Staff profile

Jason Harding received his doctorate from King's College, Cambridge. Since 2017 he has been Professor of English Studies at Durham University. He is the author or editor of seven books, including The Criterion: Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Interwar Britain (OUP 2002), The New Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot (CUP 2016) and English Lion a 1000-page volume in the award-winning The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot (Johns Hopkins UP/Faber & Faber, 2014-19) funded by an AHRC award (total value £985,000). He is currently completing a scholarly edition of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop for OUP and the first book-length study of CIA-funded Encounter magazine for Princeton UP. 

At Durham, I have supervised successful PhD dissertations on "The British Short Story of the First World War", "Chivalry in Literature and Propaganda of the First World War", "T. S. Eliot: Turning Darkness into Light", "T. S. Eliot and the Implications of Laforgue and Corbière", "Humility and Humiliation in the Works of T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett", "Hart Crane and the Little Magazine", "Modernist Poetics of Climate Change", "Mid Twentieth-Century Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought". I welcome PhD research proposals on all aspects of twentieth-century literature and intellectual history. I was the Durham lead in the AHRC Collaborative Skills Development Grant "WISE - What is Scholarly Editing?", and the AHRC-funded Network "The New Modernist Editing". I am Associate Director and a founding member of the Durham Centre for Modern Conflicts and Cultures www.durham.ac.uk/cmcc .

• Critical Theory
• Editing, Bibliography and History of the Book
• Twentieth-Century Studies

Authored book

• Harding, J. (2002). The Criterion: Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-War Britain.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Book review

• Harding, J. (2022). The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 9: 1939-1941. The Review of English Studies 73(311): 803-805.
• Harding, J. (2022). Cold Warriors. Modernism/modernity 29(2): 446-447.
• Harding, J. (2020). Waugh: Pleasant and Unpleasant. Essays in Criticism 70(4): 501-508.
• Harding, J. (2017). Cold War Poetry. Essays in Criticism 67(2): 229-235.
• Harding, J. (2016). Cold War Modernists. Literature and History 25(1): 109-112.
• Harding, J. (2016). Writing for 'The New Yorker': Essays on an American Periodical. The Review of English Studies 67(278): 200-202.
• Harding, J. (2014). T. S. Eliot and Early Modern Literature. The Review of English Studies 65(269): 375-377.
• Harding, J. (2013). The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume II, North America 1894-1960. The Review of English Studies 64(266): 728-729.
• Harding, J. (2012). Leonard and Virginia Woolf, the Hogarth Press and the Networks of Modernism. Modernism/Modernity 19(1): 212-214.
• Harding, J. (2011). Camera Consciousness: Literature, Cinema and Politics 1930-1945. The Cambridge Quarterly 40(1): 81-85.
• Harding, J. (2009). Guardians of the Humanist Legacy: The Classicism of T. S. Eliot's "Criterion" Network and its Relevance to our Postmodern World & The International Reception of T. S. Eliot. Modernism/Modernity 16(4): 824-827.
• Harding, J. (2008). Putting Your Toe In: William Empson: Against the Christians. Essays in Criticism 58(2): 162-170.
• Harding, J. (2008). Modernism and Democracy: Literary Culture, 1900-1930. Modernism/Modernity 15(2): 398-400.
• Harding, J. (2007). Non-Modernists: British Poetry in the Age of Modernism & Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature. The Cambridge Quarterly 36(2): 178-184.
• Harding, J. (2005). The Fleshly Movement: The Oxford Literary History: 1910-1940. The Cambridge Quarterly 34(4): 416-419.
• Harding, J. (2004). The Great War and the Language of Modernism. Modernism/Modernity 11(2): 363-365.
• Harding, J. (2002). Eliot's Dark Angel. Yeats Annual 15: 393-395.
• Harding, J. (2002). Courage Means Running: The Complete Poems of William Empson. The Cambridge Quarterly 31(3): 276-282.
• Harding, J. (2002). The Lost Leader: I. A. Richards: Selected Works, 1919-1938. Essays in Criticism 52(4): 365-373.
• Harding, J. (2000). Doubting Thomist: A Critical Difference: T. S. Eliot and John Middleton Murry in English Literary Criticism, 1919-1928. The Cambridge Quarterly 29(2): 184-189.

