Staff profile

My research interests lie principally in the areas of eighteenth-century fiction and drama, sensibility and eighteenth-century writing by women. I'm particularly interested in the construction of gender and its relation to genre. My first book, Sensibility and Economics in the Novel, 1740-1800: The Price of a Tear (Macmillan, 1999) examined the ways in which the sentimental novel, traditionally perceived as a ‘feminine’ genre focussing on the affective and domestic, was in fact able to comment extensively on economic and political issues of the day, especially the status of commerce and women’s relation to it. I've also written on women’s legal standing in the eighteenth century and how it emerges in the fiction of the period, and delivered papers on the work of Sarah Fielding, Frances Brooke and Frances Burney. Burney is a continuing major focus of my attention and I've delivered papers on diverse aspects of performance in Burney's work at a number of conferences. Articles derived from these papers have appeared in the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Romanticism and Women’s Writing. An article on Burney’s negotiations of propriety in her Court Journals and Letters has appeared in Eighteenth-Century Life and an essay on Garrick's afterpieces in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research. Most recently, I have contributed several entries to the forthcoming Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel and an entry to The Routledge Anthology of Women's Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism, and my edition of Sarah Fielding's 1759 novel The History of the Countess of Dellwyn for the Chawton House Library Women's Novels Series (Routledge) was published in April 2022. An essay on Dellwyn is forthcoming in a Special Issue of European Romantic Review.

Authored book

• Skinner, G. (1999). Sensibility and Economics in the Novel, 1740-1800: The Price of a Tear. Macmillan

Chapter in book

• Skinner, G. Charles Jenner, Letters from Altamont. In The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Cambridge University Press
• Skinner, G. Anon., The Strolling Player; or, Life and Adventures of William Templeton. In A. London (Ed.), The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Cambridge University Press
• Skinner, G. Charles Jenner, The Placid Man. In A. London (Ed.), The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Cambridge University Press
• Skinner, G. Centlivre, Censorship, and the Politics of the Early Eighteenth-Century Stage. In The Routledge Anthology of Women's Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism. Routledge
• Skinner, G. (2020). Spoken from the impulse of the moment: Epistolarity, Sensibility and Breath in Frances Burney's Evelina. In C. Saunders, D. Fuller, & J. Macnaughton (Eds.), The life of breath in literature, culture, and medicine: classical to contemporary (241-259). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74443-4_12
• Skinner, G. (2010). Class, Gender, and Inheritance in Burney's A Busy Day and The Woman-Hater. In B. Nelson, & C. Burroughs (Eds.), Approaches to Teaching British Women Playwrights of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century (237-246). Modern Language Association of America
• Skinner, G. (2004). Lady Dorothea Du Bois' and 'Charles Jenner. In H. Matthew, B. Harrison, & L. Goldman (Eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press
• Skinner, G. (2000). '"A worse Condition than Slavery itself"? Women's Status as Legal and Civic Subjects in the Eighteenth Century'. In V. Jones (Ed.), Women and Literature in Britain 1700-1800. Cambridge University Press
• Skinner, G. (1999). The History of Lady Julia Mandeville' and 'Self-Control. In L. Sage (Ed.), The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English. Cambridge University Press

Edited book

• Skinner, G. (Ed.). (2022). The History of the Countess of Dellwyn. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351003421

Journal Article

• Skinner, G. M. (2023). “[H]is Castle was her Proper Habitation”: Homes and Dwelling Places in Sarah Fielding’s The History of the Countess of Dellwyn (1759). European Romantic Review, 34(2), 151-164. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2023.2181455
• Skinner, G. (2014). "Stage-plays [...] and a thousand other amusements now in use": Garrick's response to anti-theatrical discourse in the mid-eighteenth century. Restoration and 18th century theatre research, 29(2), 63-82
• Skinner, G. (2014). "A Tattling Town like Windsor" : negotiating proper relations in Frances Burney's early Court Journals and Letters (1786-87). Eighteenth-Century Life, 38(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-2380007
• Skinner, G. (2012). Professionalism, Performance and Private Theatricals in Frances Burney's "The Wanderer". Romanticism, 18(3), 294-305. https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2012.0100
• Skinner, G. (2012). "An Unsullied Reputation in the Midst of Danger": Barsanti, Propriety and Performance in Burney's Early journals and Letters. Women's Writing, 19(4), 525-543. https://doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2012.712312
• Skinner, G. (2011). "My Muse loves a little Variety": Writing Drama and the Creative Life of Frances Burney. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34(2), 197-208. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-0208.2011.00376.x
• Skinner, G. (1995). '"Above Oeconomy": Elizabeth Griffith's The History of Lady Barton and Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling'. Eighteenth-Century Life, 19(1),
• Skinner, G. (1992). '"The Price of a Tear": Economic Sense and Sensibility in Sarah Fielding's David Simple'. Literature and History, 1 (3rd Series)(1),