W. R. (Bob) Owens

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Creative Arts, Technology and Science

Bob Owens

I joined the University of Bedfordshire as Professor of English Literature in September 2012. Before then, I had been Professor of English Literature at the Open University, and from 2000 until 2008 I was Head of the Department of English there. Upon my retirement from the University of Bedfordshire in August 2015, I was appointed Visiting Professor.

My main research interests are in English literature of the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries, in particular the writings of John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe. I was lead editor of the annual Bunyan Studies: A Journal of Reformation and Nonconformist Culture from 1988 until 2021, and from 2001 to 2004 I served as President of the International John Bunyan Society. Together with P.N. Furbank, I was General Editor of The Works of Daniel Defoe, published by Pickering & Chatto (44 volumes, 2000–2009).

I am also interested in aspects of the history of the book, especially textual editing, bibliography and the history of reading. Between 2006 and 2011 I was Principal Investigator on two linked AHRC-funded projects, 'The Reading Experience Database 1800–1945', and 'Developing an International Network in the History of Reading'.

In 2004 I was elected a Fellow of the English Association, and in 2013 I was elected a member of the International Association of University Professors of English.

Qualifications

  • PhD, 'A Critical Edition of John Bunyan's Posthumously Published Treatise Of Antichrist, and His Ruine (1692)', The Open University, 1984
  • BA, first class honours, English Language and Literature, University of Ulster, 1977

Teaching expertise

  • English Literature (especially of the early modern period and up to the end of the eighteenth century).

Research projects (current)

  • Entries for the ‘Literary Bedfordshire’ project on a number of writers born in Bedfordshire, including John Bunyan (1628‒88), Dorothy Osborne (1627‒95), and William Hale White, also known as ‘Mark Rutherford’ (1813‒1913).
  • The writings of a controversial Puritan diarist and clergyman, Thomas Larkham (1602‒69).
  • John Bunyan’s reading and interpretation of the Bible.

External roles (recent and current)

  • Member of the Executive Committee of the International John Bunyan Society
  • 'Network Partner' on the AHRC-funded project 'Voices and Books, 1500–1800'
  • Member of Advisory Board for the AHRC-funded project ‘Reading Communities: Connecting the Past and the Present’
  • Advisory Board member of the Cambridge University Press edition of The Letters of Daniel Defoe.
  • Member of the Board of Directors of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP)
  • Member of the Board of Advisors for ABO: A Digital Archive of Early Modern Annotated Books
  • Member of Editorial Advisory Board for English: The Journal of the English Association
  • Member of the Editorial Committee of the Friends of Dr Williams's Library Annual Lectures
  • External examiner for MA in Renaissance and Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of Liverpool
  • Emeritus Professor, The Open University
  • Visiting Fellow, Northumbria University

Invited papers and lectures (from 2012 onwards)