Chapter in book

• Harding, J. (2022). William Empson's Imaginative Engagement with China. In Cambridge Criticism Beyond Cambridge. Cao Li Beijing: Tsinghua University Press. 344-360.
• Harding, J. & Nash, J. (2019). An Introduction to Modernist Non-Translation. In Modernism and Non-Translation. Harding, J. & Nash, J. Oxford University Press. 1-18.
• Harding, J. (2019). 'Making Strange': Non-Translation in The Waste Land . In Modernism and Non-Translation. Harding, J. & Nash, J. Oxford University Press. 117-136.
• Harding, J. (2019). Foreword. In Contemporary Kazakh Poetry. Cambridge University Press. xiv-xviii.
• Harding, J. (2018). Fragments Shored against Ruin: Reassembling The Waste Land . In The Life of Texts: Evidence in Textual Production, Transmission and Reception. Caruso, C. London: Bloomsbury. 191-203.
• Harding, J. (2017). 'Our Greatest Asset':Encounter Magazine and the Congress for Cultural Freedom. In Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War: The Journals of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Lerg, Charlotte & Scott-Smith, Giles Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 107-125.
• Harding, J. (2017). The presence of Dante in T. S. Eliot. In Dante: Hell Heaven and Hope - a journey through life and the afterlife with Dante. Cipollone, A. IAS, Durham University. 87-90.
• Harding, J. (2016). Unravelling Eliot. In The New Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Harding, J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-25.
• Harding, J. (2015). Later Eliot and Pound. In A History of Modernist Poetry. Davis, A. & Jenkins, L. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 398-416.
• Harding, J. (2014). Changing Our Way of Being Wrong: T. S. Eliot's Shakespeare. In Will the Modernist: Shakespeare and the European Historical Avant-Gardes.. Cianci, G. & Patey, C. Oxford: Peter Lang. 39-57.
• Harding, J. (2012). The Myth of Venice in the Decline of Eliot and Pound. In Venice and the Cultural Imagination. O'Neill, M., Sandy, M. & Wootton, S. London: Pickering & Chatto. 141-155; 193-196.
• Harding, J. (2011). Publishing. In T. S. Eliot in Context. Harding, J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 73-82.
• Harding, J. (2011). Introduction. In T. S. Eliot in Context. Harding, J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-5.
• Harding, J. (2010). Introduction. In Ford Madox Ford, Modernist Magazines and Editing. Harding, J. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 13-23.
• Harding, J. (2010). 'Modernist and Modern Poetry: an overview'. In The Cambridge History of English Poetry. O'Neill, M. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 725-745.
• Harding, J. (2010). 'The Just Impartiality of a Christian Philosopher': Jacques Maritain and T. S. Eliot. In The Maritain Factor: Taking Religion into Interwar Modernism. Heynickx, J. & De Maeyer, J. Leuven: Leuven University Press. 180-191.
• Harding, J. (2009). The Idea of a Literary Review: T. S. Eliot and the Criterion. In The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume 1, Britain and Ireland 1880-1955. Brooker, P. & Thacker, A. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1: 346-363.
• Harding, J. (2009). Keeping Critical Thought Alive: Eliot's Editorship of the Criterion. In A Companion to T. S. Eliot. Chinitz, D. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. 388-398.
• Harding, J. (2008). Herbert Read and the Psychological Method in Criticism. In Re-Reading Read: New Views on Herbert Read. Paraskos, M. London: Freedom Press. 180-187.
• Harding, J. (2007). 'Empson and the Gifts of China.'. In Some Versions of Empson.. Bevis, M. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 84-103.
• Harding, J. (2007). Modernist Poetry and the Canon. In The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry. Davis, A. & Jenkins, L. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 225-243.
• Harding, J. (2007). 'Tradition and Egoism: T. S. Eliot and the Egoist'. In T. S. Eliot and the Concept of Tradition. Cianci, G. & Harding, J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 90-102.
• Harding, J. (2007). Introduction. In T. S. Eliot and the Concept of Tradition. Cianci, G. & Harding, J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-9.
• Harding, J. (2006). The Englishness of The English Review. In Ford Madox Ford and Englishness. Brown, D. & Plastow, J. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 137-145.
• Harding, J. (2004). The Swan Song of Historical Romance: The Fifth Queen Trilogy. In History and Representation in Ford Madox Ford's Writings. Wiesenfarth, J. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 111-120.
• Harding, J. (2003). Bloomsbury. In Encyclopedia of Literary Modernism. Poplawski, P. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. 25-26.

