Professor Aileen Douglas
Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies, English
Biography
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.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Aileen Douglas, Borders: Reading Gulliver's Travels in 2020, Journal of Irish Studies, 35, 2021, p3 - 14
'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]
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]
Aileen Douglas, Maria Edgeworth and Anna Letitia Barbauld: Print, Canons, and Female Literary Authority, European Romantic Review, 31, (6), 2020, p699 - 713
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]
The Triumph of Prudence over Passion, April London, Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, [Aileen Douglas]
'Emeline', April London, Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, [Aileen Douglas]
Aileen Douglas, Work in Hand: Script, Print, and Writing, 1690-1840, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017, 1 - 256pp
Time and the Child: The Case of Maria Edgeworth's 'Early Lessons' in, editor(s)Keith O'Sullivan and Pádraic Whyte , Children's Literature Collections: Approaches to Research, London and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp91 - 106, [Aileen Douglas]
Aileen Douglas, Women, Enlightenment and the Literary Fairy Tale in English, Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies, 38, (2), 2015, p181-94
"Elizabeth Sheridan", Literary Encyclopedia, First published 16 July, 2013, [Aileen Douglas]
"The Triumph of Prudence over Passion", Literary Encyclopedia, First published 16 July, 2013, [Aileen Douglas]
Aileen Douglas, '"Tobias Smollett"', Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature, New York, Oxford University Press, 2013, -
Aileen Douglas, Moyra Haslett and Ian Campbell Ross, Introduction: Irish Fiction 1660-1830, Irish University Review, 41, (1), 2011, pxv - xvii
Aileen Douglas and Ian Campbell Ross (eds), Elizabeth Sheridan, The Triumph of Prudence over Passion, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2011, 200pp
Irish University Review, 41, 1, (2011), Aileen Douglas, Moyra Haslett and Ian Campbell Ross, Guest Editors, [eds.]
Aileen Douglas, 'Whom gentler stars unite': Fiction and Union in the Irish Novel, Irish University Review, 41, (1), 2011, p183 - 195
Ian Campbell Ross, Aileen Douglas, & Anne Markey (eds), Sarah Butler, Irish Tales, Early Irish Fiction, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2010, 121pp
Dublin in the fiction of the later eighteenth century in, editor(s)Gilllian O'Brien and Finola O'Kane , Georgian Dublin, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2008, pp135 - 144, [Aileen Douglas]
'Rule Britannia and the It-Narrator' in, editor(s)Mark Blackwell , The Secret Life of Things, Lewisburg, PA, Bucknell University Press, 2007, pp147 - 161, [Aileen Douglas]
'The Eighteenth Century Novel' in, editor(s)John Wilson Foster , The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp21 - 38, [Aileen Douglas]
'"In a glass, darkly": Swift, Gulliver and the Human Shape.' in, editor(s)Daniel Carey et François Boulaire , Les Voyages de Gulliver: Mondes Lointains ou Mondes Proches, Caen, Presses universitaires de Caen, 2002, pp125 - 138, [Aileen Douglas]
Aileen Douglas, Maria Edgeworth's Writing Classes, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 14, (3-4), 2002, p371 - 390
Aileen Douglas, 'Making their Mark: : Eighteenth-Century Writing-Masters and their Copy-Books'., British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, 24, (2), 2001, p145 - 159
Aileen Douglas, 'Austen's Enclave: Virtue and Modernity', Romanticism, 5, (2), 1999, p147 - 160
'Introduction: Locating Swift in, editor(s)Aileen Douglas, Patrick Kelly, Ian Campbell Ross , Locating Swift: Papers from Dublin on the 250th Anniversary of the Death of Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 1998, pp9 - 27, [Aileen Douglas, Patrick Kelly, Ian Ross]
'Singularity and the Syllabus: The Teaching of Swift in Trinity College, Dublin' in, editor(s)Aileen Douglas, Patrick Kelly, Ian Campbell Ross , Locating Swift: Papers from Dublin on the 250th Anniversary of the Death of Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 1998, pp167 - 179, [Aileen Douglas, Ian Ross]
Aileen Douglas, Patrick Kelly, Ian Campbell Ross, Locating Swift: Essays from Dublin on the 250th Anniversary of the Death of Jonathan Swift, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 1998, 1-
Aileen Douglas, 'Mrs. Dingley's Spectacles: Swift, Print and Desire.', Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 10, 1995, p69 - 77
Aileen Douglas, Uneasy Sensations: Smollett and the Body, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1995, 1 - 200pp
Aileen Douglas, 'Science and the Eighteenth-Century English Woman.' , Eighteenth-Century Life, 18, 1994, p1 - 14
Aileen Douglas, 'Rule Britannia and the It-Narrator.', Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 6, 1993, p65 - 82
Early Irish Fiction, Four Courts Press, [General editor]
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
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
Aileen Douglas, Jonathan Swift and Women, Doshisha University, Kyoto, 14 October , 2019
Aileen Douglas, Plenary: Self, Other, and Corporeal Limits in the Writings of Jonathan Swift, IASIL Japan 36th International Conference, Kobe, 12 October , 2019
Aileen Douglas, Teaching and Learning in Maria Edgeworth's Works for Children, Edgeworth Teaching: Teaching Edgeworth, Fordham University, New York, 18 September, 2018
Aileen Douglas, The Author's Hand, Manuscript and Print, Sheffield, May 2012, 2012
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
Aileen Douglas, Review of Thomas Sheridan's Career and Influence, by Conrad Brunstom , Eighteenth-Century Studies, 45, (3), 2012, p453-54
Aileen Douglas, Review of A Revolution almost beyond Expression: Jane Austen's 'Persuasion', by Joclyn Harris , Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 2011
Aileen Douglas, Edgeworth as Global Writer, Global Nations? Irish and Scottish Expansion since the 16th Century, University of Aberdeen, October, 2009
Aileen Douglas, Review of Anglo-Irish Identities, 1571-1845, by Jill Marie Bradbury and David A. Valone (eds) , Scriblerian, 2008
Aileen Douglas, Review of Tobias Smollett: Scotland's First Novelist, by OM Brack, ed. , Review of English Studies, 58, 2007, p581-3
Aileen Douglas, Review of Pamela in the Marketplace: Literary Controversy and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland, by Tom Keymer and Peter Sabor , Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 21, 2006, p156-8
Aileen Douglas, Review of Women and Property in the Eighteenth-Century Novel, by April London , Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 13, (1), 2000
Research Expertise
Description
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).Projects
- Title
- Early Irish Fiction, 1680-1820
- Summary
- A series of critical editions of early Irish prose fiction. To date, seven volumes have appeared.
- Funding Agency
- IRCHSS
- Date From
- 2008
- Date To
- 2010
Recognition
Representations
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
Awards and Honours
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Women's Caucus Prize for Editing and Translation
FTCD
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Fellowship, UCLA, Los Angeles (1996)