Philip V. Allingham, who has contributed to the Victorian Web since 2000, is Professor, Faculty of Education, and Adjunct Professor, Department of English, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. He worked for the Examinations Branch of the British Columbia Ministry of Education (1988 to
1991) and taught at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver after spending two decades in Canadian public schools as teacher and andinistrator.
With the acceptance of
his doctoral dissertation The Dramatic Adaptations of
"The Christmas Books" of Charles Dickens, 1844-1848: Texts and
Contexts (U. of British Columbia, Vancouver,
Canada) in 1988, Dr. Philip V. Allingham made 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. Since becoming an associate professor he has served as Acting Chair of Lifelong Learning, Acting Chair of Undergraduate Studies in Education, Chair of Undergraduate Studies in Education, and for the past four years Vice-President of the Lakehead University Faculty Association (LUFA) and representative to the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).
His current research interests include critical language pedagogy, the changing nature of accepted formal usage, the transition of secondary students to university, and the illustration of the fiction of Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens in volumes and in Victorian periodicals. A frequent contributor and consultant to The Dickens Magazine over the past decade, 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; the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in San Francisco; and the Dickens Society of America conferences at Roanoke, Virginia; Oakland University, Michigan; Springfield, Massachusetts; Queen's University, Belfast; Kingston University, Kingston-on-Thames; Providence, Rhode Island; and Aix-en-Provence, France. 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 publications include "Charles 'Carlo' Dickens In and Out of Italy in 1844: The Chimes" in Dickens Studies Annual (Vol. 41), with Irina Gredina, "The Countess Vera Sergeevna Tolstaya's Russian Language Adaptation of Great Expectations (1895)" in Dickensian 105, 2 (Summer 2009), "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'" in DSA The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain: Public and Private Spaces and Spheres" in the DSA (Vol. 36), "Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities Illustrated: A Critical Reassessment of Hablot Knight Browne's Plates" (DSA, (Vol. 33), "Shadows in Great Expectations" in English Language Notes 41, 3 (March 2004); with Joe Belanger and Anna Lautard in 2008, "'Different than,' 'data is,' 'to boldly go' — Egregious errors or established usage?" English Quarterly 40 (3/4), and with Wayne Melville in 2011, "Faraday, Dickens and Science Education in Victorian Britain" in School Science Review, 92 (340), 69-72.
Professor Allingham has contributed several significant chapters in books include "Screening the Flashback: Three Ways of Opening The Mayor of Casterbridge" in Thomas Hardy on Screen, edited by Terry Wright (Cambridge U. P., 2005) and in Simon Cooke's Pictures of English Life: Class, Gender, and Identity in Black and White Illustrations of the 1860s "Reading The Pictures, Visualising The Text: Illustrations in Dickens from Pickwick to the Household Edition" (London: Ashgate: 2012). A complete volume of The Thomas Hardy Year Book (No. 40) entitled "Hardy's Artists," which appeared in March 2012, is entirely devoted to Allingham's essays on A Pair of Blue Eyes, Far from the Madding Crowd, George Du Maurier's illustrations for The Hand of Ethelberta and A Laodicean, Walter Paget's illustrations for The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved, and William Hatherell's illustrations for Jude the Obscure.
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. He was cited by both the National Post (Toronto) and The Times (London) on the social, cultural, literary, and meteorological contexts of A Christmas Carol.
Last modified 24 June 2012