Edmund
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 38(2) (pp. 477-481)

Bookshelves, Social Media and Gaming (2022-08-17)
Blackburn-Daniels, Sally and G. C. King, Edmund
English Studies, 103(5) (pp. 653-659)

Unpacking the “Red Flag” Bookshelf: Negotiating Literary Value on Twitter (2022-06-15)
King, Edmund G. C.
English Studies, 103(5) (pp. 706-731)

“Medicinable Literature”: Bibliotherapy, Literary Caregiving, and the First World War (2021-12)
Haslam, Sara and King, Edmund G. C.
Literature and Medicine, 39(2) (pp. 296-318)

[Book Review] Book Traces: Nineteenth-Century Readers and the Future of the Library, by Andrew M. Stauffer (2021-08)
King, Edmund G. C.
Library & Information History, 37(2) (pp. 186-187)

Reusing Historical Questionnaire Data and Using Newly Commissioned Oral History Interviews as Evidence in the History of Reading (2019-05)
King, Edmund G. C.; Parmar, Maya and Towheed, Shafquat
Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 16(1) (pp. 530-553)

[Book Review] John Kerrigan, Shakespeare's Originality. (2019)
King, Edmund G. C.
Spenser Review, 49, Article 13(3)

[Book Review] The British Soldier and His Libraries, c. 1822–1901 (2017-10-02)
King, Edmund G. C.
Library & Information History, 33(4) (pp. 279-280)

Radicalism in the Margins: The Politics of Reading Wilfrid Scawen Blunt in 1920 (2016-07-31)
King, Edmund G. C.
Journal of British Studies, 55(3) (pp. 501-518)

Readers and Reading in the First World War (2015-09-30)
Towheed, Shafquat; Benatti, Francesca and King, Edmund G. C.
Yearbook of English Studies, 45 (pp. 239-261)

E. W. Hornung’s unpublished “Diary,” the YMCA, and the reading soldier in the First World War (2014-06-01)
King, Edmund
English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 57(3) (pp. 361-387)

“A priceless book to have out here”: soldiers reading Shakespeare in the first world war (2014)
King, Edmund
Shakespeare, 10(3) (pp. 230-244)

“Books are more to me than food”: British prisoners of war as readers, 1914-1918 (2013)
King, Edmund
Book History, 16 (pp. 246-271)

Fragmenting authorship in the eighteenth-century Shakespeare edition (2010-04-13)
King, Edmund G. C.
Shakespeare, 6(1) (pp. 1-19)

Alexander Turnbull's ‘dream imperial’: collecting Shakespeare in the colonial antipodes (2010-04)
King, Edmund
Script and Print: Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, 34(2) (pp. 69-86)

Towards a prehistory of the gothic mode in nineteenth-century New Zealand writing (2010)
King, Edmund G. C.
Journal of New Zealand Literature, 28(2) (pp. 35-57)

Pope's 1723–25 Shakespear, classical editing, and humanistic reading practices (2008-04)
King, Edmund
Eighteenth-Century Life, 32(2) (pp. 3-13)

“Small-scale copyrights”?: Quotation marks in theory and in practice (2004-03)
King, Edmund
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 98(1) (pp. 39-53)

Networks (2023-01-31)
King, Edmund G. C.
In: Demoor, Marysa; van Dijck, Cedric and Van Puymbroeck, Birgit eds. The Edinburgh Companion to First World War Periodicals. Edinburgh Companions to Literature and the Humanities (pp. 32-50)
ISBN : 9781474494717 | Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh

From Common Reader to Canon: Memorialising the Shakespeare-Reading British Soldier during the First World War (2022-01-01)
King, Edmund G.C.
In: King, Edmund G.C. and Smialkowska, Monika eds. Memorialising Shakespeare: Commemoration and Collective Identity, 1916-2016. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies (pp. 35-64)
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan | Published : Basingstoke

Introduction: Memorialising Shakespeare, Memorialising Ourselves (2021-12-18)
King, Edmund and Smialkowska, Monika
In: King, Edmund and Smialkowska, Monika eds. Memorialising Shakespeare: Commemoration and Collective Identity, 1916-2016. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies (PASHST) (pp. 1-32)
ISBN : 978-3-030-84012-9 / 978-3-030-84013-6 | Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan | Published : Basingstoke

Readers: Books and Biography (2020)
Colclough, Stephen and King, Edmund G. C.
In: Eliot, Simon and Rose, Jonathan eds. A Companion to the History of the Book, 2nd. ed.. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture (pp. 157-171)
ISBN : 9781119018179 | Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell | Published : Oxford

Discovering Shakespeare’s Personal Style: Editing and Connoisseurship in the Eighteenth Century (2017-09-30)
King, Edmund G. C.
In: Depledge, Emma and Kirwan, Peter eds. Canonising Shakespeare: Stationers and the Book Trade, 1640–1740 (pp. 130-142)
ISBN : 978-1-107-15459-9 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

