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 have published widely in the field of nineteenth-century literature, with particular emphasis on the work of Tennyson and Dickens. My most recent book, Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist (Harvard University Press, 2011), was featured on ‘The Review Show’ (BBC2), and won the 2012 Duff Cooper Prize for biography; it was also selected as a book of the year in the Irish Times, Library Journal, New Statesman, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, TLS, and Wall Street Journal, and was an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times. I am currently planning a book on Lewis Carroll. Recent TV and radio work includes ‘Start the Week’ (2010), ‘Mrs Dickens’s Family Christmas’ (BBC, 2011), ‘Lingua Franca’ (ABC Radio National Australia, 2012) and ‘The Charlie Rose Show’ (PBS, 2012). I am a regular reviewer and features writer for the Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, Guardian, TLS, Art Newspaper, and THES; I also write a monthly column for the Oxford Times. In the past few years I have worked as a historical advisor on BBC adaptations of Jane Eyre (2006), Emma (2009), and Great Expectations (2011).

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' (OUP, 2010)

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

Editor of the Tennyson Research Bulletin, 2002-11, and series editor of the Anthem Press series Nineteenth-Century Studies

'Becoming Dickens' (Harvard University Press, 2011)

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

Introduction, Charles Kingsley, 'The Water-Babies' (OUP, 2013)

Recent essays include work on I. A. Richards, Pope, tragedy, Tennyson, Beckett, Dickens, FitzGerald and Hardy.