Dirk van Hulle and Mark Nixon chaired by Michael Caines

Modern book historian Professor Dirk van Hulle and co-director of the Beckett International Foundation Dr Mark Nixon explain how the drafting techniques of authors such as Samuel Beckett, Kafka, Jane Austen and Alan Bennett give valuable insight into their creative processes.

Van Hulle and Nixon say what has been removed, moved or edited give us an insight into the authors’ thinking and their efforts to find the right form. These decisions are documented in many literary manuscripts, notebooks and letters preserved in libraries and archives. For example, what would Frankenstein have looked like if Mary and Percy Shelley had not collaborated on the draft?

Van Hulle is professor of bibliography and modern book history at the University of Oxford.  Nixon is co-director of the Beckett International Foundation, which helps to manage the world’s largest collection of Samuel Beckett manuscripts and materials, and associate professor in modern literature at the University of Reading.

Discussions are chaired by Michael Caines, an editor at the Times Literary Supplement and co-editor of the Brixton Review of Books. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century.

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