Editors (2016-08-18)
King, Edmund G. C.
In: Smith, Emma ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's First Folio (pp. 121-136)
ISBN : 9781107491687 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

A Captive Audience? The Reading Lives of Australian Prisoners of War, 1914–1918 (2015-08-05)
King, Edmund G. C.
In: Towheed, Shafquat and King, Edmund G. C. eds. Reading and the First World War: Readers, Texts, Archives. New Directions in Book History (pp. 153-167)
ISBN : 978-1-349-57059-1 | Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan | Published : Basingstoke

Introduction (2015-08-05)
Towheed, Shafquat and King, Edmund G. C.
In: Towheed, Shafquat and King, Edmund G. C. eds. Reading and the First World War: Readers, Texts, Archives. New Directions in Book History (pp. 1-25)
ISBN : 9781137302700 | Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan | Published : Basingstoke

Cardenio and the Eighteenth-century Shakespeare Canon (2012-09)
King, Edmund
In: Carnegie, David and Taylor, Gary eds. The Quest for Cardenio: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes and the Lost Play (pp. 81-94)
ISBN : 978-0-19-964181-9 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford

Narratives about collaborating playwrights: the new bibliography, “disintegration”, and the problem of multiple authorship in Shakespeare (2010-09-01)
King, Edmund
In: Johnson, Laurie and Chalk, Darryl eds. “Rapt in Secret Studies”: Emerging Shakespeares (pp. 249-268)
ISBN : 1-4438-2328-7 | Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing | Published : Newcastle Upon Tyne

Memorialising Shakespeare: Commemoration and Collective Identity, 1916-2016 (2021-12-18)
King, Edmund G.C. and Smialkowska, Monika eds.
Palgrave Shakespeare Studies (PASHST)
ISBN : 978-3-030-84012-9 / 978-3-030-84013-6 | Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan | Published : Basingstoke

Reading and the First World War: Readers, Texts, Archives (2015-08-05)
Towheed, Shafquat and King, Edmund eds.
New Directions in Book History
ISBN : 9781137302700 | Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan | Published : Basingstoke

Death and Transmediations: Manuscripts in the Age of Hypertext (2021-07-09)
Antonini, Alessio; Benatti, Francesca; Watson, Nicola; King, Edmund and Gibson, Jonathan
In : 32nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, HT 2021 (30 Aug - 2 Sep 2021, Virtual Event USA) (pp. 17-26)

Restoration and Repurposing of DH legacy projects: the UK-RED case (2020-07-20)
Antonini, Alessio; Benatti, Francesca and King, Edmund
In : Digital Humanities Conference 2020 (20-24 Jul 2020, Ottawa)

Modelling Changes in Diaries, Correspondence and Authors’ Libraries to support research on reading: the READ-IT approach (2019)
Antonini, Alessio; Benatti, Francesca; King, Edmund; François, Vignale and Guillaume, Gravier
In : Open Data and Ontologies for Cultural Heritage (ODOCH'19) (3 - Jun -2019, Rome, Italy)

Reading the Great War through Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: J. A. Fallows, MA, and His Copy of My Diaries, 1900–1914 (2011-04-29)
King, Edmund
In : Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing Regional Conference (28-30 Apr 2011, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia)

A captive audience? The reading lives of Australian prisoners of war, 1914–18 (2011-02-12)
King, Edmund
In : Open University Book History and Bibliography Research Group Seminars: Reading and the First World War (12 Feb 2011, London, UK)

Man of science, man of religion: the reading of a medical missionary in Uganda, 1896-1918 (2011)
King, Edmund C. G.
In : SHARP 2011: The Book in Art and Science (14-17 Jul 2011, Washington, D.C., USA)

Lewis Theobald, Double Falshood, and the 1733 Works of Shakespeare (2009-05-23)
King, Edmund
In : International Cardenio Colloquium (22-24 May 2009, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)

Jacob’s Sons in the South Pacific: The Geoeschatology of Edwin Fairburn’s "Ships of Tarshish" (2008-12-12)
King, Edmund
In : Flogging a Dead Horse: Are National Literatures Finished? A Stout Research Centre in the Humanities Conference (10-13 Dec 2008, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)

The Shakespearean Book in the Colonial Antipodes: The Case of Alexander Turnbull (2008-10-02)
King, Edmund
In : Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Conference, 2008 (2-3 Oct 2008, University of Sydney, Australia)

"Fragments minutely broken": text, paratext, and authorship in the eighteenth-century Shakespeare edition (2008-02-08)
King, Edmund
In : Australia and New Zealand Shakespeare Association Conference, 2008 (6-9 Feb 2008, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand)