Kathryn Hughes

Kathryn Hughes is a nonfiction writer, specialising in the nineteenth century. Her first book, which was based on her PhD, The Victorian Governess (Hambledon Continuum), explored the real lives of women who worked as residential teachers in middle- and upper-class homes. Her second book George Eliot: The Last Victorian (4th Estate), won the James Tait Black prize and was filmed by BBC2. Her biography of Isabella Beeton, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton (4th Estate), won an Andre Simon prize and was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize. It was dramatised by BBC2. Her next book Victorians Undone: Tales of the flesh in the age of decorum set out to tell the biographies of famous Victorians through their body parts. 

For the past twenty years Kathryn Hughes has been a literary critic at the Guardian, specialising in nonfiction and history books. She also writes regularly for the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement on culture, books and art. She has made and presented documentaries on Radio 4. For sixteen years Kathryn was Professor of Life Writing at the University of East Anglia where she convened the MA in Life Writing. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society.