Prof. Sarah Houghton-Walker
Biography
Sarah Houghton-Walker studied at St John's College, Cambridge, and then held a Research Fellowship there. Since 2007, she has been a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, where she is a Professor of English. She is also Co-Director of the Centre for John Clare Studies, which is based in the English Faculty.
Research Interests
Sarah works mainly on Romantic-period writers. She has published monograph studies of John Clare, of so-called 'gypsies' in the Romantic period, and of Wordsworth and repetition. She has also published a critical life of Clare, and edited the Cambridge Companion to Clare. She is currently writing a book for the Cambridge 'Lives in Ten Letters' series, and co-editing a volume of Wordsworth's poetry for Oxford Worlds Classics. Her other particular interests at the moment include the weather in Romantic-period literature, Jane Austen and music, and the Pauline idea of the 'gift' in Wordsworth's writing.
Areas of Graduate Supervision
Sarah has supervised graduate students working on various aspects of later eighteenth-century and Romantic-period literature and culture, and is particularly keen to work with those interested in William and Dorothy Wordsworth, John Clare, and Jane Austen.
Connect with Sarah
Publications
Sarah Houghton-Walker, John Clare: A Life in Ten Letters (CUP, forthcoming)
William Wordsworth, Poems, in Two Volumes, ed. by Sarah Houghton-Walker and Aditi Jain (Oxford Worlds Classics, forthcoming)
Sarah Houghton-Walker, 'Dorothy Wordsworth: Developing Critical Perspectives', in Dorothy Wordsworth in Context, ed. by Jessica Fay (CUP, forthcoming)
Sarah Houghton-Walker, John Clare (Reaktion Critical Lives, 2026)
Sarah Houghton-Walker, ed., The Cambridge Companion to John Clare (CUP, 2024)
Sarah Houghton-Walker, Wordsworth's Poetry of Repetition (OUP, 2023)
Sarah Houghton-Walker, 'Repetition in "The Robins Nest"', Romanticism 26.2, 2020
Sarah Houghton-Walker, ‘The Shepherd's Calendar and Forms of Repetition’, in Palgrave Advances in John Clare Studies, ed. by Simon Kovesi and Erin Lafford, Palgrave, 2020
Sarah Houghton-Walker, ‘The Coroners Report into the Death of Mary Joyce’, John Clare Society Journal 2018
Sarah Houghton-Walker, Representations of the Gypsy in the Romantic Period, Oxford University Press, 2014
Sarah Houghton-Walker, John Clare's Religion, Ashgate, 2009
Sarah Houghton-Walker, "Clare's Gypsies and Literary Influence", John Clare Society Journal 28, 2009
Sarah Houghton Walker, "John Clare's Gypsies", Romani Studies, 2009
Sarah Houghton-Walker, "Cowper's Gypsies", Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 2008
Sarah Houghton, "The 'Community' of John Clare's Helpston", Studies in English Literature, 1500 - 1900, 2006
Sarah Hougton, "John Clare and Revaluation", Literature Compass 2.1, 2005
Sarah Houghton, "'Some little thing of other days / Saved from the wreck of time': John Clare and Festivity", John Clare Society Journal 23, 2004
Sarah Houghton, "'Enkindling extacy': The Sublime Vision of John Clare", Romanticism 9.2, 2003