Acknowledgements

I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to the team at Cambridge University Press for helping to make the process of writing this book so positive and rewarding. Thanks especially to Bethany Thomas for her excellent editorial guidance and to George Laver for his patient assistance during the later stages of production. Thanks also to Elizabeth Davey, Santhamurthy Ramamoorthy, and Steve Thompson, for their help throughout the production and copy-editing process. I am indebted to the series editors, Kate Flint and Clare Pettitt, for supporting this project and their valuable feedback on the manuscript. I greatly benefitted from detailed reports by two anonymous Cambridge readers and thank them both for their time and generosity. Ray Ryan was encouraging at an early stage of this project and gave me confidence that I had a story to tell.

The research for this book was supported by a Caird Short-Term Research Fellowship provided by Royal Museums Greenwich in 2022. During that time I profited from the expertise and friendliness of the research, library, and archives staff at the National Maritime Museum, particularly Sally Archer, Martin Salmon, Stawell Heard, Gareth Bellis, Penny Allen, and Hannah Stockton. I am also grateful for the essential institutional support provided by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), including a departmental sabbatical in autumn 2020 and research grants from the Centre for Port and Maritime History and the Research Institute for Literature and Cultural History (RILCH). Warmest thanks are due to Kathryn Walchester, Director of RILCH and subject lead for English, for her generous support of all areas of my work. I am grateful to the archivists and librarians who helped me to locate material and shared their expertise: Katie Flanagan and Tace Fox at the Burnett Archive, Archives and Special Collections, Brunel University London; Sarah Starkey and Lorna Hyland at the Archives Centre, Maritime Museum, National Museums Liverpool; Gwyn Williams at Archives and Special Collections, Bangor University; Mike Stores and colleagues at Aldham Robarts Library, LJMU; the staff at the Boston Spa Reading Room at the British Library. For kind permission to reproduce images, I acknowledge the Sunderland Antiquarian Society and the Wellcome Collection. A line from Adrienne Rich’s poem ‘Diving into the Wreck’ from p. 23 of Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company) is reproduced with permission of W. W. Norton & Company. The epigraph to Chapter 4 is from p. 282 of Alison Light’s Mrs Woolf and the Servants: The Hidden Heart of Domestic Service (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008) and is reproduced with kind permission of Bloomsbury US. Sections of Chapter 3 appeared in earlier published form as ‘At Home in the World? The Ornamental Life of Sailors in Victorian Sailortown’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 47.3 (2019), 463–485, © Cambridge University Press 2019.

I am indebted to friends and colleagues who read drafts of chapters or proposals, talked through ideas, and inspired me with their own work: Joe Moran, Jude Piesse, Bridget Bennett, Glenda Norquay, Paul Young, Gerry Smyth, Helen Rogers. Helen introduced me to new research pathways and the wonderful Burnett Archive when we collaborated on the Writing Lives undergraduate module and project at LJMU from 2017; this book would be a very different one without her generosity and guidance. Tony Crowley has been my most trusted reader, looking over many drafts while offering vital encouragement and the best form of sharp-eyed advice. I am fortunate to belong to an excellent community of scholars in the English department at LJMU and thank each one of them for their valuable collegiality. I am grateful to the following individuals who were helpful and generous in a range of different ways – all of them important – during the time in which I was writing this book: Judith Aissen, Rebecca Bailey, Jane Chin Davidson, James Clifford, Catherine Cole, Christopher Connery, Jonathan Cranfield, David Cressy, the late Jo Croft, Colette Crowley, Jacky Crowley, Tamzin Cuming, Sam Durrant, Alice Ferrebe, Emma Griffin, Lynsey Hanley, Joseph Harley, Gail Hershatter, Vicky Holmes, Laura Kennedy, Laura King, Steven King, Grace Laurencin, Lucinda Matthews-Jones, Filippo Menozzi, Rachel Mulhearn, Deaglán Ó Donghaile, Phil O’Brien, Caroline Parry, Rebecca Reeves, Julia Reid, Mary Scott, Julie-Marie Strange, Tig Slater, Wayne Turnbull, Roger Webster, Nick White, James Whitehead.

My biggest debt is to my family. Michael and Geneviève Cuming are loving parents and devoted grandparents – they have provided much support that has enabled me to balance research and family life, including childcare at essential times and a home away from home. Love and thanks also to my brother, Robert Cuming, and to Angela Pask, Amalie Russell, and Olivia Russell. I researched and wrote my first book through the more sleepless years of our children’s small personhood; this one ended up taking just as long but evolved through their beautiful teen years. Thank you, Joseph and Louise, for being my complete joy and making me so proud. Heartfelt thanks to Tony, for his constant care and support. This book is dedicated to the three of you, with love and gratefulness for all our adventures.