Josie Billington

I specialise in Victorian literature and in research on reading, arts and health. I have written widely (as editor and critic) on nineteenth-century women's fiction and poetry (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant). I have also published extensively on the power of literary reading to influence mental health and wellbeing, including interdisciplinary research on reading in relation to chronic pain, self-harm, reading with children and families, and the psychodynamics of reading groups (Is Literature Healthy?, Oxford University Press, 2016; Reading and Mental Health, Palgrave, 2019).