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Associate Professor, Department of English Simon Fraser University
Her specialty is late nineteenth and early twentieth century British literature. In 2007 her introductory text to the subject, "Modernist Literature" (McGill-Queen's UP), was published.
BA (Alberta), MPhil, DPhil (Oxford); chiefly researches the Anglo-America area; publishing history, popular culture (in particular detective fiction), and philosophy and literature are secondary research areas. She is collaborating with colleagues from New Zealand and New York on a collection of essays, provisionally entitled Pacific Rim Modernisms. This collection grew out of a plenary session and a seminar at the Modernist Studies Association Conference (MSA6) held in Vancouver in 2004. She co-chaired the conference and they received a $50,000 SSHRC conference grant for MSA6. Other research projects include a study of the construction of literary reputation on which she is collaborating with colleagues in Linguistics, and an examination of the cross cultural interrelationships between Chinese and Anglo-American modernisms.
Her book "The Professional British Literary Agent" is a study of British literary culture focusing on the professional literary agent, whose emergence in Britain around 1880 coincided with, and accelerated, the transformation of both publishing and authorship. Like other studies in book and print culture, Gillies book operates from the central premise that the business of authorship is inextricably tied to the aesthetics of literary praxis. Rather than providing a broad overview of the period, however, it focuses on a specific figure, the professional literary agent. Gillies traces the influence of two prominent agents - A. P. Watt (generally acknowledged as the first professional literary agent) and J. B. Pinker (the leading figure in the second wave of agenting) - focusing on their relationships with two key clients each.
BOOKS:
Henri Bergson and British Modernism (McGill-Queen's UP, 1996)
The Professional British Literary Agent: 1880-1920 (UTP, 2007)
Modernist Literature: An Introduction (McGill-Queen's UP, 2007) $27.95 978-0-7735-3293-9
Pacific Rim Modernisms (UTP, 2009), co-edited with Helen Sword and Steven Yao
[BCBW, 2009] "Literary Criticism"
Her specialty is late nineteenth and early twentieth century British literature. In 2007 her introductory text to the subject, "Modernist Literature" (McGill-Queen's UP), was published.
BA (Alberta), MPhil, DPhil (Oxford); chiefly researches the Anglo-America area; publishing history, popular culture (in particular detective fiction), and philosophy and literature are secondary research areas. She is collaborating with colleagues from New Zealand and New York on a collection of essays, provisionally entitled Pacific Rim Modernisms. This collection grew out of a plenary session and a seminar at the Modernist Studies Association Conference (MSA6) held in Vancouver in 2004. She co-chaired the conference and they received a $50,000 SSHRC conference grant for MSA6. Other research projects include a study of the construction of literary reputation on which she is collaborating with colleagues in Linguistics, and an examination of the cross cultural interrelationships between Chinese and Anglo-American modernisms.
Her book "The Professional British Literary Agent" is a study of British literary culture focusing on the professional literary agent, whose emergence in Britain around 1880 coincided with, and accelerated, the transformation of both publishing and authorship. Like other studies in book and print culture, Gillies book operates from the central premise that the business of authorship is inextricably tied to the aesthetics of literary praxis. Rather than providing a broad overview of the period, however, it focuses on a specific figure, the professional literary agent. Gillies traces the influence of two prominent agents - A. P. Watt (generally acknowledged as the first professional literary agent) and J. B. Pinker (the leading figure in the second wave of agenting) - focusing on their relationships with two key clients each.
BOOKS:
Henri Bergson and British Modernism (McGill-Queen's UP, 1996)
The Professional British Literary Agent: 1880-1920 (UTP, 2007)
Modernist Literature: An Introduction (McGill-Queen's UP, 2007) $27.95 978-0-7735-3293-9
Pacific Rim Modernisms (UTP, 2009), co-edited with Helen Sword and Steven Yao
[BCBW, 2009] "Literary Criticism"
