I was educated at the University of Liverpool and King’s College London, and taught at King’s College London, the University of Roehampton, and the University of Chester before joining the Open University.
My research interests include Modernist fiction, the literature of the First World War, and the work of novelist, editor and critic Ford Madox Ford. I am a founder member of the Ford Madox Ford Society, of which I am currently Chair.
My teaching commitments include A230 Reading and Studying Literature, A174 Start Writing Fiction, A215 Creative Writing, and A150 Voices and Texts. I have also written material for EA300 Children’s Literature, and A300 Twentieth-Century Literature: Texts and Debates.
While at the University of Chester, I produced a CD-ROM on the poetry of Thomas Hardy – follow the link for a taster. This CD-ROM includes the Complete Poems and numerous audio and video extracts. It is on sale from the University of Chester (at £10). If you are interested in purchasing a copy, email me and I will send you the details.
My current research students are working on Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, and the literature of the First World War. Informal PhD enquiries are welcomed, but please also refer to the Postgraduate section of our departmental website for further relevant information.
Ford Madox Ford is the focus of much of my research. And it is Parade’s End that is my most recent major project. I began work with 3 colleagues on the definitive critical edition of the four magnificent novels that make up Parade’s End in 2007. Tom Stoppard’s interest in Ford’s novels had not yet hit the headlines, nor had his intention to produce a script – eventually destined for TV adaptation by the BBC/HBO. Filming of the series, directed by Susanna White, began in 2011, and a high point of the year was a visit to the set, to watch the filming of the golf scene in episode 1. I edited volume 3, A Man Could Stand Up- , in which the hero, Christopher Tietjens, and suffragette campaigner Valentine Wannop are united on Armistice Day. This edition is the first to be fully annotated and to contain authoritative corrected texts of the novels. Other related editing projects include Ford’s classic modernist text, The Good Soldier. Follow this link to read my introduction. I have also published work on Modernism and the First World War, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, the Brontës, Joseph Conrad, and on life writing. Nineteenth and twentieth-century cultural, social and political issues are at the heart of most of my research. I have written on Ford’s treatment of railway pathologies, for example, and of sexuality, as well as on his representations of the experience of war. Follow this link for an extract from a book chapter on railway pathologies and how they figure in Ford and in the work of his contemporaries.
I am currently at work on a book, ‘Victims of Time and Train’: from Victorian Invention to Modernist Novel, planning, along with other members of the Editorial Board, the book series International Ford Madox Ford Studies, and writing a chapter on Ford and gender for a new introduction to his work.
Follow this link for details of selected publications
Email: sara.haslam@open.ac.uk
