She has previously taught at the Universities of Sheffield Hallam, Dundee, and Glasgow. She is the author and editor of several books on Victorian literature and culture, in particular The Afterlife of Christina Rossetti (Palgrave, 2001), and the edited collections (with Richard Cronin and Antony H. Harrison) A Companion to Victorian Poetry (Blackwell, 2002), and (with Jane Stabler) Unfolding the South: Nineteenth-Century British Women Artists and Writers in Italy (Manchester University Press, 2003). She is currently the editor of the Database of Victorian Periodical Poetry.