Professor James Mussell

Profile

I am Professor of Nineteenth-Century Print Cultures at the University of Leeds and Deputy Director of the Centre for the Comparative History of Print (Centre CHoP). 

I studied at the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield before completing a PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2004.  After completing my PhD I was postgraduate research assistant on the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition and taught at various universities in London.  I was Lecturer at the University of Birmingham 2007–2013, taking up my post in Leeds that autumn.

Responsibilities

• Director of Research and Innovation

Research interests

My research focuses on the nineteenth-century media.  My first book, Science, Time and Space in the Late Nineteenth-Century Periodical (Ashgate, 2007) looked at the way the forms of nineteenth-century periodicals affected the content within their pages.  While this book was in press, I was working on the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008), a major edition of six periodicals and newspapers.  This work led to my second book, The Nineteenth-Century Press in the Digital Age (Palgrave, 2012), which considered how the digitization of the nineteenth-century press changes our understanding of both press and period.  2012 also saw the publication of a co-edited book, W.T. Stead: Newspaper Revolutionary (British Library, 2012), a collection of essays that came out of the conference of the same name earlier that year.  With Laurel Brake, I also edited a special issue of 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century on Stead, which appeared in Spring 2013.

More recently, I was the PI on an AHRC Research Network, 'Making Waves: Oliver Lodge and the Cultures of Science, 1875–1940' (2013–2015), which looked at the different facets of Oliver Lodge’s career.  This led to the publication of a co-edited book (with Graeme Gooday), A Pioneer of Connection: Recovering the Life and Work of Oliver Lodge (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).  From 2015–2021 I served as Director of Centre CHoP, organising a number of events on campus and in the print room located in the basement of the School of English.  In this capacity, I was PI on a second AHRC Research Network, Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future, which looked at the legacy of letterpress, both in terms of the equipment that survives and its influence on typographic culture.  A co-edited book (with Caroline Archer-Parré), Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future was published by Peter Lang in 2023.

I am currently writing a monograph, provisionally entitled Whispers of Print, which looks at the way nineteenth-century printed texts reveal their contents.

I blog at jimmussell.com.  You can follow me on Twitter @jimmussell.

Publications

Major publications

• (Ed., with Caroline Archer-Parré), Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2023).
• (Ed., with Graeme Gooday), A Pioneer of Connection: Recovering the Life and Work of Oliver Lodge (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).
• (Ed., with Laurel Brake), 'W.T.Stead: Newspaper Revolutionary', special issue of 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 16 (2013).
• (Ed., with Laurel Brake, Ed King, and Roger Luckhurst), W.T. Stead: Newspaper Revolutionary (London: British Library, 2012).
• The Nineteenth-Century Press in the Digital Age (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012).
• (Ed., with others), Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (ncse) (2008).
• Science, Time and Space in the Late Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press (Aldershot: Ashgate 2007).

