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Professor Margaret Harris

Professor Margaret Harris

PhD Lond. MA
Director of Research, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Research group

Selected publications

Books

  • Dearest Munx: The Letters of Christina Stead and William J. Blake (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2005). xviii + 558 pp.
  • The Magic Phrase: Critical Essays on Christina Stead, ed. Margaret Harris (University of Queensland Press, 2000). xiv + 305 pp.
  • The Journals of George Eliot, ed. Margaret Harris and Judith Johnston (Cambridge University Press, 1998). xxv + 447 pp. Repr. 1999; paperback (rev. edn.) 2000.
  • Victorian Journalism: Exotic and Domestic, ed. Barbara Garlick and Margaret Harris (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1998). ix + 228 pp.
  • Reconnoitres: Essays in Australian literature in honour of G.A. Wilkes, ed. Margaret Harris and Elizabeth Webby (Melbourne: Oxford University Press/Sydney University Press, 1992). xi + 252 pp.
  • The Notebooks of George Meredith, ed. Gillian Beer and Margaret Harris, Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Romantic Reassessment 73:2 (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, 1983). xii + 216 pp.
  • A Checklist of the Three-Decker Collection in the University of Sydney Library (Sydney: Department of English and the Library of the University of Sydney, 1980). ix + 340 pp.
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Editions of Texts

  • George Eliot, Middlemarch, ed. Margaret Harris and Judith Johnston (London, Everyman Paperbacks, 1997). xxxiv + 814 pp.
  • Arnold Bennett, Anna of the Five Towns, ed. Margaret Harris (World's Classics, Oxford University Press, 1995). xxviii + 227 pp.
  • Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale, ed. Margaret Harris (World's Classics, Oxford University Press, 1995). xxix + 644 pp.
  • George Meredith, The Egoist, ed. Margaret Harris (World's Classics, Oxford University Press, 1992). xxxi + 578 pp.
  • George Meredith, Beauchamp's Career, ed. Margaret Harris (World's Classics, Oxford University Press, 1988). xxxix + 594 pp.
  • George Meredith, One of our Conquerors, ed. Margaret Harris (Victorian Texts III, University of Queensland Press, 1975). lii + 514 pp.

Chapters in books (since 2000)

  • “Mr Crowfoot”, by Christina Stead, ed. Margaret Harris, in Travellers' Tales (Best Stories under the Sun, vol. 2), ed. Michael Wilding and David Myers (Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 2005), pp. 28-34.
  • “(Caroline) Louisa Waring Atkinson (1834-1872)”, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), 2: 837-8.
  • “Jessie Catherine Couvreur (1848-1897)”, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), 13: 725-6.
  • “George Meredith (1828-1909)”, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), 37: 861-70.
  • Introduction (with Fiona Morrison) to Christina Stead, The Little Hotel (Sydney: Richmond, 2003), ix-xiv.
  • “George Meredith at the Crossways”, in A Companion to the Victorian Novel, ed. William Baker and Kenneth Womack (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002), 341-52.
  • “Christina Stead and her Critics”, in The Magic Phrase: Critical Essays on Christina Stead, ed. Margaret Harris (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2000), 1-22.
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Articles in refereed journals (since 2000)

  • “George Eliot's Conversation with Currer Bell”, George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies, 50-51 (2006), 130-42.
  • “Taking bearings: Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South Televised”, Sydney Studies in English, 32 (2006), 65-82.
  • “Australia's Victorian Vestiges”, Victorian Literature and Culture, 34 (2006), 342-346.
  • “Charles Waldstein waits upon George Eliot” (with Christopher Stray), George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies, 44-45 (2003), 12-25.
  • “George Eliot: Elegies and Eulogies”, The George Eliot Review, 34 (2003), 28-42.
  • “The Antipodean Anatomy of Victorian Studies”, AUMLA: The Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, 100 (2003), 61-72.
  • Guest editor of JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 2 (2003), a special issue focussing on Christina Stead on the occasion of the centenary of her birth. The issue included two articles by me: “Christina Stead at 100”, JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 2 (2003), 5-12; and “Christina Stead in Japanese”, 99-103.
  • “Ron Geering and Stead Scholarship”, Southerly, 63:3 (2003), 9-10.
  • “Love and death in the last letters of Christina Stead and William J. Blake”, Southerly, 63:3 (2003), 76-87.
  • “George Eliot on Stage and Screen”, Arts: The Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association, 24 (2002), 27-49.
  • “Hobart and 'Home' in Tasma and Mrs Humphry Ward”, in Australian Literary Studies in the 21st Century, ed. Philip Mead (Melbourne: Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 2001), 135-44.
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Contributions to reference works since 2000

