Tim Sommer is Lecturer in English Literature and Culture at the University of Passau, Germany. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, an Academic Visitor at the University of Cambridge, a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Oxford. At the University of Heidelberg, he was principal investigator on the project “Modern Literary Manuscripts as Cultural Heritage: Valuation, Archivization, Digitization” (2020–2021). His research on literary authorship, cultural heritage, and archival institutions has appeared in Romanticism, Book History, the Journal of World Literature, and the Harvard Library Bulletin, among other venues. His monograph Carlyle, Emerson and the Transatlantic Uses of Authority: Literature, Print, Performance was published in 2021.
“This timely collection interrogates with a critical eye how we construct literary heritage and thinks about how such ideas might shape our future. Its importance lies in the essays’ combination of heritage, literary, and archival studies to deconstruct the institutions that have authored our cultural understanding of literary archives.” Carrie Smith, Senior Lecturer, Cardiff University, UK