January Winner - Ada Sharpe

Congratulations to Ada Sharpe, one of our January researchers!

Ada Sharpe is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English and Film studies, currently writing her dissertation on representations of accomplishment and the decorative arts in British women’s writing of the Romantic period.

Her SSHRC-funded research draws on a number of popular print forms emerging in Romantic Britain between 1780 and 1835, including the novel, verse collection, and gift book, and seeks to elucidate the ways in which literary representations of female accomplishment (such as drawing, painting, and embroidery) provide a familiar frame of reference through which women writers negotiate issues of gender.

Ada is particularly fascinated by lesser-known women novelists of the early nineteenth century, such as Mary Brunton and Amelia Opie, whose didactic fiction features some of the most virtuous, admirable, and accomplished heroines in British literary history. Ada’s research has taken her to archives in Britain and the US and enabled her to discover a wealth of bizarre and wonderful primary sources, including manuals on the decorative arts and conduct books on female amusements.