Journal articles

• ‘Confused and Ill-Arranged: Reading Miscellaneity with Enquire Within’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 53 (2020), 496–519. Published version (£). A postprint version is available via the White Rose repository (OA).
• ‘Night Work or Night Play: Periodicals, Archives, and Poole’s Index’, Media (B)Orders Between Periodicals and Books. Miscellaneity and Classification in Nineteenth Century Magazines and Literature, Pfennig Magazin zur Journalliteratur 4 (2019), 34-43. A postprint version will be available from the White Rose repository will be available shortly (OA).
• 'Repetition: Or, "In Our Last"', Victorian Periodicals Review, 48 (2015), 343–58.  Published version here (£).  A postprint version is available via the White Rose repository here (OA).
• '"Of the Making of Magazines There is No End": W.T. Stead, Newness, and the Archival Imagination', English Studies in Canada, 41 (2015),  69-91.  Published version here (£) or here (OA).  A postprint version is available via the White Rose Repository here (OA).
• (with Imogen Clarke) 'Conservative Attitudes to Old-Established Organs: Oliver Lodge and Philosophical Magazine', Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (2015). Published version available here (£). A postprint version is available from the White Rose Repository here (OA).
• '"Scarers in Print": Media Literacy from Our Mutual Friend to Friend Me On Facebook', Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism, 21 (2013 [actually published in 2015]), pp. 163-179. The published version is here (OA) and there is a copy in the White Rose repository here (OA).
• 'Elemental Forms: The Newspaper as Popular Genre in the Nineteenth Century', Media History, 20 (2014), pp. 4-20.  Published version available here (£).  A postprint version is available in the White Rose Repository here (OA).
• 'Specular Reflections: John Brett and the Mirror of Venus', 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 17 (2013), pp. 1-19.  Published version available here (OA) and via the White Rose Repository here (OA).
• (with Laurel Brake), ‘Introduction’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 16 (2013), 1-7.  Published version available here (OA) and in the University of Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• 'The Passing of Print: Digitizing Ephemera and the Ephemerality of the Digital’, Media History, 18 (2012), 77-92.  Published version available here (£). A postprint version of this paper is available in the University of Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA)
• 'Private Practices and Public Knowledge: Science, Professionalization and Gender in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, 5 (2009).  Published version available here (OA).  This is also available in the University of Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• 'Arthur Cowper Ranyard, Knowledge and the Reproduction of Astronomical Photographs in the Late Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press', British Journal for the History of Science, 42 (2009), pp. 321-344.  Published version available here (£) or in Birmingham’s ePrints repository here (OA).
• 'Cohering Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century: Form, Genre and Periodical Studies', Victorian Periodicals Review, 42 (2009), pp. 93-103.  Published version available here (£) and in Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• ‘Nineteenth-Century Popular Science Magazines, Narrative, and the Problem of Historical Materiality‘, Journalism Studies, 8 (2007), pp. 656-666. Published version available here (£). There is a postprint version in Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• ‘Pandemic in print: the spread of influenza in the Fin de Siècle‘, Endeavour, 31 (2007), pp. 12-17.
• (with Suzanne Paylor) ‘Mapping the “Mighty Maze”: the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century (2005).  Published version available here (OA).

