Novel Perceptions: towards an inclusive canon

Reading is important. We have to be able to read all kinds of texts to manage our way through life. From an early age we all are also instilled with the idea that we have to read and enjoy high brow literature and 'the canon'. Literary prizes and their winners receive much media attention. However, literary scholars are hard-pressed to explain what kind of books deserve such a literary prize or a place in the literary canon. Until recently, cultural sociologists were convinced that attributing literary value to a book has nothing to do with the quality of the book. Value is attributed based on sociological processes, such as prizes and academic attention for a title or an author.

In the digital age, this changed. In the highly interdisciplinary and innovative Dutch Computational Humanities project The Riddle of Literary Quality (2012-2019), scholars selected 400 contemporary novels and combined computational measurements with the opinions of readers gathered in a large survey. They were able to show that literary value for a large part correlates with linguistic features of the novels (use of words, sentences, etc.), but is also influenced by the perceived genre of the novel and the perceived gender of the author - to name but two things. The scholars uncovered unconscious biases in readers: for instance, women's fiction was consistently rated less literary than literary fiction written by men. They see these biases as a reflection of inequalities in Dutch society and found that reporting on their research helped to raise awareness about these inequalities and furthermore inspired changes in reading patterns and in views on the literary canon.

Novel Perceptions (NOPE) seeks to replicate the Dutch research in the UK. We will select 400 recent novels and do a large survey asking readers for their opinions. We will make use of methods from computational literary studies such as stylometry to analyse the novels. Using quantitative analysis from cultural sociology, we will analyse the opinions of the UK readers of these novels. And we will combine both methodologies to explore correlations, making visible any unconscious biases in the UK reading public.

We will extend the Dutch project with additional surveys in which we will analyse readers' preference of classic and historical versus newer, non-canonised texts; the volume of novels that readers consume; novels they finish and don't. We ask people to reread novels they read in the past to understand how memory operates. The aim of the project is to analyse, but the results will quite naturally lead to raising awareness and to challenging established reading habits. In turn, this will help us promote a more diverse, inclusive reading 'diet'.

To reach these aims, we need as many participants for our surveys as possible. We are very happy that the BBC engagement project "Novels That Shaped Our World" (NOSOW, see
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2019/the-novels-that-shaped-our-world) provides a platform for our research. This project aims to stimulate inclusive and diverse reading cultures, literacy, library use and to celebrate 300 years of the English language novel whilst provoking discussions about a diverse, socially-inclusive twenty-first century canon. From January 2020, the public will be stimulated to read and think about these novels through a host of activities. People are rewarded for engaging with this survey by receiving recommendations for non-classic novels that they will (probably) like but are less well-known. Through these surveys we will draw in participants for our other surveys. The visibility of the BBC project will be essential for us to collect as many readers' opinions as possible for our data collection. All surveys have already been developed. Our grant application asks for funding to analyse the results, disseminate our findings, and to write up our results.

We aim to stimulate awareness and change perceptions of societal biases whilst promoting inclusive, diverse thinking that will have a real-life impact on individual and collective wellbeing. The BBC, our core partner, will help our research deliver impact upon public opinion and behaviour, and help promote critical thinking. We work with other partners including the British Library, Libraries Connected, the Reading Agency, the Scottish Library and Information Council, the Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals, Society of Chief Librarians, Wales, and the Publisher's Association. We are collaborating with literary festivals throughout the country for further promotion of our work. Although Novel Perceptions (NOPE) is focused on the UK population, people across the world will participate in NOPE via our nQuire surveys, ensuring global and long-term impact.

Our team has extensive experience of delivering high profile impact. Since 2012, Groes's Memory Network organised stimulator events in the UK and beyond. NOPE creates impact in the following areas:

1. The general public. We use use the nQuire platform to stimulate inclusive reading as a form of wellbeing and raise awareness about biases. The public is informed about our research via BBC broadcasts, our project website, at impact events and via our (social) media activities. We estimate we'll engage over 30,000 members of the public with our nQuire surveys. We hope to engage around 50,000 people with our online NOPE map. BBC and UoW will distribute 200.000 promotional bookmarks across UK libraries. We invite regional community members across the UK to attend stimulator events at literary festivals where they are briefed on NOPE research by our team supported by literary writers whilst engaging in discussions about current emancipatory debates. It is expected that each event will directly reach 150-200 members of the local community;

2. Non-HEI partners. We work with BBC, all UK libraries, and literary festivals across the UK. The novel perspectives offered by NOPE will raise awareness about and hope to inform future policy strategies with regard to bias in these institutions.

3. The education sector. We hope to inform policy for educational institutions and governing bodies (especially the Department of Education) to instigate secondary school and HEI curricula change and stimulate the creation of a new, inclusive canon. NOPE offers new insights into the role of age, gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity in bias and generates a discussion about inclusive educational policies that stimulate social inclusion. We invite key partners from the education sector to our conference "Towards an inclusive canon" to discuss institutional change.

4. Publishers, editors, booksellers, literary agencies, literary prizes, journalists, broadcasters, and literary critics. Our conference "Towards an inclusive canon" invites professionals from the world of books to discuss a new understanding of how socio-cultural factors shape biases in readership: our project will offer innovative, emancipatory ways of thinking about the processes that underpin the formation of the literary landscape, and its results will offer new insights into re-thinking publishing policies, signings, review policies, marketing strategies, etc;

5. Academics. NOPE will be of interest to scientists and scholars working in the arts, humanities (esp. literature), social sciences (esp. psychology, and sociology) and the sciences including computational linguistics, computer science and machine learning. The project will enhance the knowledge economy and facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration, and, in the process, generate new, innovative methodologies for scholarly use. Further, the project will provide training for one ECR, enhancing their skills including research, networking, IT, marketing/promotional skills and events organisation.