Eva Dema, St John's

Degree: PhD
Course: English
Supervisor: Dr Ruth Abbott
Dissertation Title:

Thomas Hardy and the Modern Manuscript (1898-1928)


Biographical Information

I studied at St. John's College, Cambridge for both my BA in English and an MPhil in Modern and Contemporary Literature. After taking a year away from academia - during which I worked with various charities focused on advancing social and educational mobility - I returned to Cambridge to begin an AHRC-funded PhD in 2021. Before coming to Cambridge I was educated entirely at state schools in South London and, as a first-generation student born and raised in social housing, I'm particularly interested in issues relating to access to higher education. I welcome all students from underrpresented backgrounds to contact me regarding higher education and/or studying English: eod22@cam.ac.uk.

For Lent Term 2024, I will be a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, working on a project focused on the international manuscript market at the turn of the twentieth century. During Summer 2024, I will be taking up the William H. Helfand Fellowship at the Grolier Club of New York to continue my work on this project.

In 2023, I was awarded two international academic prizes: The Review of English Studies Essay Prize for my work on Thomas Hardy, and the inaugural David Paroissien Prize for my work on Charles Dickens. The former prize is awarded to the best article in the field of English Literature by a current or recent postgraduate student, while the latter is awarded by the Dickens Society to the best article or book chapter published on Dickens each year. I have also received a number of general academic awards, including a Vice-Chancellor’s Award from the University of Cambridge; a full MPhil Scholarship from St. John’s College, Cambridge; and an Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Studentship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UKRI).

Research Interests

My thesis centres on Thomas Hardy's poetry manuscripts, and marks the first critical study of the revisions the author made to his verse, rather than his prose. More broadly, it seeks to establish the significance of these largely unstudied documents within the histories of both manuscript studies and close reading practices.

Areas of Interest: 19th century literature; revision; manuscripts & textual studies; book history & collecting; literary labour; working-class literature; dialect & (non)translation; contemporary poetry (particularly relating to class and/or queerness); Thomas Hardy; Charles Dickens; Edward Thomas; Siegfried Sassoon; Frank O'Hara.

Selected Publications

Journal Articles:

  • ‘‘Sacred to the Memory’: Thomas Hardy’s Tombstones’, The Review of English Studies (2024): https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgae028 [Winner of the Review of English Studies Essay Prize]
  • ‘‘Wind, wind, wind, always winding am I’: Dickens’s Metafictional Clockwork’, The Review of English Studies, 73 (June 2022), 552-567: https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgab094 [Winner of the David Paroissien Prize, awarded by the Dickens Society]

Book Reviews: