Dr Marcus Waithe, Magdalene

mjw66@cam.ac.uk

 

Biographical Information

Marcus Waithe is a University Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of English, and a Fellow and College Librarian at Magdalene College. He held the post of Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Sheffield between 2005-2009, having completed a Ph.D. at King's College, Cambridge in 2004. He was an undergraduate at the University of Leeds, and before that attended state schools in Essex.

Research Interests

Dr Waithe's first book, William Morris’s Utopia of Strangers: Victorian Medievalism and the Ideal of Hospitality (2006) explored Victorian interest in the treatment of strangers, in the light of literary, architectural and political efforts to define the limits of the good society. He has published articles on Victorian non-fiction prose, as well as nineteenth and twentieth-century poetry, in Essays in Criticism, Victorian Studies, English, Textual Practice, The Yearbook of English Studies and PN Review. His current book project combines these interests in intellectual history and literary form: entitled The Work of Words: Literature and the Labour of Mind in Britain, 1830-1940, it investigates authorial anxiety about the value of literary endeavour, and considers the strategies employed by writers who sought to evince 'useful' labour by making their words ‘work’ on the page. He is also pursuing specialist research on John Ruskin’s museology, and in this capacity is the project leader of an online museum, which uses Victorian photographs to ‘reconstruct’ the appearance of Ruskin’s museum for Sheffield artisans on the Web: http://www.ruskinatwalkley.org/ 

Dr Waithe's research interests take in the following areas: Victorian intellectual history; Victorian poetry; William Morris; John Ruskin; Utopias; the Victorian city; museology; work and craftsmanship; law and literature; the poetry and criticism of Geoffrey Hill.

Areas of Graduate Supervision

Dr Waithe is interested in supervising graduates in the following areas: Victorian moralists (esp. Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris); aestheticism; medievalism; literary and intellectual labour; craftsmanship; Utopianism; relations between Victorian literature and the visual arts or architecture; Victorian cultural institutions (especially museums).

Selected Publications

i) Books 

• William Morris's Utopia of Strangers: Victorian Medievalism and the Ideal of Hospitality  (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006)
• The Ins and Outs of Public Lettering: Kindersley Inscriptions in the Open (with Lida Lopes Cardozo Kindersley and Tom Sherwood)(Cambridge: Cardozo Kindersley, 2020)

(ii) Edited Volumes

• Thinking through Style: Non-Fiction Prose of the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Michael Hurley and Marcus Waithe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)
• The Labour of Literature in Britain and France, 1830-1910: Authorial Work Ethics, ed. Marcus Waithe and Claire White (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
• The Cambridge Companion to William Morris, ed. Marcus Waithe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming c. 2022)

(iii) Pamphlets

• Ruskin at Walkley: An Illustrated Guide to the Online Museum (Bembridge, Isle of Wight: Guild of St George, 2011) (2nd edition, York, 2014)
• Ruskin and Craftsmanship (The Ruskin Lecture, 2015) (York: Guild of St George, 2015)

