Professor David Fairer

Position: Emeritus Professor
Areas of expertise: Civil War and Restoration Literature; Shakespearean Comedy; Eighteenth-Century Literature; Swift, Satire, and (Un)reason; Blake
Email: D.Fairer@leeds.ac.uk
Phone: +44(0)113 343 4762

Research interests

My research interests are centred on the field of eighteenth-century poetry, criticism, and scholarship, especially early romanticism, its sources and development. I am particularly interested in tracing connections between the eighteenth century and the so-called ‘Romantic period’, and relating them to contemporary debates about ideas of continuity – a concept that became crucial during the years of the French Revolution and its aftermath.

My most recent book, Organising Poetry: The Coleridge Circle, 1790-1798 (OUP, 2009), argues that in two related areas, personal identity and history, earlier eighteenth-century writers developed new organic ways of thinking about human experience in which issues of continuity were in question, and that these can offer fresh perspectives on the poetry of Coleridge, Wordsworth and their friends in the 1790s. This is a study of how they contributed to the ‘continued organisation’ of poetry during a decade when all continuities, and the meanings and values they expressed, were being challenged. The book traces some of the issues that arise when radically-minded young poets come to embrace ideas of inheritance, retrospect, revisitings, recoveries, and friendly ‘converse’, and engage themselves with various organic geographies (streams, paths, cottages) and organic histories (national and local, literary and personal).

My previous book, English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century (Longman), set out to re-think the way eighteenth-century poetry is understood, and to question many of the structures, categories and labels that tend to package the topic. Organising Poetry is intended to be a continuation of this project.

My wider research on eighteenth-century poetry covers the full range: Pope and Swift, pastoral, landscape and georgic poetry; the work of women poets (Finch, Montagu, Leapor, Barbauld); Gray, Collins, the Wartons; Chatterton, Macpherson, Cowper, etc. I am also interested in epistolary writing of all kinds; the growth of literary history and historical scholarship in the eighteenth century; the sublime in literature and painting; eighteenth-century aesthetics; lyric, gothic and sentimental modes; Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton in the eighteenth century; Blake as poet and artist.

Selected publications

Books

1. Pope’s Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). 189 pp.

2. The Poetry of Alexander Pope (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1989). 160 pp.

3. (editor) Pope: New Contexts (London & New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990). 251 pp.

4. (editor) The Correspondence of Thomas Warton (Athens & London: University of Georgia Press, 1995). 761 pp. + lxxvi.

5. (editor) Thomas Warton, The History of English Poetry (1774-81). A Facsimile Edition, 4 vols, with an introduction by David Fairer (Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1998).

6. (joint editor) Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Oxford & Maldon MA: Blackwell, 1999). 547 pp. + xxiv. [With Christine Gerrard.]

7. (editor) Spenser’s Faerie Queene: Warton’s Observations and Hurd’s Letters. A Facsimile Edition, with an introduction by David Fairer, 3 vols (London & New York: Routledge, 2001).

8. English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, 1700-1789 (London & New York: Longman, 2003). 304 pp. + xii.

9. (joint editor) Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology. Revised Second Edition (Oxford & Maldon MA: Blackwell, 2004). 561 pp. + xxvi. [With Christine Gerrard.]

10. Organising Poetry: The Coleridge Circle, 1790-1798 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 345 pp. + xiv.

Pamphlets

Gaps and Tracings: Gothic Lines in the 1790s. The Landor Lecture: 1. Centre for Romantic Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth (2006). 24 pp.

