My research focuses on the literature of the late eighteenth and early-to-mid nineteenth centuries. I am particularly interested in the intersections between literature, history and politics in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and in the public significance of the private life in eighteenth-century and Romantic literature. As a practicing biographer I am also interested in the history of life-writing and archives, and in current developments in biographical form. In June 2018 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

My first book, Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives, was published by Bloomsbury (UK) and Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US) in 2010. Young Romantics focuses on the families of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Leigh Hunt and on the political, intellectual and emotional significance of Romantic sociability. It was awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize by the British Academy and was also highly commended by the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Biographers’ Club First Biography Prize.

My second book, Mr and Mrs Disraeli: A Strange Romance, was published in January 2015 by Chatto and Windus (UK) and FSG (US). This book traces the history of the Disraelis’ unusual courtship and marriage and is particularly concerned with the afterlife of Romanticism, the relationship between fact and fiction and the stories of Victorian women who, like Mary Anne Disraeli, sought to move beyond the circumstances of their birth to create for themselves fulfilling and stimulating lives. It was shortlisted for History Today's Book of the Year Prize, and won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2016. In September 2018 I published a short book with the Bodleian Library to mark the bi-centenary of Frankenstein: The Making of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

My most recent book is Dinner with Joseph Johnson: Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age (Chatto & Windus, 2022). Dinner with Joseph Johnson was shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize and longlisted for the Ballie Gifford Prize; work on this book was supported by a Philip Leverhulme Prize, awarded in 2016.  My current project is The Book of Falling Women, due for publication with Chatto & Windus in 2026. 

Biography:

I have a BA and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Romantic and Sentimental Literature from the University of York. From 2006-9 I was a Bye-Fellow at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, and in 2009-10 I was the Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. I have held a visiting scholarship at Wolfson College, Oxford, and in 2012-13 was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. I joined the English Department at the University of Exeter in September 2013.

Research supervision:

I currently supervise PhD students working on a range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century subjects. I also supervise students working on performance by practice PhDs in creative non-fiction, and students working on critical projects concerned with archives and material culture. I would be happy to discuss research proposals on any relevant subject related to my research interests.