Admissions Tutor
Teaching areas
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century poetry and the novel; Romantic literature. Renaissance drama.
Office Hours
Monday, 1-4. Tuesday, 12.30-1.45, 3.15-4.45. Thursday, 11.00-1.15
Background
I completed a doctorate (on mid-eighteenth-century English poetry) at the University of Bristol in 1999; I stayed at Bristol, as a Research Fellow and lecturer, until 2004, when I joined the Jonathan Swift project, at Keele University. I arrived at MMU in 2008.
Research interests
Restoration and Eighteenth-century poetry and literature, particularly John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson and mid-century poetry generally; William Godwin. Some modern American writers, particularly Edmund Wilson, William Gaddis and Richard Yates.
I have published extensively on poetry and literary criticism in the ‘long’ eighteenth century, from Dryden and Johnson to Joseph Warton, William Cowper, Charles Churchill, and Mark Akenside. My main ongoing research involvement is with the Cambridge edition of the Complete Works of Jonathan Swift, for which I am co-editing one volume, and contributing an accompanying Chronology as a reference work. I have also recently written a book about literary failure – concerning the unsuccessful careers of writers that were known to Samuel Johnson.
Editions and Editing:
‘William Godwin: The Novel, Philosophy, and History,’ History of European Ideas, 33 (2007).
Introduction to special edition of the journal, and its four essays on Godwin.
Alexander Pope and his Critics, 3 vols. (Routledge: 2003).
A facsimile reprint of significant eighteenth-century literary criticism; includes 20,000 word introduction, textual appendix, and index.
The Selected Poetry of Charles Churchill (Trent Editions, 2003).
A selection of the eighteenth-century satirist; includes introduction, notes and annotated bibliography. Reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement, 6 August, 2004, p.23.
Articles and Chapters:
‘Fame and Failure in The Spectator’, Media History, 14 (2008)
‘Joseph Warton’s Enthusiasms’, in 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, 15 (2008).
‘Eighteenth-Century Responses to Dryden’s Fables’, Translation and Literature, 16 (2007)
‘“We share something then don’t we?” Allusion in A Frolic of His Own’, in Reading William Gaddis, ed. Brigitte Felix (University of Orleans Press, 2007).
‘The Contemporary Study of Eighteenth-Century Poetry’, Literature Compass 3/4 (2006).
‘Akenside’s Pleasures of Imagination’, in The Blackwell Companion to Eighteenth Century Poetry, ed. Christine Gerrard (Blackwell, 2006).
‘Wilkes, Churchill, and Anti-Scottishness’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 29, 2005.
‘William Warburton’s Literary Squabbles’, Age of Johnson, 16, 2005.
‘Akensides’s Clamours for Liberty’, in Cultures of Whiggism, ed. David Womersley (University of Delaware Press, 2005).
‘Charles Churchill’s Anti-Enlightenment’, History of European Ideas 31, 2005.
‘Success and Failure in Grub-Street: Samuel Johnson and Percival Stockdale,’ The New Rambler, 8 (2004–5).
‘“With Love and Wonder”: Empson, Donne and Milton’, in Critical Pasts: Writing Criticism, Writing History, ed. P. J. Smallwood (Bucknell University Press, 2004).
‘Cowper’s Ends’, in Romanticism at the Millennium, ed. Tim Fulford (Palgrave, 2002)
(Jointly authored with T. A. Mason) ‘Representations of Johnson’s Criticism’, in Johnson Revisioned: New Century Essays, ed. P. J. Smallwood (Bucknell University Press, 2001).
(Jointly authored with T. A. Mason) ‘Alexander’s Feast: the Passes of the Mind’, in John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays, ed. David Hopkins and Paul Hammond (Oxford University Press, 2000).
(Jointly authored with N. Groom), ‘Poetry 1756-1776’, in The Blackwell Companion to English Literature from Milton to Blake, ed. David Womersley (Blackwell, 2000).
Forthcoming:
The Aesthetics of Failure in the Eighteenth Century
(draft of a completed book)
‘Toil and Envy: Some Responses to the Lives of the Poets’, in Samuel Johnson After 300 Years, ed. Philip Smallwood and Greg Clingham (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
Jonathan Swift, Irish Political Writings 2, co-edited with David Hayton (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
‘Editions’, in Samuel Johnson in Context, ed. Jack Lynch (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
A Jonathan Swift Chronology (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
‘The Learned Press: history, literature and foreign languages, 1584-1780’, and ‘From Aldrich to Blackstone, 1690-1780’, in The History of the Oxford University Press, Volume I: 1478-1780 (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Review Articles:
‘Housing the Alien: The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, Volume 3: 1660-1790’, in Modern Philology, 105 (2008)
‘Eighteenth Century Poetry’, in The Year’s Work in English Studies Vol. 79-82 (Oxford University Press, 2000-2004).