Dr Emma Liggins

Academic and professional qualifications

I did my BA in English at the University of Manchester, then an MA in Victorian Literature at the University of Leeds. My PhD thesis, 'Representations of the Dead Body in Victorian Fiction' was also completed at the University of Leeds.

Previous employment

I worked as a lecturer in English at Edge Hill College of Higher Education from 1997-2004. I have been teaching at MMU since 2005.

Other academic service (administration and management)

Examinations Officer for English.

Why study ?

Undergraduate courses

I teach Approaches to Drama, Nineteenth-Century to Modernism, and The Fin de Siecle.

Postgraduate teaching

I also teach on the Gothic strand of the MA in English Studies, including the units The Rise of the Gothic and Gothic and Modernity.

Research expertise

Victorian sensation fiction, the New Woman, nineteenth-century Gothic, women's ghost stories, George Gissing, fin-de-siecle and modernist women's writing, women's magazines 1880s to 1940s.

Publications

• Featured Works

  E. Liggins (2020). The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories Gender, Space and Modernity, 1850-1945. Palgrave Macmillan.

  E. Liggins (2017). George Gissing, the Working Woman, and Urban Culture. Routledge.

  E. Liggins (2015). Beyond the haunted house? Modernist women's ghost stories and the troubling of modernity. In: British Women Short Story Writers: The New Woman to Now. Edinburgh University Press, pp.32-49.

  E. Liggins (2014). Not an Ordinary “Ladies’ Paper”: Work, Motherhood, and Temperance Rhetoric in the Woman’s Signal , 1894–1899. Victorian Periodicals Review. 47(4), pp.613-630.

  E. Liggins (2014). Odd Women? Spinsters, Lesbians and Widows in British Women's Fiction, 1850s–1930s. Manchester University Press.

  E. Liggins (2013). Gendering the Spectral Encounter at the Fin de Siècle: Unspeakability in Vernon Lee's Supernatural Stories. Gothic Studies. 15(2), pp.37-52.

• Books (authored/edited/special issues)

  E. Liggins (2020). The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories Gender, Space and Modernity, 1850-1945. Palgrave Macmillan.

  E. Liggins (2017). George Gissing, the Working Woman, and Urban Culture. Routledge.

  E. Liggins (2014). Odd Women? Spinsters, Lesbians and Widows in British Women's Fiction, 1850s–1930s. Manchester University Press.

  E. Liggins, A. Maunder, R. Robbins, EJ. Liggins (2010). The British Short Story. Palgrave MacMillan.

  EJ. Liggins (2001). Feminist readings of Victorian popular texts. EJ. Liggins, DD. Duffy. Ashgate Publishing.

• Journal articles

  Z. Brennan, E. Liggins, G. Wisker (2021). Introduction. Women's Writing. 28(4), pp.447-452.

  E. Liggins (2021). Heholt, Ruth, Catherine Crowe: Gender, Genre and Radical Politics. London: Routledge, 2021. 215 pp. Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. 17(2),

  E. Liggins (2020). The woman reader and what she wanted. Victorian Periodicals Review. 53(4), pp.611-615.

  E. Liggins (2018). The “Sordid Story” of an Unwanted Child: Militancy, Motherhood and Abortion in Elizabeth Robins’ Votes for Women! and Way Stations. Women's Writing. 25(3), pp.347-361.

  E. Liggins (2014). Not an Ordinary “Ladies’ Paper”: Work, Motherhood, and Temperance Rhetoric in the Woman’s Signal , 1894–1899. Victorian Periodicals Review. 47(4), pp.613-630.

  E. Liggins (2013). Gendering the Spectral Encounter at the Fin de Siècle: Unspeakability in Vernon Lee's Supernatural Stories. Gothic Studies. 15(2), pp.37-52.

  E. Liggins (2012). THE “MODERN SPINSTER'S LOT” AND FEMALE SEXUALITY IN ELLA HEPWORTH DIXON'S ONE DOUBTFUL HOUR. Women's Writing. 19(1), pp.5-22.

  E. Liggins (2007). 13 * Feminisms. The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory. 15(1), pp.240-257.

  E. Liggins (2007). ''The Life of a Bachelor Girl in the Big City'': Selling the Single Lifestyle to Readers of Woman and the Young Woman in the 1890s. Victorian Periodicals Review. 40(3), pp.216-238.

  E. Liggins (2004). Her mercenary spirit: women, money and marriage in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 1870s fiction. Women's Writing. 11(1), pp.73-88.

  E. Liggins (2000). ‘With a Dead Child in Her Lap’: Bad Mothers and Infant Mortality in George Egerton's Discords. Literature & History. 9(2), pp.17-36.

  E. Liggins (2000). Writing against the “husband-fiend”: syphilis and male sexual vice in the new woman novel. Women's Writing. 7(2), pp.175-195.

  E. Liggins (2000). Writing against the “husband-fiend”: syphilis and male sexual vice in the new woman novel. Women's Writing. 7(2), pp.175-195.

  E. Liggins (1997). The ‘Evil Days’ of the Female Murderer: subverted marriage plots and the avoidance of scandal in the Victorian sensation novel. Journal of Victorian Culture. 2(1), pp.27-41.

• Chapters in books

  E. Liggins (2023). The room I sit in: Women's refashioning of the drawing-room in fin-de-siecle and modernist writing. In: A Space of Their Own Women, Writing and Place 1850-1950. Routledge,

  E. Liggins (2017). Her Appearance in Public: Sexual danger, urban Space and the Working Woman. MH. Ryle, JB. Taylor. In: George Gissing: Voices of the Unclassed. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., pp.29-45.

  E. Liggins (2017). The legacy of Lucy Snowe: Reconfiguring spinsterhood and the Victorian family in inter-war women's writing. In: Charlotte Brontë: Legacies and afterlives. pp.164-181.

  E. Liggins (2017). ‘Women of True Respectability?’ Investigating the London Work-girl, 1880–1900. In: Women and Work Culture. Routledge, pp.89-106.

  E. Liggins, E. Nolan (2017). Introduction. N. Pissanidis, H. Roigas, M. Veenendaal. In: Learning in Sports Coaching Theory and Application. Informa UK Limited, pp.1-7.

  E. Liggins (2015). Beyond the haunted house? Modernist women's ghost stories and the troubling of modernity. In: British Women Short Story Writers: The New Woman to Now. Edinburgh University Press, pp.32-49.

  E. Liggins (2015). Beyond the haunted house? Modernist women's ghost stories and the troubling of modernity. In: British Women Short Story Writers. pp.32-49.

  E. Liggins (2013). At high pressure? The spinster and the costs of independence in Gissing's short stories, 1894-1903. C. Huguet, SJ. James. In: George Gissing and the Woman Question: Convention and Dissent. Ashgate Publishing Company, pp.69-83.

  E. Liggins (2011). Writing Women of the Fin de Siècle. AE. Gavin, C. Oulton. In: Writing Women of the Fin de Siècle: Authors of Change. Palgrave Macmillan, pp.98-110.

  E. Liggins (2006). Gissing and the City. J. Spiers. In: Gissing and the City: Cultural Crisis and the Making of Books in Late-Victorian England. Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp.100-108.

Expert reviewer for journals and publishers

I regularly review books and articles for Women's History Review, Literature & History and Women's Writing. I have also read manuscripts on Gothic Literary Studies for the University of Wales Press.

Projects and initiatives

I am currently involved in a project at Speke Hall, Liverpool, called The Gothic at Speke: Romance and Revival. An exhibition and series of lectures are running from February to July 2018.