Professor Fiona Stafford
About
Professor Stafford is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She works on literature of the Romantic period, especially Austen, Burns, Clare, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and on their literary influences on modern poetry. Her research interests also include late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century culture; Irish and Scottish literature (post 1700); Archipelagic literature and art; Place and Nature Writing (old and new); Trees, Flowers and their cultural history; Environmental Humanities; literature and the visual arts.
Her most recent book is The Brief Life of Flowers (2018). Like her acclaimed book, The Long, Long Life of Trees (2016), it draws on first hand observation, literature, art, folklore, mythology, cultural history, natural science, botany, history of medicine.
Professor Stafford's project, The Dimlight Hours (2019), is a play based on her essay Home Front and inspired by a family wartime diary and was part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
She has also worked with Wordsworth Grasmere, providing a video talk about Wordsworth and readings for the new Museum at Dove Cottage; with the Malvern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (Ledbury Festival 2022); with the Blenheim Estate (Autumn Festival 2022); with the Oxford Botanic Garden (Winter Lecture 5: March 2020); The Hayward Gallery (Among the Trees, March 2020).
Other recent talks include:
Online Talk: Fiona Stafford, Spring Flowers and their Stories (Chawton House, 2022)
10-Minute Talks: Keeping a diary in 1941 (The British Academy, 2021)
In Conversation with Katie Mitchell, Professor Fiona Stafford and Dr Catherine Love (TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, 2021)
RFS Book Club with Fiona Stafford (Royal Forestry Society, 2021)
Expertise
- English literature
- Scottish and Irish literature, especially poetry
- The novel, especially Jane Austen
- Literature and the visual arts
- National and regional identity in literature
- Nature Writing
- Environmental Humanities
Selected publications
- 'Keats and the Sleeping Giants', in John Keats and Romantic Scotland, ed. Katie Garner and Nicholas Roe (OUP, 2022)
- Archipelago: A Reader, co-edited with Nicholas Allen (Lilliput, 2021)
- Stories of Trees, Woods and the Forest (ed. Stafford), (Everyman, 2021)
- The Brief Life of Flowers (2018)
- Jane Austen: A Brief Life (2017)
- The Long, Long Life of Trees (2016)
- Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (2013)
- Local Attachments: The Province of Poetry (2010)
Media experience
Professor Stafford has considerable experience of working with media and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio. She has presented a series for BBC Radio 3 on the symbolism, importance and meaning of trees, flowers and beaches and for coverage of BBC Proms 2022. She has also contributed to the literary magazine, Archipelago.
Recent media work
- The personal touches in Her Majesty's colourful funeral flowers (BBC News, 2022)
- The Essay: Composers and Their Dogs (BBC Radio 3, 2020/2022)
- Written in Scotland: 'Episode 1: Nationalism and Unionism' (BBC Radio 4, 2020)
- Sunday Feature: Keats Goes North (BBC Radio 3, 2020)
- In Our Time: Robert Burns (BBC Radio 4, 2019)
- The Essay: Fiona Stafford, Hay Festival 2019 (BBC Radio 3, 2019)
- The story of hope behind Anne Frank’s tree — and how it lives on (Financial Times, 2016)
- Trees are deeply rooted in the nation’s psyche. Just look at their spellbinding power (The Times, 2016)
- The Forum: Balloons and How they Changed the World (BBC World Service, 2016)
- The apple’s enduring sphere of influence (The Independent, 2016)
- Landmarks, shelter, air filters – trees are our friends (The Guardian, 2016)