Rachel Darling

I have recently completed my PhD thesis on the novelist as a fictional character in twentieth century British and Irish fiction.

I am interested in the development of the novelist as a literary and cultural figure, particularly how the role of the novelist has continued to change throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

My thesis examined a wide range of novelists - including Christopher Isherwood, Anthony Powell, Somerset Maugham, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Martin Amis, Lawrence Durrell, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Flann O'Brien, Jonathan Coe, Alasdair Gray and Anthony Burgess - all of whom have employed the novelist as a protagonist within their novels.

Future projects include a study on artistry vs. domesticity in Magda Szabo's The Door and Maggie Gee's My Cleaner, and research into the impact of social media on the role of the novelist as public author.