Professor Andrew King BA, PGCE, MA, MA, PhD

Professor of English Literature and Literary Studies

Professor Andrew King has worked at the University of Greenwich since May 2012. His first degree was in classical and medieval Latin (Reading), and he has MAs in Medieval Studies (Reading) and English (Sussex). He completed his PhD (2000), a history of the nineteenth-century mass-market periodical, The London Journal, at Birkbeck, supervised by Professor Laurel Brake. Since then he has expanded his interest both in popular reading and in another neglected but highly influential area of periodical studies, the low-circulation but high-impact world of trade, business and professional magazines: BLT19 is one of the outgrowths of this.

Having started a career in EFL, he taught his first English literature course at the University of Catania, Sicily, where he began work in 1983. In 1985 he completed his PGCE at the University of Cambridge where he was one of the very few to gain distinctions in both the theoretical and practical aspects of the course. He taught in a school in north London for a year before Catania lured him back for the rest of the 1980s. While back in Italy he was translator / interpreter for the Premio Europa per il Teatro (he still has vivid memories of Peter Brooke and Grotowski in 1988), wrote and played music for a semi-professional theatre company as well as in various cultural clubs and salons, and was the research assistant for the late Professor Alba Floreale, an expert in seventeenth- and twentieth-century English drama. While at Catania he taught his first course on literary theory at the behest of Professor Francesca Romana Paci. To both these remarkable women he remains indebted for redirecting him towards new horizons.

Committed to gender equality, in 1990 he left Sicily to support his wife in her career as a British Council officer. As a result, he was fortunate to teach English Literature and Cultural Studies for many years at universities in Romania and Poland, and around the UK (Birkbeck, Hertfordshire and Keele). In 1998 he led the joint Romanian government/ British Council project Crossing Cultures, which introduced for the first time the study of gender, class, sexuality and ethnicity into Romanian schools.

Immediately before coming to Greenwich, Andrew had taught since January 2003 at Canterbury Christ Church University where he was senior lecturer and then Reader in Print History.

Andrew was assistant editor of the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism(2008), for which he researched around 70 entries both in areas that had been (often surprisingly) not studied before, and in some very well-known subjects. At a time when these things were very new and rare, he set up and ran for the project the central private website (in those days a VLE) where the 200+ contributors deposited and discussed their work with the editors and each other.

As of 2021, Andrew has externally examined 19 PhDs from Australia, Europe and the UK. He was an external undergraduate examiner at Liverpool John Moores 2004-8 and at Edinburgh Napier 2013-17; he is currently (to 2022) external examiner of the MA in English Studies at the University of Hong Kong.

Dedicated to the future of the discipline, Andrew is founding co-editor of the twice-yearly SCOPUS-indexed Victorian Popular Fictions (2019-), and, 2019-22, President of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association. He is general editor of the Victorian Fiction Research Guides in a knowledge exchange partnership with the publisher Victorian Secrets. He is very proud to have supervised to completion five extraordinarily fine PhDs over 2020-1.

Responsibilities within the university

Service

  • REF Panel D (Humanities) Lead in annual University-wide internal research assessment exercises (“GREAT”) 2016 -
  • REF Panel D (Humanities) representative on (university) REF2021 Working Party 2016-
  • Research Group Lead for Literature and Drama Research 2012-2017
  • REF Unit of Assessment (27) Lead for English Language and Literature 2018-
  • Languages and Literature representative, Faculty Research Degrees Committee 2013- ; Deputy Chair of the Committee 2018-
  • Member of University Archives Committee 2014-
  • Member of University Professors and Readers Promotions Committee 2013-17
  • Member of Faculty Research and Enterprise Committee 2015-2018
  • Member of Faculty Ethics Committee 2015-2018
  • Frequent examination chairings and internal PhD examinations

Current Undergraduate teaching

  • 3rd year core course: Literature and Publishing 1820-today (see video course on Detective Fiction under Videos, or here for the first video of the series)
  • 2nd year option: International Bestsellers
  • Dissertations

PhD supervision

Current:

Orsolya Nagy: Absurdist theatre in the Czech Republic

Completions:

