Research student receives Dissertation Fellowship to study in Texas
James Machin, a second-year English and Humanities PhD candidate, has successfully applied for a Dissertation Fellowship with the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
The award - supported by the Creekmore and Adele Fath Charitable Foundation and the University of Texas at Austin Office of Graduate Studies - will enable James to access the Ransom Center’s unique archives of classic weird fiction writers Arthur Machen (1863–1947), M. P. Shiel (1865–1947), and Lord Dunsany (1878–1958), as well as that of John Gawsworth (pen name of T. I. F. Armstrong, 1912–1970), the poet, writer, and editor who worked tirelessly to curate Machen’s and Shiel’s literary legacy in their later years, and was the author of by far the most detailed and comprehensive biography of Machen, only recently published by the Tartarus Press in 2005.
James is extremely grateful to the Ransom Center for granting the award and to Birkbeck for supporting his application, and keenly anticipates examining material of such central relevance to his thesis, which is a cultural history of early weird fiction with a focus on the period 1880 to 1939. He believes that access to these archives will prove invaluable to his project and very much looks forward to making the trip to Texas during the next academic year.