[
Jacqueline Banerjee, Associate Editor of the Victorian Web, took her BA (1st Class) and PhD degrees from King's College London, where she was joint winner of the Brewer Prize for English Literature at the end of her first year, and won University of London Finals and Postgraduate Studentships for her graduate studies. After holding lectureships in English literature at the Universities of British Columbia, Canada, and Cape Coast, Ghana, she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the University Grants Commission in India, which she held at the University of Poona. On returning to England she was awarded a Research Fellowship at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Both fellowships involved teaching (at Cambridge, supervisions). Subsequently she became a long-term Visiting Lecturer at Kobe College, Japan, and for many years taught in the graduate school of Konan University as well. During her husband's sabbatical in England in 1990-91, she was also an honorary faculty member at her alma mater, King's, giving tutorials and seminars on nineteenth-century literature. Since returning from Japan in 2001, she and her husband have been living in Surrey, UK, near their sons.
Her publications include Through the Northern Gate: Childhood and Growing Up in British Fiction, 1718-1901 (Peter Lang, 1996), Paul Scott (Writers and Their Works series, Northcote House/British Council, 1999), Literary Surrey (John Owen Smith, 2005), and numerous articles in a wide range of journals. Among the academic journals are College English, English, English Studies, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Victorian Newsletter. Her most recent academic publications have been "Charlotte Brontë's 'Pain-Pressed Pilgrimage' and Its Critical Reception" in The Victorian Newsletter (Fall 2008: 69-92); "Women of Affairs: Contrasting Images of Empire in Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet" in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (Vol. 44, no. 3 [2009]: 69-85); "A Good Start: The Making of Paul Harvey" (the TLS commentary of 7 January 2011, 14-15); and "'A Game of Cross-Purposes': Letters in George Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel" in English Studies (Vol. 92, no. 1 [February 2011]: 39-54). Her second book for the Writers and Their Work Series, entitled George Meredith, is due out in the summer of 2011.
A long-time regular reviewer for English Studies, she has also contributed both fiction and non-fiction to a variety of newspapers and magazines such as The Anglo-Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, The London Magazine, This England (mostly in the Literary Landscapes slot) and The Weekly Telegraph. She sent the first of many contributions to the Victorian Web about fifteen years ago.
Invited talks on local authors at arts centres, literary institutions and festivals include "A Stretch of the Imagination: The Thames in Literature," "Mole Valley's Literary Heritage," "Richard Jefferies: The Surbiton Years," "George Meredith's Talent for Friendship" and "The Hunting of Lewis Carroll and Other Local Authors." Her most recent talk, "Perspectives on the Victorian Architecture of Sliema" (February 2011), was an inaugural lecture for a new Heritage Association in Malta. She contributed to a BBC radio programme on Lewis Carroll, has advised programme researchers on subjects like crime in Victorian England, and continues to teach on a part-time basis.
She is a member of the Society of Authors and the Victorian Society.
Contact InformationDr. Banerjee can be reached via e-mail at jacqueline.banerjee@kclalumni.net.
Last modified 24 August 2011