Dr Elizabeth Ludlow

Courses taught:

• English Literature (Undergraduate)
• Philosophy and English Literature (Undergraduate)
• Drama and English Literature (Undergraduate)

Dr Elizabeth Ludlow is Associate Professor of Literature and Religion at ARU, Cambridge. She joined ARU in 2014, having taught previously at the Universities of Warwick, British Columbia, Bristol, and Birmingham.

Email: [email protected]

Background

Elizabeth's research specialism is religion and literature, with a particular focus on nineteenth-century poetry, fiction, and life-writing. She is the author of Christina Rossetti and the Bible: Waiting with the Saints (2014) and Prayer and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing (2025), and the editor of The Figure of Christ in the Long Nineteenth Century (2020) and, with Koenraad Claes, of The Nineteenth-Century Present: Literature, Print Culture and Historicity (2025). Elizabeth has also written chapters and articles on subjects including Josephine Butler’s faith and activism, the legacy of St. Monica of Hippo, the nineteenth-century Early Church novel, Elizabeth Gaskell and religion, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s historical fiction. She is currently co-editing the Routledge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell and working on projects about George Eliot and religion, and on storytelling, fundraising and faith in the nineteenth century.

As the Director of the Nineteenth-Century Studies Research Unit at ARU, Elizabeth has organised four international conferences, several symposia, and a number of events focused on the figure of John Ruskin. She convenes a lecture series each year, the details of which can be found on the unit's blog.

Elizabeth is particularly interested in supervising PhD research in literature and religion and in nineteenth-century literature.

Qualifications

• PhD English Literature, University of Warwick
• MA Victorian Literature and Culture, University of Reading
• BA English Literature and Language, University of Reading

Selected recent publications

Monographs

Ludlow, E. Prayer and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing. Bloomsbury, 2025.

Ludlow, E. Christina Rossetti and the Bible: Waiting with the Saints. Bloomsbury, 2014.

Edited Collections

Claes, K., and Ludlow, E., (eds), The Nineteenth-Century Present: Literature, Print Culture and Historicity. Manchester UP, 2025.

Ludlow, E. (ed), The Figure of Christ in the Long Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Ludlow, E. and Styler, R. (eds), The Gaskell Journal, vol. 29. Special Issue on Shorter Fiction, 2015.

Journal Articles

Ludlow, E. “The High-Church branch of the Church of England.” Victorian Review, vol. 46, no. 2, 2020, pp. 149-152. https://doi.org/10.1353/vcr.2020.0037

Ludlow, E. “The Representation and Reappraisal of St. Monica of Hippo in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing.” Christianity and Literature, vol. 69, no.4, 2020, pp. 528-548. https://doi.org/10.1353/chy.2020.0065

Ludlow, E. “Working-Class Methodism and Eschatological Anxiety in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Fiction.” The Gaskell Journal, vol. 34, 2020, pp. 25-40.

Ludlow, E. “Prayer and the role of the “Soul-Artist” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Historical Fiction.” The Glass, vol. 31, no. 1, 2019, pp. 44-50.

Ludlow, E. “Elizabeth Gaskell’s early contributions to Household Words: The parabolic and the transformation of communities through “kinder understanding.” Victorian Review, vol. 41, no. 2, 2016, pp. 107-125. https://doi.org/10.1353/vcr.2016.0042

Ludlow, E. “Christina Rossetti’s Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets (1881): Exploring the Fearfulness of Forgiveness.” Literature Compass, vol. 11, no.2, 2014, pp. 84-93. https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12127

Ludlow, E. “Christina Rossetti, Amy Levy, and the composition of roundels in late Victorian Bloomsbury: Poetic snapshots of city pageants. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, vol. 56, no. 1, 2013, pp. 83-103. https://doi.org/10.1353/elt.2013.0009

Chapters in edited books

Ludlow, E. “Josephine Butler’s reconsideration of female saints: Eschatological conceptions of history and the dismantling of structural evil.” The Nineteenth-Century Present: Literature, Print Culture, and Historicity, edited by K. Claes and E. Ludlow, Manchester UP, 2025.

Ludlow, E. “Christina Rossetti and Anglican Figural Practice.” Anglican Readings of the Bible, edited by D. Nay, Lexham Press, 2021, pp. 307-324.

Ludlow, E. “Reimaging Personhood Before the Figure of Christ in the Victorian Early Christian Novel.” The Figure of Christ in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by E. Ludlow. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 163-176.

Ludlow, E. “‘There is great need for forgiveness in this world’: The Call for Reconciliation in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Sylvia’s Lovers and A Dark Night’s Work.”  Reassessing Women’s Writing of the 1860s and 1870s, edited by A.E. Gavin and C.W.L. Oulton. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 75-88.

Ludlow, E. “Christina Rossetti: Her Identity in the Communion of Saints”, Sources of the Christian Self: A Cultural History of Christian Identity, edited by J. Houston and J. Zimmermann, Eerdmans, 2018, pp. 543-553.

Ludlow, E. “Christina Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Tractarians.” The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement, edited by J. Baker, P. Nockles and J. Pereiro, Oxford UP, 2017, pp. 427-440.

Ludlow, E. “Christina Rossetti and the Bible.” The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature, edited by R. Lemon, E. Mason, J. Roberts, and C. Rowland, Blackwell, 2010, pp. 551-561.