Recovering Lost Voices: Nineteenth-Century Literature

Edited by Michaela George & Elizabeth Drummey
Vernon Press, 2026

Recovering Lost Voices explores what recovery work looks like in the twenty-first century and why its continued practice is necessary. This collection is concerned with the volume of lost British texts and authors of the nineteenth century and offers a practical and personal approach to the act of recovery and the continued practice of re-recovery. Spanning the course of the nineteenth century, the included recovered works provide glimpses into the forgotten lives of poets, playwrights, and authors, enriching the working understanding we hold of this period. Our contributors explain their unique and original personal methods and experiences of discovering their lost work and detail the process of re-recovery. This volume ultimately functions as guidance for university students and early career scholars interested in uncovering what recovery and re-recovery work entails through personal accounts. The included contributions approach recovery in archives, street markets, digital access, and manual transcribing. Re-recovery takes the form of applied lenses of analysis, such as queer, post-colonial, gender, disability, and trauma studies.   

Contributors are: Samantha Trzinski (The Ohio State University), Ruth Gehrmann (Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz), Hayley Smith (Independent Scholar), Maria Serena Marchesi (University of Messina, Italy), Charles Reeve (OCAD University), Marie Kluge (Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg ), Sophie-Constanze Bantle (University of Freiburg, Germany), Madison Marshall (University of Leeds ), Sharmila Jayasinghe (University of Sydney), Tom Bragg (Lincoln Memorial University), Drew Banghart (West Liberty University), and Lesley Goodman (Albright College).

Recovering Lost Voices is available for purchase from Vernon Press with a 24% discount (using code CFC1397889985 on checkout)

Praise for Recovering Lost Voices

Drummey and George have assembled an extraordinarily broad and vivid collection of essays that promises to turn critical attention to “lost” literary works of the nineteenth century. Recovering Lost Voices celebrates the painstaking archival research and ethical vision of its authors and editors, and reminds us that recovery work, while never complete, will always offer new and surprising literary delights.

Dr. James Krasner
Professor, Department of English
College of Liberal Arts
University of New Hampshire

Like Michaela George and Elizabeth Drummey, I believe the work of recovering lost voices in nineteenth-century British literature is an iterative process and an example of scholarly labor as care work. This edited collection is a valuable contribution to the ongoing project of making marginalized writers more accessible in the digital flood that can threaten what Suzanne Keen has called “the romance of the archive.” Chapters on poet Alice Flowerdew, travel-writer Anne Jane Thornton, novelist Thomas Anstey Guthrie, playwright William Gorman Wills, artist Elizabeth Murray, detective-fiction author L.T. Meade, novelist and critic Julia Wedgwood, travel-writer Samuel White Baker, novelist George Payne Rainsford James, novelist Marie Corelli, and novelist Edith Johnstone offer wide-ranging examples of “re-recovery” in the twenty-first century.

Prof. Dr. Livia Arndal Woods
University of Illinois at Springfield