Chapters in books

• (with Caroline Archer-Parré) ‘Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future’, in Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2023), pp. 1-16.
• ‘Trading in Death: Miscellaneity and Memory in the British Nineteenth-Century Press’, Reading Miscellanies, Miscellaneous Readings: Interrelations between Medial Formats, Novel Structures, and Reading Practices in the Nineteenth Century, ed. by Daniela Gretz, Marcus Krause, and Nico Pethes (Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2022), pp. 141-164.
• (with Graeme Gooday), ‘Oliver Lodge: Continuity and Communication’, in A Pioneer of Connection: Recovering the Life and Work of Oliver Lodge, ed. by James Mussell and Graeme Gooday (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), pp. 3-17.
• ‘“Body Separates: Spirit Unites”: Oliver Lodge and the Mediating Body’, in A Pioneer of Connection: Recovering the Life and Work of Oliver Lodge, ed. by James Mussell and Graeme Gooday (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), pp. 198-214.
• ‘“Seeking Nothing and Finding It”: Moving On and Staying Put in Mugby Junction’, Replication in the Long Nineteenth Century: Re-makings and Reproductions, edited by Linda Hughes and Julie Codell (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018). A post-print version of this will be available via the White Rose repository here once the embargo is lifted (OA).
• ‘Beyond the “Great Index”: Digital Resources and Actual Copies’, Journalism and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth Century Britain, edited by Joanne Shattock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 17-30. A post-print version of this is available via the White Rose repository here (OA).
• Digitization’, Routledge Companion to Victorian Periodicals, edited by Andrew King, Alexis Easley, and John Morton (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp. 17-28. A post-print version of this will be available in the White Rose repository here soon (OA).
• ‘The Foundation and Early Years of the News of the World: “Capacious Double Sheets”’, ‘Journalism for the Rich, Journalism for the Poor’: The News of the World and the British Press, 1843-2011, edited by Laurel Brake, Chandrika Kaul, and Mark Turner (Palgrave, 2016), pp.11-26. Published version is here (£). A post-print version of this will be available in the White Rose repository here soon (OA).
• (with Richard Altick), ‘Publishing’, A New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture, ed. by Herbert Tucker (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), pp.312-329.
• '"Characters of Blood and Flame": Stead and the Tabloid Campaign’, in W.T. Stead: Newspaper Revolutionary, edited by Laurel Brake, Ed King, Roger Luckhurst and James Mussell (London: British Library, 2012), pp. 22-36.  A post-print version of this chapter is available in the University of Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• 'Doing and Making: History as Digital Practice', in History in the Digital Age, ed. by Toni Weller (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 79-94.  A post-print version of this chapter is available in the University of Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• 'Writing the "Great Proteus of Disease": Influenza, Informatics, and the Body in the Late Nineteenth Century', in Minds Bodies Machines, 1790-1920, ed. by Deidre Coleman and Hilary Fraser (Palgrave: 2011), pp. 161-178. A post-print version of this chapter is available in the University of Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• 'Science', in Dickens in Context, ed. by Sally Ledger and Holly Furneaux (Cambridge University Press: 2011), pp. 326-333.  A post-print version of this chapter is available in the University of Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• 'Science and the Timeliness of Reproduced Photographs in the Late Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press', in The Lure of Illustration, ed. by Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), pp. 203-219.  A post-print version of this is available in the University of Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• (with Suzanne Paylor), 'Editions and Archives: Textual Editing and the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (ncse)', in Text Editing, Print, and the Digital World, ed. by Marilyn Deegan and Kathryn Sutherland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 137-158.  A post-print version of this chapter is available in the University of Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• 'Bug-Hunting Editors: Competing Interpretations of Nature in Late Nineteenth-Century Natural History Periodicals', in (Re)creating Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain: An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. by Amanda Mordavsky Caleb (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2007), pp. 81-96.  The published version of this chapter is available via the University of Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• '"This is Ours and For Us": The Mechanic's Magazine and low scientific culture in Regency London’, in Repositioning Victorian Sciences, ed. by David Clifford et al. (London: Anthem Press 2006), pp. 107-118.

