Helen’s research interests broadly lie in eighteenth-century book history, professional authorship and literary heritage, and she is particularly interested in heritage collaboration. Her publications undertake a feminist recovery of women's work in book production and explore the effects of writers’ relationships with their patrons and publishers on the production of bestselling literary texts.

BOOKS and a DATASET

1. [with Peter Sabor and Richard Terry, eds,] The Cambridge Edition of the Correspondence of John Cleland (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2024).
2. Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth-Century Book (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2021).
3. [with M-C. Newbould, eds,] Laurence Sterne and Sterneana (Cambridge: Cambridge Digital Library, 2019). Link.
4. [with Richard Terry, eds,] Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland (Peterborough: Broadview, 2018).
5. [with Patrick Wildgust, eds,] A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, by Laurence Sterne, illus. by Martin Rowson (Coxwold: Shandy Hall Press, 2018).

EDITED COLLECTIONS and SPECIAL ISSUES of JOURNALS

1. [with Allan Ingram and Clark Lawlor, eds,] Myth and (Mis)information: Constructing the Medical Professions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century English Literature and Culture (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2024).
2. [with Ashleigh Blackwood and Allan Ingram, eds,] Writing Doctors and Writing Health in the Long Eighteenth Century, Special Issue of Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 46.1 (2023). Link.
3. [with M-C. Newbould, eds,] Adaptation and Digitisation in the Long Eighteenth Century: Sterneana and Beyond, Special Issue of 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 28 (2023).
4. [with M-C. Newbould, Paul Goring, and Brian Michael Norton, eds,] A Festschrift in Honour of Peter de Voogd, Special Issue of the Shandean, 33 (2022).

SELECTED JOURNAL ARTICLES and BOOK CHAPTERS

1. ‘Craftivism and Cottonian Bindings: “The Handiwork of Greta Hall”’, New Approaches to Critical Bibliography, Special Issue of Criticism, 64.3 (2023): 351-368. Link.
2. [with M-C. Newbould,] Introduction to the Special Feature: Fitting Things? Adaptation, Eighteenth-Century Afterlives, and Digital Cultures’, Adaptation and Digitisation in the Long Eighteenth Century: Sterneana and Beyond, Special Issue of 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 28 (2023), 3-22.
3. ‘Laurence Sterne and Women’s Writing: Elizabeth Bonhôte, Jane Timbury, and Miss Street’, Adaptation and Digitisation in the Long Eighteenth Century: Sterneana and Beyond, Special Issue of 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 28 (2023), 44-62.
4. [with Ashleigh Blackwood], ‘Writing Doctors and Writing Health in the Long Eighteenth Century’, Special Issue of Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 46.1 (2023), 3-20. Link.
5. ‘Family Planning and the Long Eighteenth-Century Pocket Book’, Writing Doctors and Writing Health in the Long Eighteenth Century, Special Issue of Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 46.1 (2023), 113-133. Link.
6. ‘Autopathography and the Bramine’s Journal’, Special Issue of the Shandean, 33 (2022), 217-236.
7. ‘Printing, Publishing and Pocket Book Compiling: Ann Fisher’s Hidden Labour in the Newcastle Book Trade’, in Print Culture, Agency and Regionality in the Hand Press Era, ed. by Rachel Stenner, Adam James Smith and Kaley Kramer (London: Palgrave, 2022), 93-116. Link.
8. ‘Communing with the Fictional Dead: Grave Tourism and the Sentimental Novel’, in British Sociability in the European Enlightenment: Cultural Practices and Personal Encounters, ed. by Mascha Hansen and Sebastien Domsch (London: Palgrave, 2021), 41-62. Link.
9. ‘The Good Humour Club or Doctors’ Club and Sterne’s Political Romance’, The Shandean, 31 (2020), 138-155.
10. [with Richard Terry,] ‘Reading Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure Against Cleland’s Life and Letters’, Fanny Hill Now, ed. by Nicholas Nace and Clorinda Donato, Special Issue of Eighteenth-Century Life, 43 (2019) 29-37. Link.
11. [with Siv Gøril Brandtzæg and M-C. Newbould,] ‘Advertising Sterne’s Novels in Eighteenth-Century Newspapers’, The Shandean, 27 (2016): 27-57.

Helen Williams is Deputy Director of University Cultural Partnerships, Associate Professor of English Literature, and leads the Scholarly Editing and Print Cultures Research Group. 

Helen received her BA from Northumbria University and her MA from Durham University. She then returned to Northumbria, completing a PhD in collaboration with the Laurence Sterne Trust at Shandy Hall in 2014. She joined the faculty at Northumbria in 2012. 

As Deputy Director of Cultural Partnerships, Helen develops and supports the university’s relationships with key external partners, facilitating collaborative research, teaching, and community engagement with a range of galleries, museums, theatres, and a writing development organisation. Her portfolio includes overseeing research and impact activity with and across cultural partners.

Having written her first monograph on Laurence Sterne (CUP, 2021) and co-edited Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Broadview, 2018) and the correspondence of John Cleland (CUP, 2024), Helen is currently completing two projects on women and the history of the book, funded by the British Academy and a Katharine F. Pantzer Research Fellowship.