In Memoriam: Professor Brian Maidment

We are sad to announce the death of LJMU Emeritus Professor, Brian Maidment.

Brian was Professor of the History of Print in the English Literature subject area between 2012 and 2018. 

He had a long and pioneering career from the 1970s onwards, doing much to establish Victorian print culture as a field of scholarship. He published now seminal texts such as Dusty Bob: A Cultural History of Dustmen, 1780-1870 (2007), Comedy, Caricature and the Social Order, 1820-50 (2013), and most recently, Robert Seymour and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture: Sketches by Seymour and Comic Illustration (2021), as well as many important chapters and articles distinguished by his meticulous scholarship and imaginative insight.

While working at LJMU Brian was involved in the AHRC-funded ‘Poetry of the Cotton Famine’ project bringing together Lancashire teachers and museum curators in research addressing this key point in nineteenth-century British economic and cultural history. His interdisciplinary work, cutting across literature, media and cultural history, brought together colleagues across the school in research seminars and events, such as the European Society for Periodical Research conference hosted at LJMU in 2016.

He was president of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals and regular convenor of and participant in their international conferences and the British Association of Victorian Studies conferences. At LJMU he was a mentor and all-round encourager of younger colleagues.

Brian’s collegiality, wit and kind supportiveness of his colleagues will be remembered by members of the English team and the School of Humanities and Social Science more widely.