Demelza Hookway

School: College of Humanities
Department: English
Research Centre/Unit: Centre for Victorian Studies

My research explores representations of John Stuart Mill and Millian thought in Victorian literature and culture. I consider how Mill's ideas are debated and transformed in novels by Thomas Hardy, Mona Caird, and Olive Schreiner, and how Mill is represented in letters, diary entries and images.

My interest in Mill grew out of my Victorian Studies MA at Exeter, when I wrote a dissertation on constructions of public-spirited vocation in Mill’s On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, and his Autobiography, and George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda.

In between degrees I have worked in arts marketing, editorial project management and PR. In 2011, I co-organised the Graduate Student Panel for Hardy at Yale II and attended Dickens Universe at the University of Santa Cruz. I am currently organising two exhibitions of early children's literature as part of a joint project between Exeter Central Library and the University of Exeter Special Collections.