  1. Ann Hale, Nineteenth-Century Legal Periodicals (2020)
  2. Beth Gaskell, Nineteenth-Century Military Periodicals (2020)
  3. Fiona Snailham, Eliza Lynn Linton: the media management of a woman author’s identity (2020)
  4. Deborah Canavan, The British Workwoman 1863-1913 (2020)
  5. Julian Day, Actresses and the Eighteenth-Century Press (2021)

Awards

Recognition

  • member of the Board of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, 2011-18
  • Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Arts and Sciences, 2012 -
  • member of the Ateneo of the University of Macerata (Italy), 2012 –
  • member of Advisory Board of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers,2013-
  • member of Editorial Board Rivista di Studi Vittoriani, 2015 -
  • FRSA, 2016 -
  • President of the Victorian Popular Fictions Association, 2019 - 2022
  • AHRC Peer Review College, 2017 – (membership renewed)
  • Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO, the Dutch Research Council) 2018 -
  • member of Editorial Board, RRR: Revolution, Romanticism and Reform, 2018 -2020
  • Reader for:  EnglishAuthorshipJournalism: theory, practice and criticismVictorian Studies19 and many other learned journals; and for publishers such as EUP, Continuum, Routledge, Bloomsbury.
  • External Examiner of BAs: Liverpool John Moores (2004-8), Edinburgh Napier (2013-2017)
  • External Examiner of MA English Studies, University of Hong Kong (2019-22)
  • External Examiner of 16 PhDs (as of September 2021)

Prizes 

Andrew King and John Morton, together with their colleague from the University of St Thomas Alexis Easley, won the Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize “for the book that most advances our knowledge of the nineteenth-century press” for an unprecedented two years in a row (see Awards above).

Research / Scholarly interests

Andrew's work in the Victorian period lies at the intersection of literature, history, media studies and sociology. Blending traditional archival work with newer research methods and methodologies, his work emphasises unexpected areas of cultural exchange between popular and élite, and across national and linguistic borders. A recent interest is the environmental cost of publishing as an industry.

Besides his commitment to thinking about nineteenth-century popular culture, evident in his work on the VPFJ and for the VPFA, Andrew has continued work on 19th-century periodicals. He was the main editor and initiator of the Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and Newspapers (2016) with Alexis Easley (University of St Thomas) and his colleague at University of Greenwich, John Morton. He contributed a chapter on periodical economics – a far wider topic than merely attention to publishers' accounts. Researching the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press: Case Studies (Routledge, 2017)a volume by the same editors, came out in 2017. Both won the Colby prize for the book published during the preceding year that most advances our understanding of the nineteenth-century British press.

Andrew's latest work, on a volume of essays called “Living Work:” Work and the Nineteenth-Century Press (Routledge, due out 2022) edited with Fiona Snailham and Elizabeth Tilley (Galway), derives originally from his work on the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism and from a year-long fully funded research fellowship at the University of Ghent (2008-09) when he uncovered the dearth of research on trade periodicals as mediated communications. This crystalised in 2016 into BLT19, a digitisation project that, in the spirit of the periodicals it digitises, shows that it is possible to deliver both academic and social value online for a very small pot of money indeed: refusing to equate financial investment with value per se, it polemically offers maximum return for minimum financial investment.

Already contracted publication stretches to 2026, including a chapter for CUP on 1860s publishing; a literary biography of Ouida and a 4 volume collection on unknown sources for print history edited with Marysa Demoor (Gent), Andrew Hobbs (UCLAN) and Lisa Peters (Chester) for Routledge.

Andrew would welcome PhD applications in any of the following areas:

  • Popular fiction
  • Victorian fiction
  • Victorian periodicals
  • Popular periodicals
  • Trade and professional periodicals
  • Ecocritical humanities, with especially attention to the publishing industry

Key funded projects

Professions and the press

A year-long fully funded research fellowship at the University of Ghent, 2008-09 (€60,000).

The most immediate outputs from the fellowship comprised three journal articles and the successful completion of the DNCJ, the joint winner of the Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize in 2010.

The main research findings comprised the identification of the components of what a "professional" was in the 19th century (and still is to a large extent today) and how they developed. The research paid particular attention to gender, especially to the changing nature of professional masculinities. Andrew continued this work, focusing on Victorian banking periodicals, for the 2013 Wolff lecture.

