![Holly Furneaux BA, MA, PhD (University of London)](https://profiles-cardiff.imgix.net/attachments/1772?w=200&h=200&auto=format&crop=faces&fit=crop&q=90")
Professor Holly Furneaux
(she/her)
BA, MA, PhD (University of London)
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Teams and roles for Holly Furneaux
Overview
I teach and research Victorian literature and culture, with an emphasis on the cultural history of war, gender, the history of sexuality, and the history of emotions.
My recent AHRC project 'Strange Meetings: Enemy Encounters 1800-2020' culminated with the publication of a co-edited interdisciplinary collection, Enemy Encounters in Modern Warfare and my latest monograph Enemy Intimacies and Strange Meetings in Writings of Conflict 1800-1918 (forthcoming Oxford University Press, May 2025). This explores emotional and material exchanges across sides in literature and life-writing with attention to truces, battle aftermath, and prisoners of war. The research is featured in Imperial War Museum's exhibition 'War and the Mind' and helped to shape the acclaimed Coming Home, a comic featuring veterans' stories. I am now working on a cultural history of international adoption in the Victorian period.
My previous books include Military Men of Feeling: Emotion, Touch and Masculinity in the Crimean War (2016) and Queer Dickens: Erotics, Families, Masculinities (2009). I curated an exhibition ‘Created in Conflict: Soldier Art from the Crimean War to the Present’ at Compton Verney in 2018 and was adviser to the BBC’s Dickensian (screened 2015-16).
I have supervised a range of great PhDs and would be glad to hear from post-graduate and post-doctoral applicants.
Publication
2025
- Furneaux, H. 2025. Enemy intimacies and strange meetings in writings of conflict 1800–1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (10.1093/9780198913573.003.0001)
2020
- Shaw, P. , Furneaux, H. and Wilson-Scott, J. 2020. War, wounding and intimacies. Critical Military Studies 6 (2), pp.115-117. (10.1080/23337486.2020.1759315)
2018
- Furneaux, H. 2018. Domesticity and queer theory. In: Patten, R. L. , Jordan, J. O. and Waters, C. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens. Oxford Handbooks Oxford: Oxford University Press. , pp.372-387.
- Furneaux, H. 2018. 'Even Supposing': Reading/writing outside the marriage plot in Dickens fan fiction. In: Galvan, J. and Michie, E. eds. Replotting Marriage in Nineteenth-Century British Literature. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. , pp.171-190.
2016
- Furneaux, H. 2016. Military men of feeling: Emotion, touch, and masculinity in the Crimean War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2015
- Bates, R. , Furneaux, H. and Massie, A. 2015. Charting the Crimean War: contexts, nationhood, afterlives. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 20 13 May 2015. (10.16995/ntn.725)
- Furneaux, H. and Prichard, S. 2015. Contested objects: curating soldier art. Museum & Society 13 (4), pp.447-461. (10.29311/mas.v13i4.346)
2014
- Furneaux, H. 2014. (Re)writing Dickens queerly: The correspondence of Katherine Mansfield. In: Kujawska-Lis, E. and Krawczyk-Łaskarzewska, A. eds. Reflections on/of Dickens. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. , pp.121-137.
- Furneaux, H. 2014. Victorian masculinities, or military men of feeling: domesticity, militarism, and manly sensibility. In: John, J. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture. Oxford Handbooks Oxford: Oxford University Press. , pp.211–230. (10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199593736.013.010)
2013
- Furneaux, H. 2013. Children of the regiment: soldiers, adoption, and military tenderness in Victorian culture. Victorian Review 39 (2), pp.79-96. (10.1353/vcr.2013.0046)
- Furneaux, H. 2013. Household Words and the Crimean War: journalism, fiction and forms of recuperation in wartime. In: Drew, J. ed. Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press. Buckingham: University of Buckingham Press. , pp.245-260.
2012
- Furneaux, H. 2012. Dickens, sexuality and the body; or clock loving: Master Humphrey’s queer objects of desire. In: John, J. ed. Dickens and Modernity. Vol. 65, Essays and Studies Boydell and Brewer. , pp.41-60.
- Furneaux, H. 2012. What I call home: Using Dickens in the classroom to think about forms of family. The Use of English 64 (1), pp.13-22.
