Oliver Tearle became Lecturer in English in 2017 as part of Loughborough University’s Excellence 100 campaign. His research is principally in literature of the period 1880-1930, focusing especially on twentieth-century poetry, the ghost story, and modernism. His third monograph, on modernist poetry and the Great War, was published in 2019.
In addition to his published academic research, Tearle is a prolific blogger whose literary blog receives over 15 million views every year.
Between 2018 and 2021 he was Programme Director for English at Loughborough.
Tearle’s recent research is in modernist poetry. His second monograph, T. E. Hulme and Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2013), the first book-length study of Hulme’s poetry, reassessed the role of this prominent poet and thinker in the formation of British and American modernism. His third monograph, The Great War, The Waste Land, and the Modernist Long Poem, was published by Bloomsbury in 2019. In 2014, he was named one of Loughborough University’s Research Rising Stars.
He has co-supervised to completion a PhD on nineteenth-century stage adaptations of Oliver Twist and is currently co-supervising a PhD on the fiction of Frances Burney. Tearle welcomes PhD applications in all areas of his research, especially modernist poetry.
Tearle’s teaching is predominantly in the areas of poetry and modernism. He convenes the Part A core module ‘Analysing Poetry: Metre, Form and Meaning’ and contributes to the Part B module ‘Modernisms’. Between 2018 and 2021 he was Programme Director for English.
Tearle’s blog, Interesting Literature, receives 15 million views a year and has led to two books: The Secret Library (Michael O’Mara Books, 2016) and Britain by the Book (John Murray, 2017). The blog has hosted numerous scholars including Roger Ebbatson, Regenia Gagnier, Michael Greaney, Claire Nally, and Sir Stanley Wells, and has been cited by the researchers of the popular BBC TV programme QI on numerous occasions. Since 2018 he has also hosted Loughborough University’s School of Poetry podcast.
In 2016 he wrote and presented the first in a series of short films produced by Loughborough University on classic literary texts. His video, on T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, draws on his research into Eliot’s poem and has received over 125,000 views.