Shorter articles and posts

• ‘Science Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Constructing Scientific Communities, ed. by Gowan Dawson, Bernard Lightman, Sally Shuttleworth, and Jonathan R. Topham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 424. $55.00 (cloth)’, Journal of British Studies, 62:1 (2020), 279-280.  Published version (here) (£).  A post-print version is available via the White Rose Repository here (OA).
• ‘Clare Pettitt, Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity, 1815-1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). 368pp. ISBN 9780198830429’, Journal of European Periodical Studies, 7:2 (2023), 167-170.  Published version available here (OA).
• ‘”A Revolution in the Making”: Theory, Practice, Print Culture’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 26 (2021), 355-6. Published version available here (OA). A post-print version will be available in the White Rose Repository here (OA) soon.
• ‘Maurice S. Lee. Overwhelmed: Literature, Aesthetics, and the Nineteenth-Century Information Revolution’, Journal of English Studies, 71 (2020), 1003-1005.
• ‘The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politics of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century, by Alex Csiszar; pp. xii + 376. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2018, $45.00, $35.00 paper, £34.00, £28.00 paper’, Victorian Studies, 62 (2020), 490-492.
• ‘Index: Periodical Parts and the Bookish Afterlife’, Victorian Review, 43 (2018), 204-7. This is available via the journal here (£). There is a postprint version in the White Rose Repository here (OA).
• Review of Howard Cox and Simon Mowatt, Revolutions from Grub Street: A History of Magazine Publishing in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), Sharp News, 25:1 (2016), 11.
• ‘Moving On By Staying the Same’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 21 (2016), 1-7. Published version here (£). A post-print version of this is available via the White Rose repository here (OA).
• ‘Newspapers’, Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, ed. by Dino Franco Felluga, Pamela K. Gilbert, and Linda K. Hughes (Blackwell, 2015). Available via Blackwell Reference Online here (£). A postprint version will be available from the White Rose Repository soon.
• '"In Chancery", Again', Dickens Our Mutual Friend Reading Project (1 February 2015).  Available here (OA).
• Five contributions to '(Re)Presenting the Archive', Archive Journal, 4 (2014).  Published version available here (OA).
• Review of Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era, Media History, 21 (2015), pp. 121-122.  Published version here (£).
• Review of Raw Data is an Oxymoron, Media History, 20 (2014), pp. 105-6.  Published version here (£).
• 'BJHS: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow', Viewpoint: Magazine for the British Society for the History of Science, 99 (October 2012), pp. 1-2.  This is available from the BSHS here.  I have also published this as a blog post here.
• 'Blogging about Hacking the Book', Journal of Victorian Culture Online (20 August 2012).  Published version available here (OA).
• 'Teaching Nineteenth-Century Periodicals Using Digital Resources: Myths and Methods', Victorian Periodicals Review, 45 (2012), pp. 201-209.  Published version available here (£) and in Birmingham's ePrints repository here (OA).
• Review of Dallas Liddle, The Dynamics of Genre: Journalism and the Practice of Literature in Mid-Victorian Britain (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2009), English Studies, 92 (2011), pp. 113-4.  Published version available here (£).
• 'Review of ProQuest Historical Newspapers, (review no. 1096)', Reviews in History (June 2011).  Published version available here (OA).
• 'Ownership, Institutions, Methodology', roundtable contribution to Journal of Victorian Culture, 13 (2008), 94-100.  Published version available here (£) or in Birmingham’s ePrints repository here (OA).
• 'Digital Culture, Materiality and Nineteenth-Century Studies', forum contribution to 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century (2008).  Published version available here (OA) and in the University of Birmingham's ePrints Repository here.
• Thirteen contributions to the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism (Proquest;  British Library and Academia Press 2008).
• Reviw of Grace Eckley, Maiden Tribute: A Life of W.T. Stead (Xlibris 2007), Sharp News, 18 (2009), 12.
• Review of Christine Ferguson, Language, Science and Popular Fiction in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle: the Brutal Tongue (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), English Literature in Transition, 50 (2007), 339-343.  Published version here (£).
• Review of Geoffrey Cantor et al., Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: Reading the Magazine of Nature (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2004), Science Serialized: Representations of the Sciences in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals, edited by Geoffrey Cantor and Sally Shuttleworth (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press 2004), Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media, edited by Louise Henson et al. (Aldershot: Ashgate 2004), Media History, 12 (2006), 225-231.
• ‘The “Reviewers Reviewed”: Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical’, a review essay in Metascience, 14 (2005), pp. 363-370.  Published version available here (£).

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Some research projects I'm currently working on, or have worked on, will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

• Letterpress Printing: Past, Present, Future

Student education

I teach widely across the School of English, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.  At the moment, I usually offer two modules, Victoria’s Secrets: Secrecy in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture’ (undergraduate) and Victorian New Media (postgraduate).  I usually also contribute to the undergraduate core module Victorian Literature.

I am happy to supervise doctoral students in the following areas:

• Victorian literature and culture
• Literature and science
• Digital humanities
• media history / print culture

Contact me if you’re interested in pursuing doctoral research in any of these areas (or those aligned).

 

Research groups and institutes

• Textual Histories Research Group
• Centre for the Comparative History of Print

Current postgraduate researchers

• Mary Chapman
• Jay Kerslake

<h4>Postgraduate research opportunities</h4> <p>We welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study. Our <a href="https://phd.leeds.ac.uk">research opportunities</a> allow you to search for projects and scholarships.</p>