Recent publications

Article

King, Andrew and , (2024), Nineteenth-Century Mediamorphosis: transformations in print culture. Routledge. In: , , , . Routledge, Culture, Literature, and the Arts Routledge Historical Resources (doi: https://routledgelearning.com/rhr-cultureliteratureandthearts/essays/nineteenth-century-mediamorphosis-transformations-in-print-culture/) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2023), Review of Alexander Bubb, Asian Classics on the Victorian bookshelf. Victorian Popular Fiction Association. In: , , , . Victorian Popular Fiction Association, Victorian Popular Fictions, 5 (2) . pp. 122-125 ISSN: 2632-4253 (Print), (doi: https://doi.org/10.46911/PMRM5497).

King, Andrew and , (2021), Welcome. Victorian Popular Fiction Association. In: , , , . Victorian Popular Fiction Association, Victorian Popular Fictions, 3: 1 (1) . pp. 1-3 ISSN: 2632-4253 (Print), (doi: https://doi.org/ 10.46911/JFAN9805).

King, Andrew and , (2021), Intro-/Inter-: Laurel Brake and the political epistemology of the introduction 1990–2016. Oxford University Press. In: , , , . Oxford University Press, Journal of Victorian Culture (JVC), 26 (3) . pp. 338-339 ISSN: 1355-5502 (Print), 1750-0133 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcab012).

King, Andrew and , (2020), Welcome. Victorian Popular Fiction Association. In: , , , . Victorian Popular Fiction Association, Victorian Popular Fictions, 2: 1 (2) . pp. 1-2 ISSN: 2632-4253 (Print), (doi: https://doi.org/10.46911/DZGG6238).

King, Andrew and , (2019), Welcome to Issue 1.2 (Autumn 2019). Victorian Popular Fiction Association. In: , , , . Victorian Popular Fiction Association, Victorian Popular Fictions, 1 (2) . pp. 1-2 2632-4253 (Online) (doi: https://victorianpopularfiction.org/publications/1200-2/victorian-popular-fictions-volume-1-issue-2-autumn-2019/welcome-vpfj-1-2-autumn-2019/).

King, Andrew and , (2019), Victorian Popular Fictions Today: “feel these words as mama does!”. Victorian Popular Fiction Association. In: , , , . Victorian Popular Fiction Association, Victorian Popular Fictions, 1: 1 (1) . pp. 6-34 2632-4253 (Online) (doi: https://victorianpopularfiction.org/publications/1200-2/victorian-popular-fictions-volume-1-issue-1/andrew-king-victorian-popular-fictions-today-feel-these-words-as-mama-does/).

King, Andrew and , (2019), Welcome. Victorian Popular Fiction Association. In: , , , . Victorian Popular Fiction Association, Victorian Popular Fictions, 1 (1) . pp. 1-5 ISSN: 2632-4253 (Print), (doi: https://victorianpopularfiction.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1-King-Victorian-Popular-Fictions-Welcome-VPFA-vol-1-issue-1-June-2019-1.pdf).

King, Andrew and , (2018), History of the British and Irish Magazine. Oxford University Press. In: , , , . Oxford University Press, Oxford Bibliographies in Communication (doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/OBO/9780199756841-0198) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2017), Forget Me Not. The Rise of the British Literary Annual 1823–1835. Taylor & Francis. In: , , , . Taylor & Francis, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 39 (3) . pp. 237-240 ISSN: 0890-5495 (Print), 1477-2663 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/08905495.2017.1312780).

King, Andrew and , (2016), Sherlock Holmes: The man who lived and will never die. Cambridge University Press. In: , , , . Cambridge University Press, Victorian Literature and Culture, 44 (1) . pp. 202-210 ISSN: 1060-1503 (Print), 1470-1553 (Online) (doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1060150315000492).

King, Andrew and , (2016), Impure researches, or literature, marketing and aesthesis. The case of Ouida's "Dog of Flanders" (1871-today). Edizioni Ca' Foscari. In: , , , . Edizioni Ca' Foscari, English Literature, 2 (2) . pp. 359-382 ISSN: 2420-823X (Print), (doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14277/2420-823X/EL-2-2-15-10).

