Professor Simon James

Professor Simon J. James is Professor of Victorian Literature in the Department of English Studies, Durham University. Simon is a specialist in Victorian and early twentieth-century fiction in particular, and in forms of narrative more generally. He was the Principal Investigator for the Durham Commission on Creativity and Education. A partnership between Arts Council England and Durham University, the Durham Commission investigated the benefits of teaching young people to be creative and to think creatively.

Simon is also the author of Unsettled Accounts: Money and Narrative Form in the Novels of George Gissing and Maps of Utopia: H. G. Wells, Modernity and the End of Culture and the co-editor of The Evolution of Literature and George Gissing and the Woman Question: Convention and Dissent. He has also edited books by Gissing and Wells, and written on Charles Dickens, Arnold Bennett, Marie Corelli and turn-of-the-century realism.