Professor Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

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. In 2015 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2025 I was elected a Fellow of the English Association.

Teaching

Most of my teaching is in the period 1760-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. 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; 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. The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland (Harvill Secker; Harvard University Press, 2015) was featured on Start the Week (BBC R4) and BBC1 Breakfast, and serialised as Book of the Week on BBC R4 read by Simon Russell Beale; it was shortlisted for the Costa Prize in 2015. The Turning Point: A Year that Changed Dickens and the World (Jonathan Cape, 2021; Alfred A. Knopf, 2022) was selected as a book of the year in the Times, Financial Times, Spectator, and New Statesman. Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces was published by Jonathan Cape in 2023, alongside interviews on R4’s Today programme, BBC 5Live, Times Radio, ABC Australia and France 24. It was also featured in the Sunday Times magazine and Observer magazine and serialised in the Daily Telegraph. It was selected by Waterstones as one of the Best Books of 2023. My most recent book, Look Closer: How to Get More Out of Reading was published by Fern Press in 2025, and was selected as a book of the year in the Times and Spectator, accompanied by interviews on BBC R4’s Today programme and Front Row. Other TV and radio work includes ‘Mrs Dickens’s Family Christmas’ (BBC1), ‘Lingua Franca’ (ABC Radio National Australia), ‘The Charlie Rose Show’ (PBS), ‘Queen Victoria’s Children’ (BBC2) and ’The Secret World of Lewis Carroll’ (BBC2). I write regularly on books and film for the Times, Spectator, and Literary Review; other essays and reviews have appeared in publications including the Guardian, TLS, Daily Telegraph, Prospect, and Vogue. In the past I have worked as a consultant on BBC adaptations of Jane Eyre (2006), Emma (2009), and Great Expectations (2011); in 2015-16 I worked on the 20-part BBC1/Red Planet series Dickensian; in 2019 I was an advisor on the feature film Enola Holmes, and in 2022 I worked on the sequel Enola Holmes 2.

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)
• ‘A. E. Housman’s Rejected Addresses’, in Proceedings of the British Academy (2008)
• (ed. with Seamus Perry), Tennyson Among the Poets: Bicentenary Essays (Oxford University Press, 2009)
• (ed.), Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor: A Selected Edition (OUP, 2010)
• Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist (Harvard University Press, 2011)
• (ed.), Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies (OUP, 2013)
• The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland (Harvill Secker; Harvard University Press, 2015)
• (ed.), Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (Norton Critical Editions, 2019)
• (ed.), J. M. Barrie, The Collected Peter Pan (Oxford University Press, 2019)
• The Turning Point: A Year That Changed Dickens And The World (Jonathan Cape, 2021; Alfred A. Knopf, 2022)
• Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces (Jonathan Cape, 2023)
• Look Closer: How to Get More Out of Reading (Fern Press, 2025)
• Editor of the Tennyson Research Bulletin, 2002-11, and series editor of the Anthem Press series Nineteenth-Century Studies
• Recent essays include work on address, rhythm, houses, Victorian transport, and comedy.