During his long and distinguished academic career, Professor Geoffrey Bullough (1901-1982) amassed a large collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth century literary texts, many of which represent his interest in minor Victorian novelists. Professor John Widdowson, Director of NATCECT, noted that these novels `are important for the study of the language used in nineteenth century fiction´ (correspondence held in NATCECT Archives, University of Sheffield).

Annotated catalogue

In 2007 the collection provided the focus for a British Academy funded research project which considered the textual representation of dialects of English in nineteenth-century texts. As part of this project, an annotated catalogue of 40 of these novels was created. For each text examined, context is noted (date/genre/synopsis), together with an overview of the varieties used. This is followed by an extract of each dialect as it appears in the text, and brief analysis of the means by which the dialect is represented (orthography, grammar, and vocabulary). Particular points of interest are included at the end of each entry.

Links to the whole collection listing, and to the annotated catalogue, can be found in the External Documents section below.