(iv) Articles and Essays

• 'Building Utopia: The Structural Medievalism of William Morris's News from Nowhere', in The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism, ed. Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)
• 'St George's Museum and John Ruskin's Reconstructive Intelligence', Ruskin Review, 14.2 (2020), 39-54
• 'Strenuous Minds: Walter Pater and the Labour of Aestheticism', in The Labour of Literature in Britain and France, 1830-1910: Authorial Work Ethics, ed. Marcus Waithe and Claire White (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 147-166
• 'Ruskin's Style of Thought: Animating Redescription in the Late Writings', in Thinking through Style: Non-Fiction Prose of the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Michael Hurley and Marcus Waithe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 183-200
• 'Uncanny Romance: William Morris and David Jones', in Timely Voices: Romance Writing in English Literature, ed. Goran Stanivukovic (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017), pp. 199-217
• 'Medievalism and Modernity', in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Late Victorian to Modern, ed. Laura Marcus, Michèle Mendelssohn and Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 21-37
• 'Ruskin's Cultural Legacies', in The Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin, ed. Francis O'Gorman (Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 263-278
• '"Another sort of writing"? Invalidism and Poetic Labour in the Letters of Elizabeth Barrett', in Letter Writing Among Poets: From William Wordsworth to Elizabeth Bishop, ed. Jonathan Ellis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pp. 126-140
• 'The St George's Museum', Forum: Victorian Built Environments, Victorian Review, 39.1 (Spring 2013), 35-39
• 'William Morris and the House Beautiful', in Oscar Wilde in Context, ed. Peter Raby and Kerry Powell (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 88-100
• 'William Barnes: Views of Field Labour in Poems of Rural Life', in The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry, ed. Matthew Bevis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
• 'John Ruskin and the Idea of a Museum', in Persistent Ruskin: Studies in Influence, Assimilation and Effect, ed. Keith Hanley and Brian Maidment (Ashgate, 2013), pp. 33-52
• 'The Pen and the Hammer: Thomas Carlyle, Ebenezer Elliott, and the "active poet"', in Class and the Canon: Constructing Labouring-Class Poetry and Poetics, 1780-1900, ed. Kirstie Blair and Mina Gorji (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2013), pp. 116-135
• 'Empson's Legal Fiction', Essays in Criticism, 62.3 (July, 2012), 279-301
• 'From Folklore to Folk Law: William Morris and the Popular Sources of Legal Authority', in The Voice of the People: Writing the European Folk Revival, 1760-1914, ed. Matthew Campbell and Michael Perraudin (London: Anthem Press, 2012), pp. 157-169
• 'Hill, Ruskin and Intrinsic Value', in Geoffrey Hill and his Contexts, ed. Piers Pennington and Matthew Sperling (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 133-149
• 'The Laws of Hospitality: Liberty, Generosity, and the Limits of Dissent in William Morris's The Tables Turned and News from Nowhere', The Yearbook of English Studies, 36:2 (2006), 212-229
• 'The Stranger at the Gate: Privacy, Property, and the Structures of Welcome at William Morris's Red House', Victorian Studies, 46:4, 2004, 567-595
• 'Hospitality and Household in William Morris's News from Nowhere', in Lectures d'une oeuvre: News from Nowhere, William Morris, ed. Beatrice Laurent (Editions du temps, 2004)
• '"The slow haul to forgive them": Geoffrey Hill and the Second World War', P.N. Review, 31:1, 2004, 77-80
• '"Whose Jerusalem"? - Prophecy and the Problem of Destination in Geoffrey Hill's "Canaan" and "Churchill's Funeral"', English, 51:201, 2002, 261-276
• 'News from Nowhere, Utopia and Bakhtin's Idyllic Chronotope', Textual Practice, 16:3, 2002, 459-472

(v) Academic Book Reviews

• T. L. Burton and K. K. Ruthven, eds, The Complete Poems of William Barnes, Vol I: Poems in the Broad Form of the Dorset Dialect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), in Modern Language Review, 111.3 (July, 2016), 860-1
• Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards, eds, John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre, in Victorian Studies, 55.2 (Winter 2013), 324-326
• Stuart Eagles's After Ruskin (OUP, 2011), Nineteenth-Century Prose, Special Issue: John Ruskin, 38.2 (Fall, 2011)
• Robert Hewison's Ruskin on Venice (Yale UP, 2009), The Eighth Lamp: Ruskin Studies Today, No. 5
• Jason Camlot's Style and the Nineteenth-Century British Critic (Ashgage, 2008), Victorian Studies, 51.2 (Winter 2009), 348-350
• Matthew Bevis, ed., Some Versions of Empson (OUP, 2007), Modern Language Review, 104.2 (April, 2009), 561-562
• 'Donne in Their Time', Essays in Criticism, 59.2, 2009, 157-165 (review of Dayton Haskin's John Donne in the Nineteenth-Century (OUP, 2007)
• Patrick Bridgwater's De Quincey's Gothic Masquerade (Rodopi, 2005), The Yearbook of English Studies, 36.2 (2006), 277-8
• 'The Reading World', The Cambridge Quarterly, 36.1 (2007), 90-94 (review of Philip Waller's Writers, Readers and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain 1870-1918 (OUP, 2006)
• Dinah Birch, ed., John Ruskin: Selected Writings (OUP, 2004), Modern Language Review, 101.3 (July 2006), 834-835
• Terence Dawson's The Effective Protagonist in the Nineteenth-Century Novel: Scott, Bronte, Eliot, Wilde (Ashgate, 2004), Modern Language Review, 101.3 (July, 2006), 834-835

