Pete Orford is Course Director for the MA by Research in Charles Dickens Studies, as well as lecturing for undergraduates. He has a research background in Shakespeare and Dickens. He is the author of The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel and our endless attempts to end it, and the creator of The Drood Inquiry (www.droodinquiry.com), an interactive exploration of Dickens’ last story. He has contributed several articles and chapters to significant works including The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens and The Blackwell Companion to Charles Dickens. He is currently editing Pictures from Italy for OUP.
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
- Travel writing
- Fitz-James O’Brien
- Shakespeare
- Nineteenth-Century Literature
- Early Science-Fiction
External Roles
- Academic Associate of the Charles Dickens Museum, London
- Member of the Executive Board of the International Dickens Society
Contact Details
Recent Publications
- Pete Orford (ed.), Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens (Oxford: OUP, forthcoming)
- ‘Dickens and Serialisation’ in David Paroissien (ed.), A Companion to Charles Dickens, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell Wiley, forthcoming)
- ‘Dickens and Shakespeare’ in Juliet John and Claire Wood (eds), Dickens and the Arts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, forthcoming)
- ‘Speculation and Silence: Reading Dickens by instalment in time, at the time, and for all time’ in Leon Litvack (ed.), Reading Dickens Differently (Oxford: Blackwell Wiley, forthcoming)
- ‘The Unfinished Picture: The Mystery of Rosa Bud’ in Emily Bell (ed.), Dickens After Dickens (York: White Rose Press, forthcoming)Pete Orford, The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel and our endless attempts to end it (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2018)
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, 2018) - ‘Terry Pratchett’, ‘Philip Pullman’ and ‘J K Rowling’ in Tom Ue (ed.), The Dictionary of Literary Biography, 377: 21st Century Writers (Boston: Cengage Gale, 2015), pp. 200-210; 211-236; 250-7
- ‘Henry VI Part One’, ‘Henry VI Part Two’, ‘Henry VI Part Three’, ‘Richard II’ and ‘Henry V’, in Paul Edmondson, Paul Prescott and Erin Sullivan (eds), A Year of Shakespeare: Reliving the World Shakespeare Festival (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 76-9, 79-82; 82-4; 235-7; 243-6