Professor Philip Smallwood
Philip Smallwood, BA (Oxon), M.Phil (Oxon), Ph.D. (London), is Emeritus Professor of English at Birmingham City University and Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of English, Bristol University. His teaching and research interests are in the late seventeenth and in the eighteenth century, especially the poetry and criticism of John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson. Other active interests include the history, practice, and theory of literary criticism of all periods, aesthetics, the theory of history, and the writings of the British philosopher R.G. Collingwood.
Over the last two or three decades, and in addition to numerous essays, chapters, and reviews, Professor Smallwood has published 5 monographs, an anthology, edited texts and manuscripts, together with several edited collections of essays. His books include Modern Critics in Practice: Critical Portraits of British Literary Critics (1990), Johnson Re-Visioned: Looking Before and After (2001; 2nd. ed. 2009), the monograph Reconstructing Criticism: Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” and the Logic of Definition (2003) and in 2004 there appeared his widely-reviewed study of Johnson’s criticism and historical thought, Johnson’s Critical Presence: Image, History, Judgment. His edited collection of essays, Critical Pasts: Writing Criticism, Writing History was published in the same year, and in 2005 (2nd. ed. 2007) the co-edited volume, with Wendy James and David Boucher, for Oxford University Press, of R.G. Collingwood’s Philosophy of Enchantment, an edition of previously unpublished material on the European folktale, with other cultural and critical essays.
More recently (2009) Professor Smallwood has co-edited Samuel Johnson After 300 Years for CUP. His monograph, Critical Occasions: Dryden, Pope, Johnson and the History of Criticism, was published in 2011, and in collaboration with Dr. Min Wild of Plymouth University, a hybrid volume collecting satirical attacks on literary critics in the eighteenth century and entitled Ridiculous Critics: Augustan Mockery of Critical Judgment (2014; paperback 2016). Alongside new essays on Johnson and on Pope, in 2023 Professor Smallwood completed a new monograph for Cambridge University Press entitled The Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson: Forms of Artistry and Thought. His latest project, an edited volume of essays for Routledge entitled Samuel Johnson in Perspective: Poetry, Criticism and Cultural Relations is forthcoming in 2026.
Several of Professor Smallwood’s volumes have been the subject of positive reviews in the Times Literary Supplement while Johnson’s Critical Presence, Ridiculous Critics and Samuel Johnson’s Literary Criticism have all won Choice American Library Association awards as ‘Outstanding Academic Titles’ for the years 2005, 2015 and 2024 respectively.
Professor Smallwood has lectured internationally in Britain, the United States, China, New Zealand, and Australia. He has been awarded Visiting Research Fellowships at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University (2000); the School of Advanced Studies, University of London (2000); and St John’s College, University of Oxford (2003). In 2013, he was Andrew Mellon/American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Research Fellow at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas. In 2025, he was elected to an Honorary Senior Research Fellowship at the University of Bristol.
From 2010, Professor Smallwood has held a series of honorary academic roles in the Department of English at the University of Bristol, including Honorary Visiting Fellow, Senior Associate Teacher, Senior Honorary Teaching Associate, and currently Honorary Senior Research Fellow. He is a former Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has held awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Board and the British Academy. He is an elected member of the US Johnsonians and has been an invited speaker at universities including Virginia, Bristol, Bucknell, Columbia, London, Penn State, and the University of the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences in Beijing.
Professor Smallwood is a member of the editorial board of the journal Eighteenth-Century Life and has advised extensively on university publications, research proposals, and professorial appointments and promotions in both Britain and the United States. As a graduate student at Lincoln College, Oxford, he tutored for St Catherine’s College. He was appointed Lecturer in English at Birmingham Polytechnic in 1976, later becoming Senior Lecturer, and was appointed to a Chair in English at Birmingham City University in 1992. He served as Head of the School of English at BCU from 1990 to 1997.
Between 1991 and 1993, as the University’s nominee, Professor Smallwood acted as a consultant to the Higher Education Quality Council, reporting on measures for ensuring academic quality in British universities. In December 2018, at the invitation of the Johnson Society of London, he delivered the Richard Thrale Memorial Lecture on “Johnson’s Compassion” and gave an address in Westminster Abbey prior to laying a wreath on the tomb of Samuel Johnson. He returned in December 2025 to give the Thrale Memorial Lecture on “A Time to Laugh: Johnson’s Exuberance”. In February 2025, he delivered the annual Macclesfield Lecture in Melbourne on “Raising the Dead: the Two Lives of Johnson’s Life of Savage”, and in March 2025, at the invitation of the Johnson Society of Australia, he gave the annual David Fleeman Memorial Lecture on “States of Happiness in Abraham Cowley and Samuel Johnson”.
