Dr Matthew Mauger, BA (Warwick) MA (Queensland) PhD (London)

Profile

I have been based at Queen Mary since 2001, first as a PhD student, and more recently as a lecturer in the Department of English. I specialize in eighteenth-century literature and the Digital Humanities, with a particular emphasis - in both my research and teaching - on London as a cultural and commercial centre. My recent work focusses on the British encounter with China via the eighteenth-century East India trade. I’ve written books on the cultural history of tea and on the criminal world of eighteenth-century London, and have recently published a monograph on William Blake and eighteenth-century legal writing.

Undergraduate Teaching

My teaching has two main focuses, both related to my research: an intellectual curiosity about the life and literature of the eighteenth-century city of London, and an interest in skills and practices associated with Digital Humanities. I regularly number among the lecturers on the popular second year eighteenth-century module Representing London, and have convened Reading William Blake. I also co-convene Criticism and Code, a module  offered to final year students keen to explore practically the exciting and experiment field of Digital Humanities.

I have taught on:

• ESH288: Representing London: The Eighteenth Century
• ESH351: Reading William Blake
• ESH6000: English Research Dissertation
• ESH6087: Criticism and Code

Research

Research Interests:

• Global commerce, culture, and identity in the eighteenth century
• Digital humanities methods and practices
• Intellectual, literary, and commercial life of the city of London in the eighteenth-century
• Poetry of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries
• Enlightenment legal discourse and the history of crime

Recent and ongoing research

My research focuses on the literary and intellectual life of London in the eighteenth century, and on the tracing the eighteenth-century flows of commodities, people, and ideas between Britain and the part of the world described in the period as 'the East Indies'. I have published articles on Blake’s legislative architecture, the literature of penal transportation, forms of trade literature (such as gauger’s guides), and on the City of London as a space for commerce, mercantile life, and civic government. With Markman Ellis and Richard Coulton I have published a study on the cultural history of tea across the long-eighteenth century (The Empire of Tea: How an Asian Leaf Conquered Britain. With Richard Coulton and Chris Reid I have also published a collaborative study exploring the theft of books in eighteenth-century London (Stealing Books in Eighteenth-Century London). Most recently, I have published a monograph – William Blake and the Visionary Law – which explores Blake’s obsessive focus on the legal structures which define human society.

In my ongoing teaching and research, I am also interested in the use of digital humanities methods, and forms of online publication. I have been working with undergraduate students on ESH6087 Criticism and Code (which I convene alongside Richard Coulton) to develop an online edition of Laurence Sterne's fragmentary novel A Sentimental Journey. With Richard, I have also been developing a website -- EIC Manuscript Journeys -- which presents online editions of East India Company ships' logs of the early-eighteenth century, together with visualisations of their journeys from Britain across the Indian Ocean world.

Publications

Supervision

I would welcome enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in any of the areas of my research.