Articles in journals

1. ‘Authorship Problems in The Adventurer’, Review of English Studies, n.s. 25 (May 1974), 137-51.
2. ‘The Poems of Thomas Warton the Elder?’, Review of English Studies, n.s. 26 (May & Aug. 1975), 287-300, 395-406.
3. ‘The Writing and Printing of Joseph Warton’s Essay on Pope’, Studies in Bibliography, 30 (1977), 211-19.
4. ‘The Poems of Thomas Warton the Elder? – A Postscript’, Review of English Studies, n.s. 29 (Feb. 1978), 61-5.
5. ‘The Making of Warton’s History of English Poetry’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2 (1979), 58-62.
6. ‘Imagination in The Rape of the Lock’, Essays in Criticism, 29 (1979), 53-74.
7. ‘Milton’s Lady and Pope’s Eloisa’, Southern Review (Adelaide), 12 (1979), 209-26. (Joint winner of the Southern Review prize for outstanding essay on an interdisciplinary subject.)
8. ‘The Vitality of Pope’, English, 29 (1980), 45-50.
9. ‘The Origins of Warton’s History of English Poetry’, Review of English Studies, n.s. 32 (Feb. 1981), 37-63.
10. ‘Baby Language and Revolution: The Early Poetry of Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb’, Charles Lamb Bulletin, 74 (April 1991), 33-52.
11. ‘Annotating the Correspondence of Thomas Warton’, Editors’ Notes, 12 (Spring/Fall 1993), 19-26.
12. ‘David Fleeman: A Memoir’, Studies in Bibliography, 48 (1995), 1-33.
13. ‘Organizing Verse: Burke’s Reflections and Eighteenth-Century Poetry’, Romanticism, 3 (1997), 1-19.
14. ‘Sentimental Translation in Mackenzie and Sterne’, Essays in Criticism, 49 (1999), 132-51.
15. ‘Eighteenth-Century Poetic Landscapes’, Coleridge Bulletin, n.s. 13 (Spring 1999), 1-18.
16. ‘Historical Criticism and the English Canon: A Spenserian Dispute in the 1750s’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 24 (Spring 2000), 43-64.
17. ‘Experience Reading Innocence: Contextualizing Blake’s Holy Thursday’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 35 (Summer 2002), 535-62.
18. ‘Coleridge’s Sonnets from Various Authors (1796): A Lost Conversation Poem?’, Studies in Romanticism, 41 (Winter 2002), 585-604.
19. ‘“A little sparring about Poetry”: Coleridge and Thelwall, 1796-8’, Coleridge Bulletin, n.s. 21 (Spring 2003), 20-33.20. ‘A Caribbean Georgic: James Grainger’s The Sugar-Cane’, Kunapipi, 25 (2003), 21-8.
21. ‘Happy Returns? Lamb, Gray, and Wordsworth’s Ruined Cottage’, The Charles Lamb Bulletin, 131 (July 2005), 62-75.
22. ‘The Romantic and the Classical’, The English Review, 16:3 (Feb. 2006), 21-4.
23. ‘“Fishes in His Water:” Shenstone, Sensibility, and the Ethics of Looking’, The Age of Johnson, 19 (2009), 129-48.
24. ‘Close Reading Yearsley’, Key Words, 8 (2010), 18-20.
25. ‘“Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air”: The World of Eco-Georgic’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 40 (2011), 201-18.
26. ‘“Love was in the next Degree”: Lyric, Satire, and Inventive Modulation’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34 (2011), 1-20.
27. ‘Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Creative Fancy’, The Coleridge Bulletin, 37 (Summer 2011), 1-20.
28. ‘Swift and Pope: Reading between the Lines’, The Age of Johnson, 22 (2012), 321-30.
29. ‘Revisiting “Tintern Abbey”: The Challenge of the Familiar’, Romanticism, 19 (2013), 179-87.

Essays contributed to books

1. ‘Oxford and the Literary World’, in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 5 (1688-1800), eds. L.S. Sutherland and Leslie Mitchell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 779-806.

2. ‘Anglo-Saxon Studies’, in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 5 (1688-1800), eds. L.S. Sutherland and Leslie Mitchell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 807-29.

3. ‘Pope, Blake, Heraclitus, and Oppositional Thinking’, in Pope: New Contexts, ed. David Fairer (London & New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), pp. 169-88.

