Lecturer in English Literature
Pete Orford is the editor of the popular Dickens On… series for Hesperus Press, and has written numerous journal articles and conference papers on Dickens’s works. He is a leading expert on the neglected writer Fitz-James O’Brien, a nineteenth-century Irish-American author and poet. Prior to his work on nineteenth-century literature, he studied at the Shakespeare Institute, where he researched the performances and critical reception of Shakespeare’s history plays over the past four centuries. He is currently studying the many solutions and sequels to Dickens’s last, unfinished, novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Qualifications
- BA, English Literature and Philosophy, University of Kent
- MA, University of Kent
- PhD, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Teaching Expertise
- Shakespearean Drama
- Nineteenth Century Literature
- Assignment Writing and Research Skills
Research Interests
- Charles Dickens
- Fitz-James O’Brien
- Shakespeare
- Nineteenth-Century Literature
- Early Science-Fiction
External Roles
- Lead blogger for the Dickens Journals Online reading project
Contact Details
- E-mail: peter.orford@buckingham.ac.uk
- Website: http://buckingham.academia.edu/PeteOrford
Recent Publications
- Pete Orford (ed.), Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens, Clarendon Dickens (Oxford: OUP, forthcoming)
- Pete Orford, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood“, in The Oxford Handbook to Charles Dickens, ed. by John Jordan, Robert Preston and Cathy Waters (Oxford: OUP, forthcoming)
- Pete Orford, “To begin with: Justifying Marley in A Christmas Carol“, The Dickensian 110.2 (Summer 2014), 145-153
- Pete Orford (ed.), Charles Dickens on Poverty (London: Hesperus Press, 2013)
- Pete Orford, “Unfamiliar in their mouths: the possible contributions of Fitz-James O’Brien to Household Words“, in Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press, ed. by Hazel Mackenzie and Ben Winyard (Buckingham: University of Buckingham Press, 2013)
- Pete Orford, “Richard II; Henry V; Henry VI Parts One, Two and Three”, in A Year of Shakespeare: Re-living the World Shakespeare Festival, ed. by Paul Edmondson, Paul Prescott, and Erin Sullivan (London: Bloomsbury, 2013)
Selected Publications
- Pete Orford, "An Italian Dream and a Castle in the Air", in Dickens and the City, ed. by Jeremy Tambling (Manchester: Ashgate, 2012), 157–65
- Pete Orford, "What are they? The Pseudo-mystery stories of Fitz-James O'Brien", Clues: A Journal of Detection, 30:2 (Autumn 2012), 10–18
- Pete Orford, "Capable but uninspired: Evaluating Frank Benson's Hesitant/Heroic History Cycle", Shakespeare Bulletin 29.2 (Summer 2011)
- Pete Orford, "Dickens and Science Fiction", 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 10 (2010)
- Pete Orford, "'A Little Bit of Paradise': Allegories of Eden in The Diamond Lens", Leeds Centre Working Papers in Victorian Studies, Vol. 12 (2012)
- Pete Orford (ed.), Dickens on Theatre (London: Hesperus Press, 2011)