Full-Time Faculty

Maria Frawley  
Ph.D., University of Delaware, 1991

My research interests are in nineteenth-century British literature, social history, and print culture. My earlier work on the culture of invalidism has led to a current interest in “transient illnesses” of Victorian Britain and to histories, narratives, and representations of institutional care (e.g., workhouses, asylums) in the period. I focus in ongoing research projects on issues of identity theft, the figure of the impostor, and the idea of imitability, especially as influenced by print culture. I have an abiding interest in Victorian women and social reform, and have small projects going on Florence Nightingale and Angela Burdett-Coutts. A “back-burner” project that originated in a series of classroom assignments on Jane Austen’s fiction is a book tentatively titled Jane Austen: Keywords.

Books:

Invalidism and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 2004)

Anne Brontë (Twayne, 1996)

A Wider Range: Travel Writing by Women in Victorian England (Associated University Presses, 1994)

Editor, Life in the Sick-Room, by Harriet Martineau. (Broadview Press, 2003)

Other Publications:

“The Victorian Age, 1832-1901,” In English Literature in Context. Cambridge UP

(forthcoming, 2007)

“‘Warriors for the Working Day’: History, Distance, and Collaborative Authority in

England and Her Soldiers.” CLIO’S Daughters: Victorian Women Write History.

Ed. Lynette Felber. University of Delaware Press. (forthcoming, 2007)

“Behind the Scenes of History: Harriet Martineau and The Lowell Offering.” Victorian

Periodicals Review (Summer 2005): 141-57.

“Borders and Boundaries, Perspectives and Place: VictorianWomen and the Art of Travel

Writing.” Intrepid Women: Victorian Artists Travel. Ed. Jordana Pomeroy.

Ashgate Press (2005): 27-38.

“Harriet Martineau, Health, and Journalism.” Women’s Writing. Martineau Bicentary Edition. 9, 3 (2002): 433-44.