Haunted Selves, Haunting Places in English Literature and Culture

Julian Wolfreys is Professor of English Literature at the University of Portsmouth, UK, and author and editor of numerous books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, and literary theory. He is also the author of a novel, Silent Music (2014) and three volumes of poetry.

• Introduction.- The Chapter Before the First: Dwelling and the Uncanny.- English Losses: Thomas Hardy and the Memory of Wessex.- All You Need is Love? Edward Thomas, Apostrophizing the Other.- ‘A parallel dimension’: The Haunted Streets and Spectral Poethics of the Neo-Victorian Novel.- ‘Can you tell me where my country lies?’: Re-membering, Re-presenting the Forgotten.- ‘Chewing through your Wimpey dreams’: Whimsy, Loss, and the ‘experience’ of the Rural in English Music and Art, 1966-1976.- ‘And for a moment’: Voicing the Landscape with Alice Oswald and John Burnside.- ‘It was suddenly hard winter’: Crossing the Field with John Burnside.- Place and Displacement: Julian Barnes and the Haunted Self.

“Well-researched, diverse, and comprehensive, Wolfreys’s thought-provoking interdisciplinary study opens up new ways of seeing ourselves and the world. A broad and wide-ranging monograph, Haunted Selves is a valuable contribution to English cultural and literary studies and is compelling reading for academics and non-academics alike. … Wolfreys invites readers to find new ways of understanding the poetics of space, self, and memory in a study that is a superb tribute to storytelling, celebrating the enduring power of literature … .” (Monika Kosa,Victoriographies, Vol. 11 (2), July, 2021)