Edited book

• Harding, Jason & Nash, John. (2019). Modernism and Non-Translation. Oxford University Press.
• Harding, J. (2016). The New Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Harding, J. & Schuchard, R. (2015). The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition: Volume 4, English Lion, 1930-1933. Johns Hopkins University Press & Faber and Faber.
• Harding, J. (2011). T. S. Eliot in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Harding, J. (2010). Ford Madox Ford, Modernist Magazines and Editing . International Ford Madox Ford Studies, Vol.9. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.
• Harding, J. & Cianci, G. (2007). T. S. Eliot and the Concept of Tradition.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Journal Article

• Harding, J. (2021). Lionel Trilling's The Liberal Imagination. Essays in Criticism 71(4): 482-502.
• Harding, J. (2015). European Avant-Garde Coteries and the Modernist Magazine. Modernism/modernity 22(4): 811-820.
• Harding, J. (2012). Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson and the King's College Mandarins. Cambridge Quarterly 41(1): 26-42.
• Harding, J. (2012). T. S. Eliot's Shakespeare. Essays in Criticism 62(2): 160-177.
• Harding, J. (2009). The Right Accent: Conrad and the English Review. Conradiana 41(2-3): 221-243.
• Harding, J. (2006). Eliot Without Tears. Modernism/Modernity 13(1): 917-924.
• Harding, J. (1998). Experiment in Cambridge: 'A Manifesto of Young England'. Cambridge Quarterly 27(4): 287-309.

Newspaper/Magazine Article

• Harding, J. (2022). Poetic alchemy. The Financial Times (22/23 October): 9.
• Harding, J. (2015). The Labyrinth and the Fountain: Evelyn Waugh and Patrick Leigh Fermor in Wartime Crete. London Magazine (April-May): 17-25.
• Harding, J. (2013). Tarantula's Web John Hayward, T. S. Eliot and Their Circle. London Magazine (June/July): 95-101.
• Harding, J. (2012). Obituary: Valerie Eliot. Church Times (23 Nov): 30.
• Harding, J. (2012). Signing the vivid air Stephen Spender's journals. London Magazine (Oct/Nov): 3-11.
• Harding, J. (2011). Eliot v. Mansfield. London Review of Books 33(7): 4.
• Harding, J. (2011). In Memoriam: Sir Frank Kermode. Ford Madox Ford Society Newsletter 17: 29-30.
• Harding, J. (2008). The Good Editor. The Guardian Review 14.06.08: 15.
• Harding, J. (2008). Lehmann's London. London Magazine (Dec): 62-65.
• Harding, J. (2005). The Wayward William Empson. Times Literary Supplement 5335: 4-6.
• Harding, J. (2004). Prufrock and prejudice. Times Literary Supplement 5299: 24.
• Harding, J. (2002). Public Intellectuals. The Times Higher Education Supplement 1542: 33.
• Harding, J. (2002). Eliot and Keynes. Times Literary Supplement 5202: 17.
• Harding, J. (2001). Vivienne Eliot and the Criterion. Times Literary Supplement 5151: 15.
• Harding, J. (2000). Montgomery Belgion and the Criterion. Times Literary Supplement 5082: 14-15.
• Harding, J. (2000). Dipper George Moore. London Review of Books 22(8): 32.

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Harding, J. & et al. (2020). T. S. Eliot: The Search for Happiness. Sky Arts Documentary.
• Harding, J. (2016). The Criterion (tseliot.com). T. S. Eliot Estate official site.