Professor Dinah Birch  joined us to give the concluding talk of our Lady Anna Big Read.

Professor Dinah Birch CBE, BA, MA, DPhil, FRSA, FEA

Professor Dinah Birch is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. She chaired REF2014 Sub-panel 29 (English Literature and Language) and was Deputy Chair of Main Panel D (Arts and Humanities), and Chair of Main Panel D in REF 2021.

Dinah has published widely on Victorian fiction and poetry, and on the work of the critic John Ruskin. Her books include Our Victorian Education (2007), and she is the general editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature (7th ed., 2009). She has published new editions of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (2011) and Anthony Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her? (2012) and The Small House at Allington (2014) with Oxford University Press. Her interest in prose style is reflected in recent essays on George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, and John Ruskin, and she has also published work on the Brontë family and 19c education. She served as a member of the Man Booker prize panel in 2012. She is a regular broadcaster and contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and London Review of Books. Dinah is currently writing a short introduction to Trollope’s life and work, to be published by Oxford University Press in February 2025.

Lady Anna was originally published in The Fortnightly Review, April 1873 – April 1874. First published in book format London, Chapman and Hall, 1874. 2 volumes.

Resources

• Plot summary and character listing for Lady Anna
• Download Lady Anna free of charge from Project Gutenberg