Cathrine O. Frank, Ph.D.
Location
Credentials
Education
Expertise
- British literature
- Law literature
- Writing
Research
Current research
Copyright, piracy, and Peter Pan
Selected publications
Monographs
Character: Writing and Reputation in Victorian Law and Literature. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Law, Literature and the Humanities, Edinburgh UP, 2022; paperback, 2023.
Law, Literature, and the Transmission of Culture in England, 1837-1925. Ashgate, 2010; paperback, Routledge, 2016.
Edited Collections
Teaching Law and Literature, with Austin Sarat and Matthew Anderson. Modern Language Association, 2011.
Law and the Humanities: An Introductio, with Austin Sarat and Matthew Anderson. Cambridge UP, 2009
Invited Article/Guest Editor
鈥淰ictorians and the Law: Literature and Legal Culture.鈥 Introduction to special issue on Victorians and the Law. Victorian Network 5.2 (Winter 2013): 1-11. Web. <>
Articles and Book Chapters
鈥淟iteracies for a New Canon.鈥 Law, Culture and the Humanities, First Published Dec 12, 2019, doi:10.1177/1743872119893320.
"Narrative and Law." Law and Literature. Ed. Kieran Dolin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018, pp. 42-57.
"Gossip, Hearsay and the Character Exception in Victorian Law and Literature." Law and Humanities 9.2 (Fall/Winter 2015): 172-202.
"Riot and Revolution in Elizabeth Gaskell's Fiction." Law, Culture, and the Humanities 10.3 (2014): 421-39.
"Privacy, Character, and the Jurisdiction of the Self: A 'Story of the Door' in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Special issue on Jurisdiction. English Language Notes 48.2 (Fall/Winter 2010): 215-24.
"Trial Separations: Divorce, Disestablishment, and Home Rule in Phineas Redux." College Literature Special issue on Law and Literature. 35.3 (2008): 30-56.
"Of Testaments and Tattoos: The Wills Act of 1837 and Rider Haggard's Mr. Meeson's Will (1888)." Law and Literature 18.3 (2006): 323-42.
"Fictions of Justice: Testamentary Intention and the (Il)legitimate Heir in Anthony Trollope's Ralph the Heir and E.M. Forster's Howards End." English Literature in Transition 47.3 (2004): 311-30.
"Tinklers and Time Machines: Time-Travel in the Social Fantasy of E. Nesbit and H.G. Wells." Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults. Eds. Elaine Ostry and Carrie Hintz. New York: Routledge, 2003.
"Wandering Narratives and Wavering Conclusions: Irreconciliation in Frances Burney's The Wanderer and Walter Scott's Waverley." European Romantic Review 12 (2001): 429-456.
Encyclopedia entries
鈥淧rivacy鈥 in Spoo, Robert, and Simon Stern. Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025, pp. 367 70. .
鈥淲ills.鈥 in Spoo, Robert, and Simon Stern. Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025, pp. 511-14. .
Book Reviews (Solicited)
Review of Gaskell and the Law by Paul Mitchell (London: Hart, 2025) The Gaskell Journal in progress
Review of Inheritance and Speculation in Victorian Fiction: Finance, Family, and the Law by Noa Reich (Lanham, MD; Lexington Books, 2024). Nineteenth Century Literature 81.1 (2026): 117-21.
Review of British Literature and the Life of Institutions: Speculative States by Benjamin Kohlmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). Victorian Studies 66.3 (2025): 496-98.
鈥淢urder for Kids: The Making of an American Tradition.鈥 Review of Bloody Murder: The Homicide Tradition in Children鈥檚 Literature by Michelle Ann Abate (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2013). Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 6.2 (2014): 162-67.
Review of Criminal Law and the Modernist Novel: Experience on Trial by Rex Ferguson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013). Review of English Studies 65 (2014): 953-55.
Review of The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope, edited by Carolyn Dever and Lisa Niles (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011). Victorian Studies 55.1 (2013): 162-64.
鈥淰ictorian Murder Poems: From the Scaffold to the Hearth.鈥 Review of Crime in Verse: the Poetics of Murder in the Victorian Era by Ellen L. O鈥橞rien (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2008). Papers on Language and Literature 46.1 (Winter 2010): 102-08.
Other scholarly activity
RECENT CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
鈥淎fter Copyright: Fair Dealing, Collaboration, and J.M. Barrie鈥檚 Peter Pan or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up.鈥 North American Victorian Studies Association, November 13-16, 2025. Washington, D.C.
鈥淧an鈥檚 Pirates: Intellectual Property, Piracy, and J.M. Barrie鈥檚 鈥楧edication. To the Five鈥 (1928).鈥 Northeast Conference on British Studies. October 21-22, 2022; Lewiston, ME.
鈥淔orming Victorian Character: History, Narratology, Law and Literature,鈥 North American Victorian Studies Association. October 17-19, 2019; Columbus, OH.
鈥淒efamation of Character: Anthony Trollope and the Law of Libel,鈥 Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, March 2018, Washington, D.C.
鈥淲hen Gossip Becomes Libel: Writing, Reputation, and the Protection of Victorian Character.鈥 North American Conference on British Studies. November 11-13, 2016; Washington, D.C.
鈥淭eaching and Tutoring: Reflections from a Writing Fellows Initiative.鈥 Organizer, Chair, and Presenter. Engaging Practices: A UMass-Boston Conference on the Teaching of Composition,鈥 Mar. 28, 2015. Boston, MA
Funded grants
National Endowment for the Humanities, $165,000 grant to co-direct (with Matthew Anderson) a Summer Institute for College and University Professors: "The Rule of Law: Legal Studies and the Liberal Arts." Summer 2009.
Research interests
Legal history and the Victorian and Edwardian novel (e.g. testamentary law, married womens property law, illegitimacy, charitable trusts, trials), literary history, realism and modernism, law and the humanities