Book section

King, Andrew and , (2024), Chapter 7. Publishing in the 1860s: technology, regulation, and distribution. Cambridge University Press. In: , , In: Pamela K. Gilbert (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1860s. Cambridge University Press, United States (1st) . pp. 129-146 . ISBN: 9781009053051; 9781316511831; 1316511839 (doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009053051.008).

King, Andrew and , (2019), The trade and professional press. Edinburgh University Press. In: , , In: David Finkelstein (ed.), The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press: 2: Expansion and Evolution, 1800-1900. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh , 2 (1st) . ISBN: 9781474424882; 9781474424912; 9781474424905; 1474424880 (doi: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edinburgh-history-of-the-british-and-irish-press-volume-2.html) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2019), Publishing and marketing. Cambridge University Press. In: , , In: Ingo Berensmeyer, Gert Beulens, Marysa Demoor (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Literary Authorship. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge . pp. 415-428 . ISBN: 9781107168657 (doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316717516) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2018), Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper. McFarland. In: , , In: Kevin A. Morrison (ed.), Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction. McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina, USA . ISBN: 9781476669038 (doi: ) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2018), The Family Herald. McFarland. In: , , In: Kevin A. Morrison (ed.), Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction. McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina, USA Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction . ISBN: 9781476669038 (doi: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/companion-to-victorian-popular-fiction/) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2018), The London Journal. McFarland. In: , , In: Kevin A. Morrison (ed.), Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction. McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina, USA . ISBN: 9781476669038 (doi: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/companion-to-victorian-popular-fiction/) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2018), Penny Fiction Periodicals. McFarland. In: , , In: Kevin A. Morrison (ed.), Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction. McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina, USA . ISBN: 9781476669038 (doi: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/companion-to-victorian-popular-fiction/) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2018), Reynolds's Miscellany. McFarland. In: , , In: Kevin A. Morrison (ed.), Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction. McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina, USA . ISBN: 9781476669038 (doi: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/companion-to-victorian-popular-fiction/) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2018), Series and Serials. McFarland. In: , , In: Kevin A. Morrison (ed.), Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction. McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina, USA . ISBN: 9781476669038 (doi: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/companion-to-victorian-popular-fiction/) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2018), "Suicide". McFarland. In: , , In: Kevin A. Morrison (ed.), Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction. McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina, USA . ISBN: 9781476669038 (doi: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/companion-to-victorian-popular-fiction/) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2016), Periodical Economics. Routledge. In: , , , The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and Newspapers. Routledge, . pp. 60-74 . ISBN: 9781409468882 (doi: https://www.routledge.com/products/9781409468882) NB Item availability restricted.

Conference item

King, Andrew and , (2023), Beyond the Taxes on Knowledge: the Law and the 1860s English Press. In: Esprit Periodicals and the Law Seminar 2, 19th December 2023, online - European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit) , . , (doi: https://www.espr-it.eu/news/events).

King, Andrew and , (2023), Ouida on the Margins 1839-1857. In: Ouida: High Priestess of the Impossible (A VPFA Study Day), 3rd - 4th November 2023, online virtual event , . , (doi: https://victorianpopularfiction.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Ouida_VPFA-Study-Day-2023_Programme.pdf).

King, Andrew and , (2018), Switching: creating reference works for Nineteenth-Century serials. In: Media History Seminar, 12 March 2019, Senate House, University of London , . , (doi: https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/events/event/17226).

King, Andrew and , (2018), Subjugations: the case of the Stanfield Hall Murders and J.F. Smith’s Stanfield Hall (1848). In: Desubjugating Knowledges in Nineteenth-Century Print Culture, 13 October 2018, Keynes Library, Birkbeck , . , (doi: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/remote_event_view?id=733).

King, Andrew and , (2018), The shape of water. In: The Body and the Page: Annual Conference of the Research Society for Victorian periodicals, 26-28 July 2018, University of Victoria, BC , . , (doi: https://youtu.be/cGxS6H8bflg).

King, Andrew and , (2018), What is "Victorian popular fiction"?. In: War and Peace: the 10th Annual Conference of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association, 3-7 July 2018, Senate House, University of London , . , (doi: https://victorianpopularfiction.org/pastconferences/).