  • 60 entries for The Oxford Companion to George Eliot, ed. John Rignall (Oxford University Press, 2000; rev. edn. (paperback), 2001). Total approx. 40,000 words (one-eighth of the volume), individual entries ranging from 200 to 5,000 words: appearance, personal; Bennett, Arnold; biographies of George Eliot; Braddon, Mary Elizabeth; Browning, Oscar; Burton, Frederic; composition, method of; Congreve, Richard and Maria; crime; Cross, John Walter and the Cross family; earnings of George Eliot; “Evangelical Teaching: Dr Cumming”; films; Florence; Ford Madox Ford; E. M. Forster; Gosse, Edmund; health; Hill, Octavia; “How I came to write Fiction”; “Influence of Rationalism, The”; Italy; journalist, George Eliot as; journals of George Eliot (with Judith Johnston); “Lord Brougham's Literature”; manuscript collections; Manzoni, Alessandro; medicine and health; Meredith, George; money and debt; Morley, John; Müller, Friedrich Max; Naples; notebooks of George Eliot; “Notes on Form in Art”; obituaries of George Eliot; Oliphant, Margaret; pets owned by George Eliot; “Poetry and Prose from the Notebook of an Eccentric”; “Progress of the Intellect, The”; projected works; pseudonym, choice of; publishers; publishers, negotiations with; Rome; Romola; servants, domestic; “Servants' Logic”; Stephen, Leslie; Stuart, Elma; Taylor, Peter Alfred and Clementia; technology; television adaptations; theatre; theatrical adaptations; travels; Venice; Ward, Mrs Humphry.
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Areas of teaching and specific topics

Teaching

  • Nineteenth-century and twentieth-century literature, especially fiction

Specific Topics

  • Nineteenth-century novelists, especially George Eliot and George Meredith
  • Minor nineteenth-century fiction
  • Christina Stead
  • Critical textual editing
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Recent and Current Grants

  • ARC Discovery Grant, 2005-7: George Eliot: The Life of a Pseudonym.
  • As joint Chief Investigator
    ARC Linkage Project Grant 2005-7, with Dr Drusilla Modjeska (CI) and Ms Nikki Christer (PI), From Thesis to Book: issues in commercial publication of scholarly work.
  • As Contributor (one of five; Project Leader, Professor Ian Donaldson, ANU):
    ARC Learned Academies Special Project Grant 2005, Promoting scholarly writing for the public sphere.
  • In recent years I have held a number of collaborative grants, particularly for e-Humanities initiatives (e.g, in 2003, as Project Leader, ARC Special Research Initiatives Seed-funding, for The Australian e-Humanities Research Network). I have also held individual grants funded by the University of Sydney and the Australian Research Council (e. g. in 2001, University of Sydney Sesqui R and D Grant, “The Correspondence of Christina Stead and William J. Blake”; in 2000, Australian Research Council Small Grant, with Dr Kate Lilley: "Pilot study for an electronic edition of the works of John Tranter").
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Journal editorship, and editorial and advisory boards

  • Editor (co-editor Anthony Miller), Sydney Studies in English.
  • Editorial board, The George Eliot Review (University of Warwick), George Eliot and George Henry Lewes Studies (Northern Illinois University); AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association; Australasian Victorian Studies Journal; JASAL: Journal of the Association for Studies in Australian Literature: Literature and Aesthetics.
  • Advisory Board, Academy Editions of Australian Literature; Editorial Board, Otago Studies in English; Editorial Board, Long Histories (University of Western Australia Press).
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Current Projects

  • George Eliot: theh life of a pseudonym
  • critical study of George Meredith
  • nineteenth-century fiction on film
  • collected edition of Christina Stead's novels
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