Before joining the Kent School of English, Koenraad Claes lectured at Ghent University (Belgium), where in April 2011 he also obtained his PhD with a dissertation on late-Victorian literary magazines.
He has published on a number of topics in nineteenth-century literature and print culture, with an emphasis on periodical studies. His role within this research project is to devise methodologies for the attribution (when possible) of anonymous and pseudonymous contributions to the Lady`s Magazine, and to work out prosopographical profiles for the many obscure reader-contributors who submitted unsolicited copy. He will hereby add to our understanding of who read the Lady`s Magazine and of how its content was being received and engaged with by these interactive readers, who fall outside the much-discussed trend towards professionalization in authorship during the long eighteenth century. Because of the commercial success and the inferable wide readership of the magazine, this approach will also provide further insights into public opinion on topical political issues as well as contemporaneous literary fashions.