King, Andrew and , (2018), Excessive reference: “proximity” and personality in nineteenth-century crime fiction. In: Measure and Excess: INCS International Conference, 13-15 June 2018, Universita di Roma 3, Rome, Italy , . , (doi: ).

King, Andrew and , (2018), Serial Marketing: Ouida in the 1860s. In: Open University History of Books and Reading with Institute of English Studies, 5 March 2018, Senate House, University of London , . , (doi: ).

King, Andrew and , (2017), Colby Prize Lecture part 1 (and final): Periodical Collaborations - Past, Present and Future. In: Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, 27-29 July 2017, Freiburg, Germany , . , (doi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxH6qR1MmuU).

King, Andrew and , (2016), ‘Suicide: Popular? Obscene? The case of Ouida’s Two Little Wooden Shoes (1874)’. In: Annual Conference of the British Association for Victorian Studies, 31 August - 2 September 2016, University of Cardiff , . , (doi: http://bavs2016.co.uk/programme/bavs-2016-day-2/).

King, Andrew and , (2016), The Peasant’s Throat: Ouida’s Transnational Underclass on the European Operatic Stage. In: The Novel, the Periodical Press, and the Global Circulation of Texts, 1789-1945, 16-17 February 2016, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK , . , (doi: https://novelwithoutfrontiers.wordpress.com/).

Conference proceedings

King, Andrew and , (2021), Embarrassed by being mistaken for a woman. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Greenwich. In: "Inclusion and Exclusion" 13th Annual Conference of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association, 14-16 July 2021, University of Greenwich (online) In: Anne-Marie Beller, Ailise Bulfin, Janine Hatter, Erin Loutti, Emily Bell (eds.), Victorian inclusion and exclusion: Victorian popular fiction association, 13th annual conference, 14-16 July 2021. School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Greenwich, University of Greenwich, London (doi: https://youtu.be/5GsVw-JfiRk).

Edited book

King, Andrew and , (2022), Work and the Nineteenth-Century press: living work for living people. Routledge. In: , , , . Routledge, New York and London (1st) . ISBN: 9781032346557; 9781032346540; 9781003323204 (doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/b23105) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew and , (2019), Keep the Door of my Lips: the Unspoken Cost of Work in Victorian/ Austerity Britain. Stephen Lawrence Gallery. In: , , , . Stephen Lawrence Gallery, . ISBN: 9780957343054 (doi: ) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew , Easley, Alexis, Morton, John (2017), Researching the nineteenth-century periodical press: Case studies. Routledge. In: , , , . Routledge, . ISBN: 9781409468851 (doi: ) NB Item availability restricted.

King, Andrew , Easley, Alexis, Morton, John (2016), The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and Newspapers. Routledge. In: , , , . Routledge, . ISBN: 9781409468882 (doi: https://www.routledge.com/products/9781409468882) NB Item availability restricted.

Video

King, Andrew and , (2017), Henry Dunbar Part 4. Youtube. In: , , , . Youtube, (1st) (doi: https://youtu.be/PVWMjCM-h5U).

King, Andrew and , (2017), Henry Dunbar Part 3. Youtube. In: , , , . Youtube, (1st) (doi: https://youtu.be/tsGNquc_3Y8).

King, Andrew and , (2017), Henry Dunbar Part 2. Youtube. In: , , , . Youtube, (1st) (doi: https://youtu.be/lol-Lj3-PXk).

King, Andrew and , (2017), Detective Fiction Session 2: "Detection and Sensation”: Part 1: ‘Why Henry Dunbar?’. In: , , , . , (doi: https://youtu.be/-oY0IEVvf8A).

King, Andrew and , (2017), Detective Fiction: Introduction Part 1: “Edgar Allan Poe & How to Read (Clues)”. Youtube. In: , , , . Youtube, (doi: https://youtu.be/_AWsWYBY6Ec).

King, Andrew and , (2017), Detective Fiction: Introduction Part 2: “Time for Detection”. In: , , , . , (doi: https://youtu.be/3ei_1Y3KTGQ).

King, Andrew and , (2017), Detective Fiction: Introduction Part 3: “Discourse and the Interpretation of Texts”. In: , , , . , (doi: https://youtu.be/WXWQcNASqPE).