4. (with Stephen Copley) ‘An Essay on Man and the Polite Reader’, in Pope: New Contexts, ed. David Fairer (London & New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), pp. 205-24.

5. ‘Thomas Warton the Younger’, in The Spenser Encyclopaedia, ed. A.C. Hamilton (Toronto & London: Toronto University Press, 1990), p. 727.

6. ‘Joseph Warton’ and ‘Thomas Warton’, in The Dictionary of Literary Biography: The Eighteenth-Century British Poets, ed. John Sitter (n.p.: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1991), pp. 262-70.

7. ‘Pope and Imagination’, in Approaches to Teaching Pope’s Poetry, eds. Wallace Jackson and R. Paul Yoder (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1993), pp. 80-88.

8. ‘Thomas Warton, Thomas Gray, and the Recovery of the Past’, in Thomas Gray: Contemporary Essays, eds. W.B. Hutchings and William Ruddick (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993), pp. 146-70.

9. ‘Introduction to Pope: New Contexts’, in Critical Essays on Alexander Pope, eds. Wallace Jackson and R. Paul Yoder (New York: G.K. Hall, 1993), pp. 52-6. [Reprinted from the 1990 essay collection.]

10. ‘“Sweet native stream!”: Wordsworth and the School of Warton’, in Tradition in Transition: Women Writers, Marginal Texts, and the Eighteenth-Century Canon, eds. Alvaro Ribeiro and James G. Basker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 314-38.

11. ‘The Formation of Warton’s History’ (introduction), in Thomas Warton, The History of English Poetry (1774-81). A Facsimile Edition, 4 vols (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1998), Vol. I, pp. 1-71. [See list of books.]

12. ‘Organizing Verse: Burke’s Reflections and Eighteenth-Century Poetry’, in Early Romantics: Perspectives in British Poetry from Pope to Wordsworth, ed. Thomas Woodman (Basingstoke & London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998), pp. 9-29.

13. ‘Chatterton’s Poetic Afterlife, 1770-1794: A Context for Coleridge’s Monody’, in Thomas Chatterton and Romantic Culture, ed. Nick Groom (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 228-52.

14. ‘Sentimental Translation in Mackenzie and Sterne’, in Translating Life: Studies in Transpositional Aesthetics, eds. Shirley Chew and Alistair Stead (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), pp. 161-80.

15. ‘James Thomson, The Seasons’; ‘Mark Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagination’; Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy’; and ‘Poetry’, in A Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake, ed. David Womersley (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 284-90; 308-14; 371-9; and 560-74.

16. ‘Introduction’ to Spenser’s Faerie Queene: Warton’s Observations and Hurd’s Letters. A Facsimile Edition, 3 vols (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. v-lvii.

17. ‘Creating a National Poetry: The Tradition of Spenser and Milton’, in The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, ed. John Sitter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 177-201.

18. ‘Preface’ to The Victorians and the Eighteenth Century: Reassessing the Tradition, eds. Francis O’Gorman and Katherine Turner (Aldershot: Ashgate 2004), pp. xii-xvi.

19. ‘The Faerie Queene and Eighteenth-Century Spenserianism’, in A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary, ed. Corinne Saunders (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 197-215.

20. ‘Persistence, Adaptations and Transformations in Pastoral and Georgic Poetry’, in The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780, ed. John Richetti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 259-86.

21. ‘The Sonnet’, in Romanticism: An Oxford Guide, ed. Nicholas Roe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 292-309.

22. ‘Sterne, Sensibility and “Learned Wit”’, in Literature, Readers and Dialogue: Essays by and in reply to Douglas Jefferson, eds. Janet Clare and Veronica O’Mara (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2006), pp. 106-113.

23. ‘Southey’s Literary History’, in Robert Southey and the Contexts of English Romanticism, ed. Lynda Pratt (London: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 1-17.

24. ‘Mary Leapor, “Crumble Hall”’, in A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, ed. Christine Gerrard (Malden MA, etc.: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 223-36.

