Academic Background

Pembroke College, Cambridge: BA (1990), MA (1994), PhD (1998); Procter Visiting Fellow, Princeton University, 1991-1992; Junior Research Fellow, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, 1995-1996; Fellow and Tutor, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 1996-2002; Fellow and Tutor, Magdalen College, Oxford, 2002-present.

Undergraduate Teaching

Most of my teaching is in the period 1700-present; this means that I teach Victorian and Modern Literature in the first year of the undergraduate course (together with literary theory and practical criticism), Romantic period literature in the second year, and a number of special options in the final year.

Research Interests

I am currently writing two books: 'Becoming Dickens' (Harvard University Press, 2011) and 'The Book of Shadows: Victorian Magic and the Making of the Modern World' (Princeton University Press, 2012). My other research interests include strands of literary criticism, Victorian poetry and fiction, and the history of sexuality. Media work includes writing arts features and reviews for the Daily Telegraph, contributing to UK and US radio and television programmes, and acting as the historical advisor on recent BBC adaptations of 'Jane Eyre' (2006) and 'Emma' (2009).

Selected Publications

'Victorian Afterlives: The Shaping of Influence in Nineteenth-Century Literature' (OUP, 2002)

(ed.), Charles Dickens, 'A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books' (Oxford World's Classics, 2006)

(ed.), Charles Dickens, 'Great Expectations' (Oxford World's Classics, 2008)

(ed.), Henry Mayhew, 'London Labour and the London Poor: A Selected Edition' (Oxford University Press, 2010)

(ed.), 'Tennyson Among the Poets: Bicentenary Essays' (Oxford University Press, 2009)

Editor of the Tennyson Research Bulletin, 2002-present

'Becoming Dickens' (Harvard University Press, forthcoming in 2011)

'A. E. Housman's Rejected Addresses', in 'Proceedings of the British Academy' (2008)

Recent essays include work on I. A. Richards, tragedy, Tennyson, Edward FitzGerald and Hardy.