Rebekah Cohen, Newnham

Biographical Information

I previously studied at the University of Oxford, where I read for my BA in English Language and Literature at Somerville College, followed by an MSt in English (1830-1914) at Merton College. I then spent a year working as Graduate Trainee Librarian at Christ's College in Cambridge, where I enjoyed working with and researching the library's Special Collections. 

Now, I am excited to be studying for my PhD at Newnham College, funded by a Cambridge Trust Vice-Chancellor's and Newnham College Scholarship. My PhD research investigates how connected discourses of literary and mechanical invention in the nineteenth-century converge in ideas of contrivance, and the impact this has on Victorian thinking about literary composition, particularly among Charles Dickens and his circle. 

Research Interests

My current research centres around nineteenth-century prose of all kinds (including Victorian fiction, periodicals, letters, and journals), book history, theories of textual scholarship, and Victorian discourses on invention, labour, and novelty.

In addition to my PhD research, I am also interested in: narrative and theories of the novel; comedy; Victorian life writing; George Eliot; the history and theory of libraries; Victorian Jewish writers, especially Amy Levy; Victorian editing of Shakespeare, especially by women.