25. ‘“The Year Runs Round”: The Poetry of Work in Eighteenth-Century England’, in Ritual, Routine, and Regime: Repetition in Early Modern British and European Cultures, ed. Lorna Clymer (Toronto, etc.: Toronto University Press, 2006), pp. 153-71.

26. ‘Pope and the Elizabethans’, in The Cambridge Companion to Alexander Pope, ed. Pat Rogers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 89-104.

27. ‘Coleridge’s Early Poetry, 1790-1796’, in The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Fred Burwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 359-74.

28. ‘The Awkward Johnson’, in Samuel Johnson After 300 Years, eds. Greg Clingham and Philip Smallwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 145-163.

29. ‘Lyric Poetry: 1740-1790’, in The Cambridge History of English Poetry, ed. Michael O’Neill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 397-417.

30. ‘Milton and the Romantics’, in John Milton: Life, Writing, Reputation, eds. Paul Hammond and Blair Worden (Oxford: Oxford University Press for The British Academy, 2010), pp. 147-165.

31. ‘Foreword’, to Chris Mounsey, Understanding the Poetry of William Blake Through a Dialectic of Contraries(Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2011), pp. vii-ix.

32. ‘[Shakespeare in Eighteenth-Century] Poetry’, in Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century, eds. Fiona Ritchie and Peter Sabor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 99-117.

33. ‘Lyric and Elegy’, in The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Volume 3: 1660-1790, eds. David Hopkins and Charles Martindale (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 519-45.

34. ‘Johnson and the Warton Brothers’, in Samuel Johnson: The Arc of the Pendulum, eds. Freya Johnston and Lynda Mugglestone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 181-94.

35. ‘Modulation and Expression in the Lyric Ode, 1660-1750’, in The Lyric Poem: Formation of a Genre, ed. Marion Thain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 92-110

Completed and forthcoming

‘Georgic’, in The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660-1800, ed. Jack Lynch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp.

‘“Light Electric Touches”: Sterne, Poetry, and Empirical Erotics’, in Eighteenth-Century Poetry and the Rise of the Novel Reconsidered, eds. Courtney Weiss Smith and Kate Parker (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2013), pp.

‘The Agile Johnson’, in Samuel Johnson: New Contexts for a New Century, ed. Howard D. Weinbrot. San Marino CA: Huntington Library, 2013), pp.

‘Wordsworth and the Pastoral-Georgic Tradition’, in William Wordsworth in Context, ed. Andrew Bennett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2103), pp.

‘“Flying atoms in the sightless air”: Issues of Coherence and Scale in Leapor and Yearsley’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Writin

Invited lectures and conference papers (since 1989)

1. ‘Pope and Opposites’. Paper delivered to the Annual Conference of the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Charleston, S.C., U.S.A. 3 March 1989.

2. ‘Frankenstein’s Monster and the Burkean Sublime’. Paper delivered at the inaugural B.A.R.S. Conference, ‘Reviewing Romanticism’. King Alfred’s College, Winchester, 5 April 1989.

3. ‘“This Prison of our Selves”: Samuel Daniel and the Housing of Woman’. Paper delivered at the British Comparative Literature Association Triennial Congress. Leicester, 4 July 1989.

4. ‘Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the School of Warton’. Plenary lecture delivered to the Wordsworth Summer Conference. Grasmere, 10 August 1989.

5. ‘The Wartons and Winchester’. Paper delivered to the Johnson Club. Winchester, July 1990.

6. ‘“Baby Language and Revolution: The Early Poetry of Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb’. The Ernest Crowsley Memorial Lecture delivered to the Charles Lamb Society, London. 1 December 1990.

7. ‘Thomas Warton, Thomas Gray, and the Recovery of the Past’. Paper delivered to the Restoration to Reform Seminar. All Souls College, Oxford, 11 March 1992.

8. ‘Partners in Crime? Collaboration between the Warton Brothers’. Paper delivered at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Seattle, U.S.A., 29 March 1992.