2011
- Furneaux, H. 2011. Inscribing friendship: John Forster’s Life of Dickens and the writing of male intimacy in the Victorian period. Life Writing 8 (3), pp.243-256. (10.1080/14484528.2011.578337)
- Furneaux, H. 2011. Victorian sexualities. Literature Compass 8 (10), pp.767-775. (10.1111/j.1741-4113.2011.00834.x)
2010
- Furneaux, H. 2010. Negotiating the gentle-man: male nursing and class conflict in the ‘high’ Victorian period. In: Birch, D. and Llewellyn, M. eds. Conflict and Difference in Nineteenth Century Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. , pp.109-125.
2009
- Furneaux, H. 2009. Emotional intertexts: female romantic friendship and the anguish of marriage. Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies 14 (2), pp.25-37.
- Furneaux, H. 2009. Queer Dickens: erotics, families, masculinities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2007
- Furneaux, H. 2007. Charles Dickens’ families of choice: elective affinities, sibling substitution, and homoerotic desire. Nineteenth Century Literature 62 (2), pp.153-192. (10.1525/ncl.2007.62.2.153)
- Furneaux, H. 2007. Hold the “matrimonial sauce”: the celebration of bachelorhood in Collins and Dickens. In: Mangham, A. ed. Wilkie Collins: Interdisciplinary Essays. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. , pp.22-36.
2005
- Furneaux, H. 2005. Gendered cover-ups: live burial, social death and coverture in Mary Braddon's fiction. Philological Quarterly 84 (4), pp.425-450.
- Furneaux, H. 2005. “It is impossible to be gentler”: the homoerotics of male nursing in Dickens’s fiction. Critical Survey 17 (2), pp.34-47.
- Furneaux, H. 2005. “Worrying to death”: reinterpreting Dickens’s critique of the new Poor Law in Oliver Twist and contemporary adaptations. The Dickensian 101 (3), pp.213-224.
Articles
- Bates, R. , Furneaux, H. and Massie, A. 2015. Charting the Crimean War: contexts, nationhood, afterlives. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 20 13 May 2015. (10.16995/ntn.725)
- Furneaux, H. 2007. Charles Dickens’ families of choice: elective affinities, sibling substitution, and homoerotic desire. Nineteenth Century Literature 62 (2), pp.153-192. (10.1525/ncl.2007.62.2.153)
- Furneaux, H. 2013. Children of the regiment: soldiers, adoption, and military tenderness in Victorian culture. Victorian Review 39 (2), pp.79-96. (10.1353/vcr.2013.0046)
- Furneaux, H. 2009. Emotional intertexts: female romantic friendship and the anguish of marriage. Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies 14 (2), pp.25-37.
- Furneaux, H. 2005. Gendered cover-ups: live burial, social death and coverture in Mary Braddon's fiction. Philological Quarterly 84 (4), pp.425-450.
- Furneaux, H. 2011. Inscribing friendship: John Forster’s Life of Dickens and the writing of male intimacy in the Victorian period. Life Writing 8 (3), pp.243-256. (10.1080/14484528.2011.578337)
- Furneaux, H. 2005. “It is impossible to be gentler”: the homoerotics of male nursing in Dickens’s fiction. Critical Survey 17 (2), pp.34-47.
- Furneaux, H. 2011. Victorian sexualities. Literature Compass 8 (10), pp.767-775. (10.1111/j.1741-4113.2011.00834.x)
- Furneaux, H. 2012. What I call home: Using Dickens in the classroom to think about forms of family. The Use of English 64 (1), pp.13-22.
- Furneaux, H. 2005. “Worrying to death”: reinterpreting Dickens’s critique of the new Poor Law in Oliver Twist and contemporary adaptations. The Dickensian 101 (3), pp.213-224.
- Furneaux, H. and Prichard, S. 2015. Contested objects: curating soldier art. Museum & Society 13 (4), pp.447-461. (10.29311/mas.v13i4.346)
- Shaw, P. , Furneaux, H. and Wilson-Scott, J. 2020. War, wounding and intimacies. Critical Military Studies 6 (2), pp.115-117. (10.1080/23337486.2020.1759315)
Book sections
- Furneaux, H. 2012. Dickens, sexuality and the body; or clock loving: Master Humphrey’s queer objects of desire. In: John, J. ed. Dickens and Modernity. Vol. 65, Essays and Studies Boydell and Brewer. , pp.41-60.