  • October 2012, 'Researching the History of Reading: The RED Project', Department of Humanities, Northumbria University
  • March 2013, 'William Hale White ("Mark Rutherford") and Nonconformity in the Nineteenth Century', John Bunyan Museum, Bedford
  • May 2013, 'Researching Bible Reading in England: Evidence from the Reading Experience Database (RED)', University of Helsinki, Finland
  • June 2013, 'Jerome McGann's "Social Textual Criticism" and the Editing of Literary Texts from the Long Eighteenth Century', North East Forum for Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies, Newcastle
  • August 2013, 'Nonconformity in the Novels of William Hale White ("Mark Rutherford"), Princeton University, USA
  • December 2013, 'Editing Defoe: Reflections on Theory and Practice', Aix-Marseille Université, France
  • January 2014 (with Alexis Weedon), 'Researching the Publishing History of The Pilgrim's Progress', University of Reading
  • May 2014, '"But What if the Queen Should Die?": Defoe, the Dissenters, and the Succession', Dr Williams's Centre for Dissenting Studies, London
  • July 2015, ‘Editing Defoe’, at the Fourth Biennial Conference of the Defoe Society, Bath Spa University
  • July 2016, ‘“There you shall enjoy your friends again”: Bunyan’s Concept of Heaven’, at the Eighth Triennial Conference of the International John Bunyan Society, Aix-Marseille Université, France
  • July 2016, ‘Studying Reading and Readers using the Reading Experience Database (RED)’, at the International Association of University Professors of English: Triennial Conference, University of London
  • September 2016, ‘Reading Aloud, Past and Present’, at ‘Reading Communities: Connecting the Past and the Present’, University of London
  • February 2017, ‘John Bunyan and the Heavenly City’, the 2017 Limborough Lecture, given to the Worshipful Company of Weavers, St Bartholomew the Great, London.
  • April 2017, ‘Bringing Literature to Life: Reading Aloud’, at a conference on ‘Literature and Life’, University of Exeter.
  • July 2022, ‘“A Reading and Giving of the Sense”: The Practice of Reading Aloud in Dissenting Culture’, and contribution to Roundtable on ‘Editing Bunyan’, at the Tenth Triennial Conference of the International John Bunyan Society, Northumbria University, Newcastle.
  • October 2022, ‘Bunyan’s Readers’, at a conference celebrating 350th anniversary of the founding of Bunyan Meeting, Bedford.

Publications

Books (from 2000 onwards)

  • (ed.), Dissent, Volume 3, Political and Economic Writings of Daniel Defoe, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2000
  • (ed.), Social Reform, Volume 8, Political and Economic Writings of Daniel Defoe, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2000
  • (ed.), John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2003
  • (ed.), The True-Born Englishman and Other Poems, Volume 1, Satire, Fantasy and Writings on the Supernatural by Daniel Defoe, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003
  • (consulting editor), The Selected Works of Delarivier Manley, ed. Rachel Carnell and Ruth Herman, 5 vols, Pickering & Chatto, 2005
  • (ed.), A New Family Instructor, Volume 3, Religious & Didactic Writings by Daniel Defoe, Pickering & Chatto, 2006
  • (with P. N. Furbank), A Political Biography of Daniel Defoe, Pickering & Chatto, 2006
  • (ed.), The Complete English Gentleman and Of Royal Education, Volume 10, Religious & Didactic Writings of Daniel Defoe, Pickering & Chatto, 2007
  • (ed. with Stuart Sim), Reception, Appropriation, Recollection: Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Peter Lang, 2007
  • (ed.), The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Volume 1, The Novels of Daniel Defoe, Pickering & Chatto, 2008
  • (ed.), The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Volume 2, The Novels of Daniel Defoe, Pickering & Chatto, 2008
  • (ed. with Delia da Sousa Correa), The Handbook to Literary Research, second rev. edn, Routledge, 2010
  • (ed.), The Gospels: Authorized King James Version, Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2011
  • (ed. with Shafquat Towheed), The History of Reading, Vol. 1, International Perspectives, c.1500–1990, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
  • (ed. with Katie Halsey), The History of Reading, Vol. 2, Evidence from the British Isles, c.1750–1950, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
  • (consulting editor), Christianity Not as Old as the Creation: The Last of Defoe's Performances, ed. G. A. Starr, Pickering & Chatto, 2012
  • (ed. with Michael Davies), The Oxford Handbook of John Bunyan, Oxford University Press, 2018.
  • (ed. with Nicola Darwood and Alexis Weedon), Fiction and ‘The Woman Question’ from 1850 to 1930, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020.