9. ‘Thomas Warton and his Friends’. Paper delivered to the Johnson Society of London. 16 May 1992.

10. ‘Thomas Gray and Thomas Warton’. Paper delivered to the Five Colleges Eighteenth-Century Seminar. Smith College, Northampton, MA., U.S.A., 20 April 1993.

11. ‘Annotating the Correspondence of Thomas Warton’. Paper delivered at the 24th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A., 23 April 1993.

12. ‘Coleridge and Chatterton’. Lecture delivered to the Friends of Coleridge. Kilve Court, Somerset, 10 September 1994.

13. ‘Songs of Charity: Blake’s Holy Thursday in Context’. Paper delivered at the 26th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A., 8 April 1995.

14. ‘Organizing Verse: Burke’s Reflections and English Poetry, 1744-1790’. Keynote Lecture delivered to the conference, ‘The Early Romantics: British Poets from 1744-1798’. University of Reading, 7 September 1995.

15. ‘Burke’s Reflections in Reynolds’s Window’. Paper delivered at the 27th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Austin, Texas, U.S.A., March 1996.

16. (organiser) ‘Political Views: Readings in the Poetry of Place, 1744-1798’. Seminar at the 29th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Notre Dame, Indiana, U.S.A., 4 April 1998.

17. ‘Women Poets in the Landscape: Charlotte Smith and Anna Seward’. Lecture delivered to the Friends of Coleridge. Kilve Court, Somerset, 5 September 1998.

18. ‘Historical Criticism and the English Canon: The Faerie Queene in the 1750s’. Paper delivered to the Restoration to Reform Interfaculty Seminar. Pembroke College, Cambridge, 19 February 1999.

19. ‘“Fishes in his Water”: William Shenstone and the Value of Looking’. Paper delivered at the 31st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Philadelphia, U.S.A., 15 April 2000.

20. ‘Coleridge in Conversation? Sonnets by Various Authors’. Plenary lecture delivered to the Biennial International Coleridge Conference. Cannington, Somerset, 20 July 2000.

21. ‘Historicism and Canon-Formation: Controversies Old and New’. Plenary Lecture delivered to the ‘Early Romantic Poetry Revisited’ Conference. St Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill, 5 September 2000.

22. ‘Romantic Modes in English Poetry, 1700-1730’. Paper delivered to the postgraduate research seminar, Department of English, University of Durham, 17 January 2001.

23. ‘“The Year runs round”: The Poetry of Work in Eighteenth-Century England’. Lecture delivered to the conference, ‘Ritual, Routine, and Regime: Institutions of Repetition in Euro-American Cultures, 1650-1832’. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, U.S.A., 3 March 2001.

24. ‘“Of Compost shall the Muse descend to sing?”: Organic Matters in Eighteenth-Century Poetry’. University of Glasgow, 26 February 2002.

25. ‘Organic Matters: Georgic and Gothic in Eighteenth-Century Britain’. The BSECS Lecture, delivered to the 33rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Colorado Springs, U.S.A., 6 April 2002.

26. ‘“A little sparring about Poetry”: Coleridge and Thelwall, 1796-8’. Paper delivered to the Biennial International Coleridge Conference. Cannington, Somerset, 21 July 2002.

27. ‘Georgic and Gothic in the Eighteenth Century’. Paper delivered to the Restoration to Reform Seminar. St Hugh’s College, Oxford, October 2002.

28. ‘Economies of Landscape’. Paper delivered to the Eighteenth-Century Research Seminar. University of Leeds, December 2002.

29. ‘Erotic Spaces in Eighteenth-Century Poetry’. Keynote Lecture delivered to the ‘Love and Romanticism’ Conference. Oxford Brookes University, 3 September 2003.

30. ‘Coleridge’s First Book: the 1796 Poems’. Lecture delivered to the Friends of Coleridge. Kilve Court, Somerset, 5 September 2003.

