Pauline Morris (Doctoral Studentship Holder)

Pauline completed her Bachelor of Arts in English with History at Sunderland University in 1999 and in 2002 began a Master of Arts in Renaissance to Romanticism literature part-time, also at Sunderland, which she completed in 2004. Her interest in the subject of literary depression stems from a reading of Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. Because Charlotte's letters, included in the biography, often express deep feelings of sadness she became absorbed by the question of how far such feelings influenced her writing. She is currently researching how eighteenth-century writers expressed melancholy and despondency within their work. She is looking at popular understandings of depression and the ways in which depression was both represented and misrepresented during the period.