Department of English
Cockefair Hall 16F
(816) 523-5973
FAX (816) 235-1307
phegleyj@umkc.edu
Jennifer Phegley, Professor (B.A. in English and History, Texas State University, 1992; M.A. in English,
The Ohio State University, 1995; Ph.D. in English, The Ohio State University, 1999).
Co-Chair, Department of English Language and Literature. Areas of specialization: Victorian Periodicals; Authorship, Reading, and Publishing in the 19th Century;
Transatlantic Studies; Sensation Fiction; Pedagogy. Author of Courtship
and Marriage in Victorian England (Praeger 2012) and Educating the Proper Woman Reader: Victorian Literary Magazines and the Cultural Health of the Nation (Ohio
State University Press, 2004). Co-editor of Transatlantic Sensations
(with John Barton and Kristin Huston; Ashgate 2012), Teaching
Nineteenth-Century Fiction (with Andrew Maunder; Palgrave 2010) and Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present (with
Janet Badia, University of Toronto Press 2005).
I have just completed work on Courtship and Marriage in Victorian England, which explores amorous relationships among the working, middle, and upper classes from the 1830s to the 1910s. The book covers a wide variety of topics, including attitudes toward marriage, standards of courtship conduct, alternative methods of finding a spouse (such as the use of matrimonial advertisements and courtship correspondence clubs), wedding planning, and honeymooning. It also examines the transformation of marriage laws throughout the century and provides a deeper understanding of how and why marriage norms were defined and maintained by considering the many people who lived outside the boundaries of traditional matrimony, including "old maids," bachelors, unmarried couples, and same-sex partners.