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Professor Aileen Douglas

Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies (English)
ARTS BUILDING
      
Profile Photo

Professor Aileen Douglas

Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies (English)
ARTS BUILDING

 adouglas@tcd.ie

 3531896 2322


Educated in Ireland and America, Aileen Douglas holds a PhD from Princeton University. She began her academic career in the States, teaching at Washington University in St. Louis for five years before returning to Trinity to take up a position in the School of English. Her research interests focus on the writing of the long eighteenth century. In her monographs, 'Work in Hand: Print, Script, and Writing, 1690-1820' (OUP 2017) and 'Uneasy Sensations: Smollett and the Body' (Chicago 1996) she explores aspects of embodiment, materiality, and literary representation. She also has a particular interest in Irish writing and writing by women. Aileen Douglas is a General Editor of the IRC supported Early Irish Fiction 1690-1820 series (Four Courts, 2011-) and has co-edited two volumes for the series. She is a co-organizer of the Swift350 academic conference being held in June 2017 to mark the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift. Elected to Fellowship of Trinity College Dublin in 2000, she served between 2008 and 2011 as Senior Lecturer/Dean of Undergraduate Studies, a statutory officer of the University. Since 2016 she has been Head of the School of English.
  18th Century literature   Irish writing, especially early Irish fiction   Maria Edgeworth   print culture
Project Title
 Early Irish Fiction, 1680-1820
From
2008
To
2010
Summary
A series of critical editions of early Irish prose fiction. To date, seven volumes have appeared.
Funding Agency
IRCHSS
Project Type
Edited series

Details Date
Co-organizer Swift350 Academic Conference, TCD 7-9 June 2017
General Editor, 'Early Irish Fiction, 1690-1820' (2008-Present)
Board Member, Ulster-Scots Agency 2007-9
Editorial Board University of Georgia Press Edition of the Works of Tobias Smollet
Committee Member Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society 1998-2014
Smollett and the Novel in Scotland in, editor(s)Cairns Craig , The International Companion to the Scottish Novel, Edinburgh, 2025, pp20 - 33, [Aileen Douglas], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas and Ian Campbell Ross, ed., Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024, ix-xliii, 1-319pp, Book, PUBLISHED
Marriage in, editor(s)Michael Griffin and David O'Shaughnessy , Oliver Goldsmith in Context, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024, pp96 - 103, [Aileen Douglas], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
'What Follows': Maria Edgeworth's Works for Older Children in, editor(s)Jessica Lim and Louise Joy , Women's Literary Education, 1690-1850, Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Press, 2023, pp96 - 113, [Aileen Douglas], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
'Gender and Sexuality: From the contuses to the English Governess in, editor(s)Anne E. Duggan , A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Long Eighteenth Century, Lonon, Bloomsbury, 2021, pp61 - 82, [Aileen Douglas], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, Borders: Reading Gulliver's Travels in 2020, Journal of Irish Studies, 35, 2021, p3 - 14, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
The Province of Poetry: Women Poets in early eighteenth-century Ireland in, editor(s)Moyra Haslett , Irish Literature in Transition 1700-1780, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp227 - 243, [Aileen Douglas], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, Maria Edgeworth and Anna Letitia Barbauld: Print, Canons, and Female Literary Authority, European Romantic Review, 31, (6), 2020, p699 - 713, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Maria Edgeworth: Conversations in the 'New World' of Children in, editor(s)Fiorenzo Fantaccini and Raffaella Leproni , 'Still Blundering into Sense': Maria Edgeworth, her Context, her Legacy., Florence, Firenze University Press, 2019, pp205 - 222, [Aileen Douglas], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
'Emeline', April London, Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, [Aileen Douglas], Item in dictionary or encyclopaedia, etc, APPROVED
  

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Aileen Douglas, Review of Revising the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Authorship from Manuscript to Print, by Hilary Havens , Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 34, (2), 2022, p250-2 , Review, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, Plenary: Self, Other, and Corporeal Limits in the Writings of Jonathan Swift, IASIL Japan 36th International Conference, Kobe, 12 October , 2019, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, Jonathan Swift and Women, Doshisha University, Kyoto, 14 October , 2019, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, Teaching and Learning in Maria Edgeworth's Works for Children, Edgeworth Teaching: Teaching Edgeworth, Fordham University, New York, 18 September, 2018, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, The Author's Hand, Manuscript and Print, Sheffield, May 2012, 2012, Oral Presentation, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, Being Graphic: An account of Eighteenth-Century Script in Print, 20th Annual Conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, Trinity College Dublin, June , 2012, Oral Presentation, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, Review of Thomas Sheridan's Career and Influence, by Conrad Brunstom , Eighteenth-Century Studies, 45, (3), 2012, p453-54 , Review, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, Review of A Revolution almost beyond Expression: Jane Austen's 'Persuasion', by Joclyn Harris , Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 2011, Review, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, Edgeworth as Global Writer, Global Nations? Irish and Scottish Expansion since the 16th Century, University of Aberdeen, October, 2009, Invited Talk, PUBLISHED
Aileen Douglas, Review of Anglo-Irish Identities, 1571-1845, by Jill Marie Bradbury and David A. Valone (eds) , Scriblerian, 2008, Review, PUBLISHED

  


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Award Date
FTCD 2000
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Women's Caucus Prize for Editing and Translation 2015
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Fellowship, UCLA, Los Angeles (1996)
Aileen Douglas has a number of interrelated research interests. Most recently her concern with issues of materiality, embodiment, and representation has focused on eighteenth-century print culture. Work in Hand: Script, Print, and Writing, 1690-1840 (OUP 2017) argues that between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries manual writing was a dynamic technology. It examines script in relation to becoming a writer; in constructions of the author; and in emerging ideas of the human. Research for the book involved consideration of eighteenth-century writing masters, and of pedagogy in the Irish Charter Schools and in the monitorial system devised by Andrew Bell in India. Literary figures discussed include Samuel Johnson, William Blake, and Isaac D'Israeli. Conceptually, this research is connected to earlier work on it-narrators, and on the body in eighteenth-century writing, especially in the fiction of the Scottish novelist Tobias Smollett. She has a general interest in disciplinary and canon formation, particularly in relation to Irish writing, and has published a range of articles and book chapters on Jonathan Swift and Maria Edgeworth. She contributed a chapter on 'The Novel before 1800' to the 'Cambridge Companion to the Irish novel' (2006) and her exploration of Irish fiction in the long eighteenth century continues in her work for the 'Early Irish Fiction Series' (Four Courts Press, ongoing). In this regard, she has become very interested in making available and popularizing the work of Elizabeth Sheridan, whose novel The Triumph of Prudence over Passion she has co-edited. At the moment she is working on an edition of Sheridan's Emeline (1782). Her developing research project brings together print culture and a long-standing concern with gender. It is especially interested in how writing for, or about, children enabled eighteenth and early-nineteenth century women to become published authors. A forthcoming book chapter on the poet Mary Barber for 'Irish Literature in Transition (Cambridge, 2018) deals with these issues, as does a forthcoming book chapter on Maria Edgeworth's representation of the child's awareness of time (Palgrave, 2017).