Although I have been rather quiet in this space, in the past year I have been able to devote more attention to my research endeavours. Although Victorian literature remains a core concern (more about that in a later post), European literature from the first half of the twentieth century is vying in importance. I have just returned from the bi-annual conference of the Europe Society for the Study of English, where I gave a paper on William Gerhardie's The Polyglots, a hilarious novel in which the breakdown of technologies of transport and communication echoes a breakdown in the form of the novel. My interest in European modernism has yielded two chapters (one on infrastructure in Stefan Zweig's Beware of Pity, the other on trauma and cosmopolitanism in Sándor Márai's Sirály), which are now under review. And most concretely, my thinking about Auden's "In Time of War" has materialized as an article in Partial Answers. In all these investigations, it has been hard not to be struck by the parallels with our own contemporary moment.

The conference in Mainz also gave me an opportunity to meet with the editorial board of the European Journal for English Studies. Earlier this year, I was invited to take over from Adam Piette as the book reviewer editor. It is a privilege to hold this position and am looking forward to putting the exciting work of European anglicists in the spotlight. ​