Journal editing (from 2012 onwards)

  • Bunyan Studies: A Journal of Reformation and Nonconformist Culture
    • Number 16 (2012)
    • Number 17 (2013), special issue: ‘William Hale White (“Mark Rutherford”), 1831–1913’
    • Number 18 (2014)
    • Number 19 (2015), special issue: ‘Religion and Politics in Bunyan’s Writings’
    • Number 20 (2016), special issue: ‘Dissenting Hands’
    • Number 21 (2017)
    • Number 22 (2018), special issue: ‘Circulation, Appropriation, Translation: George Herbert and John Bunyan’
    • Number 23 (2019)
    • Number 24 (2020), special issue: ‘Honest Labour: Work and Nonconformity’
    • Number 25 (2021)

Articles, book chapters, and reviews (from 2012 onwards)

  • 'The English Version of the Polyglot Bible', in Senate House Library, University of London, ed. Christopher Pressler and Karen Attar, Scala Publishers (2012)
  • 'Writing from Prison: John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress', in The English Review, 23:2 (2012)
  • 'Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, and the Barbary Pirates', in English, 62 (2013)
  • 'William Hale White, Nonconformist and Novelist', in Bunyan Studies, number 17 (2013)
  • (jointly with Alexis Weedon), '"My Pilgrim's Book has travel'd Sea and Land": Researching the Publishing History of The Pilgrim's Progress', in The Recorder, number 20 (2014)
  • Review of Michael Brealey, Bedford's Victorian Pilgrim: William Hale White in Context, in English, 63 (2014)
  • 'A Previously Unknown Photograph of "The Cottage", Groombridge', in The Newsletter of the Mark Rutherford Society, spring (2014).
  • Review of Jane Darcy, Melancholy and Literary Biography, 1640-1816, in The Cowper and Newton Journal, 5 (2015)
  • Review of Patricia Hurry, Catalogue of the Congregational History Society Library, in Congregational History Society Magazine, 7:5 (2015)
  • Review of Kirsty Milne, At Vanity Fair: From Bunyan to Thackeray, in Review of English Studies, 67 (2016)
  • 'Religious Writings and the Early Novel', in The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel, ed. J.A. Downie, Oxford University Press, 2016
  • 'References to Hale White/Mark Rutherford in RED’, in The Newsletter of the Mark Rutherford Society, spring (2017)
  • ‘Ways of Engaging New Readers with The Pilgrim’s Progress’, in The Recorder, number 23 (2017)
  • ‘Studying Readers and Reading using the Reading Experience Database (RED)’, in English Without Boundaries, ed. Jane Roberts and Trudi L. Darby, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017
  • 'Bunyan's Posthumously Published Works', in The Oxford Handbook of John Bunyan, ed. Michael Davies and W. R. Owens, Oxford University Press, 2018
  • ‘“But what if the Queen should die?”: Defoe, the Dissenters, and the Succession’, in Negotiating Toleration: Dissent and the Hanoverian Succession 1714–1760, ed. Benjamin Bankhurst and Nigel Aston, Oxford University Press, 2019
  • Review of Jordan Alexander Stein, When Novels were Books, in Bunyan Studies, 27 (2023)
  • ‘“There you shall enjoy your friends again”: Bunyan’s Depiction of Heaven’, in The Puritan Literary Tradition, ed. Johanna Harris and Alison Searle, 2024

Conference organisation

  • July 2008, co-organiser of three-day international conference on ‘Evidence of Reading: Reading the Evidence’, held at the Institute of English Studies, University of London
  • June 2013, co-organiser of one-day conference ‘William Hale White (“Mark Rutherford”) 100 Years On’, held at Dr Williams’s Library, London
  • April 2015, co-organiser of one-day conference ‘Representing Dissent in the Long Eighteenth Century’, held at the University of Bedfordshire
  • July 2016, member of Advisory Committee organising four-day international conference on ‘Voicing Dissent in the Long Reformation’, held at Aix-Marseille University, France
  • April 2017, co-organiser of one-day conference ‘Prisons and Prison Writing in Early-Modern Britain’, held at Northumbria University
  • April 2018, co-organiser of one-day conference ‘Remembrance and Re-Appropriation: Shaping Dissenting Identities’, held at Keele University
  • June 2018, co-organiser of one-day conference ‘Literature and “The Woman Question”, held at the University of Bedfordshire
  • April 2019, co-organiser of one-day conference ‘Honest Labour: Exploring the Interface between Work and Nonconformity’, held at Loughborough University

Contact details

E: bob.owens@beds.ac.uk