31. “‘The old Poetic Story”: Recovering the Gothic in the Eighteenth Century’. The Tucker Cruse Lecture. University of Bristol, 30 October 2003.

32.‘The Erotics of Empiricism’. The Annual Lecture delivered to the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference. St Hugh’s College, Oxford, 3 January 2004.

33. ‘“Let ev’ry Man enjoy his Whim”: The Genre of Sentimental Satire’. Paper delivered at the 35th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Boston, MA, U.S.A., 26 March 2004.

34. ‘“Patriot Rage and Indignation high”: The Voice of Sheridan in Fears in Solitude’. Paper delivered to the Biennial International Coleridge Conference. Cannington, Somerset, 28 July 2004.

35. ‘Thomas Warton’s Organic History’. Paper tabled for concluding round table at the ‘Celtic Romanticism and Gothic Revisionism’ Conference. Bristol, 16 January 2005.

36. ‘Happy Returns? Lamb, Gray, and Wordsworth’. Guest of Honour’s Lecture to the Charles Lamb Society Annual Birthday Lunch. London, 19 February 2005.

37. ‘Wordsworth’s The Ruined Cottage and Organic History’. Paper delivered to the Midlands Romantic Seminar. University of Nottingham, 23 March 2005.

38. ‘Wordsworth’s The Ruined Cottage and Organic History’. Paper delivered to the Romantic Realignments Seminar. University of Oxford, 16 June 2005.

39. ‘Converse and Chit-Chat: Eighteenth-Century Contexts for Coleridge’s Conversation Poems’. Lecture delivered to the Friends of Coleridge. Kilve Court, Somerset, 9 September 2005.

40. ‘Gaps and Tracings: Gothic Lines in the 1790s’. Inaugural Landor Lecture. The Centre for Romantic Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 25 November 2005.

41. ‘The Erotics of Empiricism’. Guest lecture delivered to the Department of English, University of Virginia. Charlottesville, 28 March 2006.

42. ‘Surviving and Growing: Pastoral and Georgic in the 1790s’. Paper delivered at the 37th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Montreal, Canada, 30 March 2006.

43. ‘Putting his Poems Together: Coleridge’s 1796 Volume’. Paper delivered to the Biennial International Coleridge Conference. Cannington, Somerset, 24 July 2006.

44. ‘Roger Lonsdale’s Edition of Gray, Collins and Goldsmith’. Paper delivered at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference. St Hugh’s College, Oxford, 4 January 2007.

45. ‘Putting his Poems Together: Coleridge’s 1796 Volume’. Paper delivered to the Eighteenth-Century Worlds Seminar. University of Liverpool, 10 January 2007.

46. ‘The Work of Language in Georgic Poetry’. Paper delivered at the 38th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., 24 March 2007.

47. ‘Organic History in Eighteenth-Century Literature’. Paper delivered to the Eighteenth-Century Worlds Seminar. University of Liverpool, 23 October 2007.

48. ‘Surviving and Growing: Pastoral and Georgic in the 1790s’. Paper delivered to the workshop on Virgil’sEclogues and Georgics, and their reception. University of Oslo, Norway, 17 November 2007.

49. ‘Teaching Poetry Roundtable’, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference. St Hugh’s College, Oxford, 4 January 2008.

50. ‘Coleridge and the Invasion Threat of 1798’. Paper delivered to the English Research Seminar. University of Exeter, 12 May 2008.

51. ‘Thelwall the Poet’. Paper delivered to the Biennial International Coleridge Conference. Cannington, Somerset, 29 July 2008.

52. ‘Wordsworth’s Green Language: Tintern Abbey, The Ruined Cottage, and The Old Cumberland Beggar’. Opening Lecture delivered to the 37th Wordsworth Summer Conference. Grasmere, 31 July 2008.

53. ‘“Religious Musings”: Some Eighteenth-Century Contexts’. Lecture delivered to the Friends of Coleridge. Kilve Court, Somerset, 6 September 2008.