- Furneaux, H. 2018. Domesticity and queer theory. In: Patten, R. L. , Jordan, J. O. and Waters, C. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens. Oxford Handbooks Oxford: Oxford University Press. , pp.372-387.
- Furneaux, H. 2018. 'Even Supposing': Reading/writing outside the marriage plot in Dickens fan fiction. In: Galvan, J. and Michie, E. eds. Replotting Marriage in Nineteenth-Century British Literature. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. , pp.171-190.
- Furneaux, H. 2007. Hold the “matrimonial sauce”: the celebration of bachelorhood in Collins and Dickens. In: Mangham, A. ed. Wilkie Collins: Interdisciplinary Essays. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. , pp.22-36.
- Furneaux, H. 2013. Household Words and the Crimean War: journalism, fiction and forms of recuperation in wartime. In: Drew, J. ed. Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press. Buckingham: University of Buckingham Press. , pp.245-260.
- Furneaux, H. 2010. Negotiating the gentle-man: male nursing and class conflict in the ‘high’ Victorian period. In: Birch, D. and Llewellyn, M. eds. Conflict and Difference in Nineteenth Century Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. , pp.109-125.
- Furneaux, H. 2014. (Re)writing Dickens queerly: The correspondence of Katherine Mansfield. In: Kujawska-Lis, E. and Krawczyk-Łaskarzewska, A. eds. Reflections on/of Dickens. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. , pp.121-137.
- Furneaux, H. 2014. Victorian masculinities, or military men of feeling: domesticity, militarism, and manly sensibility. In: John, J. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture. Oxford Handbooks Oxford: Oxford University Press. , pp.211–230. (10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199593736.013.010)
Books
- Furneaux, H. 2025. Enemy intimacies and strange meetings in writings of conflict 1800–1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (10.1093/9780198913573.003.0001)
- Furneaux, H. 2016. Military men of feeling: Emotion, touch, and masculinity in the Crimean War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Furneaux, H. 2009. Queer Dickens: erotics, families, masculinities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Research
My research is in Victorian literature and culture, with an emphasis on the cultural history of war, gender, forms of family, sexuality, touch and emotion.
My recent AHRC project 'Strange Meetings: Enemy Encounters 1800-2020' , in partnership with Imperial War Museum, Military Medical Museum, and Re-Live, an arts for health charity, explored soldiers' interactions between sides. It culminated with the publication of a co-edited interdisciplinary collection, Enemy Encounters in Modern Warfare and my latest monograph Enemy Intimacies and Strange Meetings in Writings of Conflict 1800-1918 (forthcoming Oxford University Press, May 2025). This explores emotional and material exchanges across sides in literature and life-writing with attention to truces, battle aftermath, and prisoners of war. The research is featured in Imperial War Museum's exhibition 'War and the Mind' and helped to shape the acclaimed Coming Home, a comic featuring veterans' stories. This feature in The Conversation gives an overview of the project and its impacts.
Having published an essay on adoptions of enemy children in wartime, I am now working on a cultural history of international adoption in the Victorian period. I am interested in the personal and political dimensions of representations and lived experiences of the children and families involved, and how these are shaped by imperialism.
My earlier AHRC funded project Military Men of Feeling, in partnership with the National Army Museum, focused on the Crimean War. The project investigated overlooked aspects of soldiers' felt experience, such as family feeling in regiments, soldier adoptions, the production of trench art, and battlefield nursing. Recognising a widespread cultural emphasis on the gentle soldier, this project deposed persistent ideas about Victorian masculinity as well as enhancing our understanding of the complexities of battlefield feeling. It resulted in an OUP book in 2016 and an exhibition in 2018 at Compton Verney art gallery ‘Created in Conflict: Soldier Art from the Crimean War to the Present’.
Following my first book Queer Dickens (2009) I continue to work in Dickens studies, and have recently published articles on queer Dickens fan fiction and on Dickens’s antisocial women. I was an adviser for the BBC’s Dickensian (screened 2015-16) and for over a decade was co-organiser of the annual Dickens Day in London.
Biography
Holly joined the School of English, Communication & Philosophy at Cardiff in 2015 from University of Leicester, where she was Reader in Victorian Studies.
Supervisions
Current supervision
Rebekah Sloane Mather