(vi) Literary and Art Journalism

• Cover feature on Ruskin Bicentenary 2019, 'An Eye to the Future?', Apollo Magazine, February 2019, pp. 52-8
• Review of Gerhard Munthe: Norwegian Pioneer of Modernism, Apollo Magazine, November 2018, pp. 116-117.
• Feature on the re-opening of Emery Walker House, Hammersmith, Apollo Magazine, 18 May 2017 (online content)
• 'The "old house by the Thames" that inspired William Morris', Apollo Magazine, 7 September 2016 (online content)
• 'Accidental Affinities', review of A. S. Byatt's Peacock & Vine: Fortunty and Morris in Life and at Work, Apollo Magazine, September 2016, p. 119
• Review of Giles Waterfield, The People's Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800-1914, Apollo Magazine, January 2016
• Review of Sarah Quill's Ruskin's Venice: The Stones Revisited and Ken and Jenny Jacobson's Carrying off the Palaces: John Ruskin's Lost Daguerreotypes, Apollo Magazine, May 2015, pp. 106-7
• '"Dense Settling": Geoffrey Hill's Broken Hierarchies', P.N. Review, 219 (September-October 2014) (review of Geoffrey HIll, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012, ed. Kenneth Haynes (OUP, 2013)
• Review of Tony Pinkney, ed., We Met Morris: Interviews with William Morris, 1885-1896, The Times Literary Supplement, 14 October 2005, p. 34
• Review of Thomas J. Tobin, ed., Worldwide Pre-Raphaelitism, in The Times Literary Supplement, 11 March 2005, p. 29
• 'Angry and Engaged', review of Michael Hamburger's Wild and Wounded and August Kleinzahler's The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, P. N. Review, 31 (January-February, 2005), 3, 85-86
• 'Housman Country', review of Bromsgrove Poets, P. N. Review, 31 (September-October, 2004), 1, 93-94
• Review of David Clifford and Laurence Roussillon, eds, Outsiders Looking In: The Rossettis Then and Now, The Times Literary Supplement, 2 July 2004, p. 24 

(vii) Public Engagement

• BBC Radio 4, 'In Our Time' (5 July 2018): 'William Morris'
• 'Craftsmanship To-Day: A Symposium on Modern Making' (organized in collaboration with the Guild of St George), at the Art Workers' Guild, London, 24 October 2016 (keynote footage available on YouTube)
• 'Ruskin in Walkley', talk at Walkley Community Centre ('Ruskin in Sheffield' project), Sheffield, February 2015
• 'Victorian Utopias', British Library 'Discovering Literature' Project, 2014
• 'From Socialist News to Fine Art Printing: William Morris's News from Nowhere', British Library 'Discovering Literature' Project, 2014
• Ruskin at Walkley: Reconstructing the St George's Museum: www.ruskinatwalkley.org
• 'Charles Darwin and Victorian Travel Writing', in Darwin: For the Love of Science, ed. Andrew Kelly and Melanie Kelly (Bristol Cultural Development Partnership, 2008)
• 'Lines, Landscape and Anti-Modernism: Understanding Victorian Opposition to the Railways', in Brunel: In Love with the Impossible, ed. Andrew Kelly and Melanie Kelly (Bristol Cultural Development Partnership, 2006)
• BBC Radio 4, ‘Open Book’ (March 2006)