Philip V. Allingham, Contributing Editor
With the acceptance of his doctoral dissertation The Dramatic
Adaptations of "The Christmas Books" of Charles Dickens, 1844-1848:
Texts and Contexts at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver,
Canada, in 1988, Dr. Philip V. Allingham began to make the transition to
a career of scholarly research, publication, and post-secondary
instruction after twenty years as a teacher of secondary English, Latin,
and Western Civilisation in Ontario and B. C. public schools, notably at
Balmoral Jr. Secondary in North Vancouver and at Mt. View, Esquimalt,
and Oak Bay Secondary Schools in Victoria. While working in the
Examinations Branch of the B. C. Ministry of Education from 1988 to
1991, Dr. Allingham taught survey courses in the novel, the Victorian
novel, short fiction, and eight major British authors for the English
Dept. at the University of B. C. His three-year stint as examinations
coordinator of English Literature 12 concluded, he returned to the
classroom, first as a contract lecturer in the Department of English at
U. B. C., then as a teacher and department head for seven years in the
English Department at Golden Secondary School, British Columbia School
District No. 6 (Rocky Mountain).
During the decade following his acquisition of the doctoral degree, he taught in the university transfer program part-time for the College of the Rockies and for Language and Literacy Education at U. B. C., while serving on the executives of the local teachers' union and of the British Columbia Teachers of English Language Arts (BCTELA). Encouraged by the publication of more than two dozen scholarly articles on Dickens and Hardy (particularly on serial publication and illustration) in such prestigious journals as The Dickensian, The Dickens Quarterly, The Thomas Hardy Journal, The Thomas Hardy Year Book, and Nineteenth-Century Literature, as well as of teacher guides for the Global Shakespeare Series (ITP Nelson) editions of Julius Caesar and > King Lear, he applied for the position of assistant professor, Intermediate/Senior English Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario. His current research interests include critical language pedagogy, the changing nature of accepted formal usage, and the illustration of the fiction of Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens in volumes and in Victorian periodicals. He has presented conference papers at the Canadian Society for Studies in Education at Laval, Quebec; the Society for Teaching and Learning at St. John's, Newfoundland; and the Dickens Society of America conferences at Roanoke, Virginia; Oakland University, Michigan; Springfield, Massachusetts; and Queen's University, Belfast. In December 2001, he worked with Professor George Landow in the University Scholars Programme at the National University of Singapore in the capacity of Senior Fellow. Recent major publications include "The Illustrations in The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain: Public and Private Spaces and Spheres" in the Dickens Studies Annual (Vol. 36), "Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities Illustrated: A Critical Reassessment of Hablot Knight Browne's Plates" (DSA, Vol. 33), and "Shadows in Great Expectations" in English Language Notes 41, 3 (March 2004). On Canadian national radio (CBC) he appeared on 19 December 2004 in an interview with the regular host of Tapestry, Mary Hynes, discussing the origins of A Christmas Carol.
Last modified 19 September 2023