54. ‘Milton and the Romantics’. Lecture delivered to the symposium to celebrate the quatercentenary of Milton’s birth. The British Academy, London, 6 December 2008.

55. ‘Reading Dyer’s Grongar Hill’. Teaching Poetry Roundtable, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference. St Hugh’s College, Oxford, 7 January 2009.

56. ‘“Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air”: The World of Eco-Georgic’. Paper delivered at the 40th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Richmond, Virginia, 26 March 2009.

57. ‘Lyric and Elegy’. Paper delivered to the Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, volume 3 contributors’ workshop. University of Bristol, 27 June 2009.

58. ‘Johnson and the Warton Brothers’. Plenary Lecture delivered to the ‘Johnson at 300’ Conference. Pembroke College, Oxford, 17 September 2009.

59. ‘“Love was in the next Degree”: The Dynamics of the Lyric Poem, 1660-1760’. The Rushton Lecture, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 16 March 2010.

60. (Organiser and chair) ‘“Mixture” in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Poetry and Theory’. Seminar at the 41st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A., 18 March 2010.

61. (Conference respondent) ‘“Half Dust, Half Deity”: Science, Nature, and the Supernatural in the Long Eighteenth Century’, Graduate Conference. Cambridge English Faculty, 24-5 April 2010.

62. ‘Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Creative Fancy’. Concluding Lecture delivered to the Coleridge Summer Conference. Cannington, Somerset, 21-8 July 2010.

63. ‘Erasmus Darwin’s Loves of the Plants (1789): Erotic Botany and its Implications’. Lecture delivered to the Friends of Coleridge. Kilve Court, Somerset, 3-5 September 2010.

64. ‘Mary Leapor’s “Crumble Hall”’. Mary Leapor Roundtable, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference. St Hugh’s College, Oxford, 5-8 January 2011.

65. ‘Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Nature’s Beguilements’. Lecture delivered to the Wordsworth Winter School. Rydal Hall, Cumbria, 21-6 February 2011.

66. ‘Satire and Lyric Modulation’. Paper delivered at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Vancouver, Canada, 17-20 March 2011.

67. ‘Shakespeare in Eighteenth-Century Poetry’. The Robin Dix Memorial Lecture. University of Durham, 5 May 2011.

68. ‘Rivers Revisited: The Challenge of the Familiar’. Lecture to ‘The Wye Valley: Romantic Representations, 1640-1830’ conference. Tintern, Monmouthshire, Wales, 6 July 2011.

69. ‘Eco-georgic: Organic Economies in the Eighteenth Century’. Opening plenary lecture to the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference. St Hugh's College, Oxford, 4 January 2012.

70. ‘Shakespeare in Eighteenth-Century Poetry’. The Winston Churchill Birthday Foundation Lecture. University of Bristol, 16 February 2012.

71. ‘Pedagogy and Poetic Form’ (roundtable). 43rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A., 23 March 2012.

72. ‘The Feeble Lyre: Posterity and the Concept of Lyric Failure’. Paper delivered at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A., 24 March 2012.

73. ‘The Agile Johnson’. Concluding lecture, as guest of honour, to the Annual Conference of the Johnson Society of the Central Region. University of Notre Dame, Indiana, U.S.A., 13 April 2012.

74. ‘“All manag’d for the best”: Adapting Adaptation in the Eighteenth Century’. Opening plenary lecture to the Citizens of the World Conference: Adapting (in) the Eighteenth Century. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 22 June 2012.

75. ‘Being Human in Paradise Lost’. Rstvig Foundation Lecture, University of Oslo, 20 September 2012.

76. ‘Wordsworth and the Georgic’. Paper delivered at the 44th Annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., 4 April 2013.

77. ‘Georgic’s Working Language’. Paper delivered at the Bill Overton Memorial Conference on Eighteenth-Century Poetry, Loughborough University, 18 September 2013.