Heidi Liedke is Assistant Professor of English literature at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, and Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, UK with a new project on theatre livecasts. She obtained her PhD in English philology at the University of Freiburg, Germany, in 2016. She is co-editor of the collection
Muße und Moderne
(
Idleness and Modernity
; Mohr Siebeck, to be published in 2018). Her work has appeared in
Textus
and
Recherches et Travaux
.

Explores the different gradations, articulations and especially experiences of idleness and idling in the context of a historical period that was mainly obsessed with its work ethic and efficiency

Seeks to contextualize the status of both idleness and travel in the Victorian age and connect the topics by reading travel texts by both canonical and lesser-known writers, including Anna Mary Howitt, W.H. Hudson, Jerome K. Jerome, Margaret Fountaine and George Gissing

Combines close readings with a pronounced interest in the history of mentalities to arrive at a multi-faceted representation of the attitudes and concerns of the English middle-class in the nineteenth century surrounding the discourses on leisure, idleness and travel