Areas of Expertise
- Literary critical scholarship, research and composition
- Aesthetic theory
- The philosophy of history
- Teaching and lecturing at all levels
- Public speaking
Qualifications
- MA (Lincoln College, Oxford)
- M.Phil (Lincoln College, Oxford)
- Ph.D (King’s College, London)
Memberships
- American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies
- British Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies
- The Johnsonians (USA)
- The Johnson Club (UK)
- The Johnson Society of London
Teaching
Current part-time teaching of eighteenth-century poetry and criticism
Research
The poetry and criticism of Alexander Pope; Samuel Johnson; the philosophy of R.G. Collingwood.
Postgraduate Supervision
Supervised a number of M.Phil and Ph.D candidates while in post; also served as external examiner for Ph.D. candidates at the Universities of Nottingham, Birmingham, and Exeter.
Publications
Philip Smallwood - Classified List of Publications, Lectures, Papers and Presentations.
Books
Samuel Johnson in Perspective: Poetry, Criticism and Cultural Relations, ed. (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2026).
The Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson: Forms of Artistry and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023). Monograph. 219pp. Choice American Library Association ‘Outstanding Academic Title’ Award 2024.
Published in paperback, 2025
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009369992
See also “Criteria of the Heart: Dr. Johnson at the Travelodge,”
https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/11/criteria-of-the-heart-dr-johnson-at-the-travelodge.
Reviews:
Freya Johnston, London Review of Books, vol. 46, no. 8, 25 April 2024, pp. 37-39: “expansive, patient and sympathetic”;
A.W. Lee, The New Rambler, 2022-2023, 111-115: “Resonant with the eminent tradition of British practical critics such as Frank Kermode and Donald Davie, Smallwood possesses the intellectual acuity to formulate his own perspectives on literature and culture, and the argumentative skill to make them persuasively felt by his readers”;
Michael Adams, Modern Philology 122, no. 2 (2024): 36–39.
Phil Jones, The Scriblerian, vol. 57, no. 2, 2024, 244-47. “One of the book’s strengths is the vivid fluency of the writing, which en-livens the subject under discussion.”
Frans De Bruyn, The Johnsonian News Letter, Vol. LXXVI, no. 2, 57-63. “Smallwood writes knowledgeably, insightfully, and sympathetically about Johnson as critic, drawing on a life-time of study and reflection.”
Kraft, Elizabeth. Review of The Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson: Forms of Artistry and Thought, by Philip Smallwood. Choice 61, no. 11 (2024): 1149: ‘In a brilliant reconsideration of the literary criticism of Samuel Johnson, Smallwood (Birmingham City Univ., UK) argues that affective response, not rational analysis, drove Johnson’s literary pronouncements. As Smallwood thoroughly demonstrates, lived experience—emotional, relational, philosophical, temporal, editorial—is at the heart of Johnson’s critical enterprise’.
Ridiculous Critics: Augustan Mockery of Critical Judgment, ed. Philip Smallwood and Min Wild (Bucknell University Press/Rowman and Littlefield, 2014; 2nd edition [paperback], 2016). Critical Anthology, 246pp. Choice American Library Association ‘Outstanding Academic Title’ Award 2015.
Associate Editor, ‘Criticism and Culture’, Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Eighteenth-Century Literature, 3 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2014).
Critical Occasions: Dryden, Pope, Johnson, and the History of Criticism (New York, AMS Press, 2011). Monograph,169pp.
Reviews:
Sophie Gee, ‘No Danger to Books’, Times Literary Supplement, March 23, 2012.
Kickel, Katherine. Review of Critical Occasions: Dryden, Pope, Johnson, and the History of Criticism, by Philip Smallwood. The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats 46, no. 2 (Spring 2014): 157–59.
Vilmar, Christopher. Review of Critical Occasions: Dryden, Pope, Johnson, and the History of Criticism, by Philip Smallwood. Choice 49, no. 6 (February 2012): 3142.
Vilmar, Christopher. Review of Critical Occasions: Dryden, Pope, Johnson, and the History of Criticism, by Philip Smallwood. CLIO: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 45, no. 2 (Spring 2016): 251–58. Samuel Johnson After 300 Years, ed. Philip Smallwood and Greg Clingham. Edited volume (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; paperback 2012), Edited collection of essays, 291pp.
The Philosophy of Enchantment: Studies in Folktale, Cultural Criticism and Anthropology by R.G. Collingwood, co-edited by Philip Smallwood, David Boucher and Wendy James (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; 2nd. edition, 2007), 380pp.
Critical Pasts: Writing Criticism, Writing History (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2004). Edited collection of essays, 212pp.
Johnson’s Critical Presence: Image, History, Judgment (London: Routledge, 2004), 180pp. Choice American Library Association ‘Outstanding Academic Title’ Award 2005.
Reconstructing Criticism: Pope’s ‘Essay on Criticism’ and the Logic of Definition (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2003). Monograph, 225pp.
Reviews:
Jennifer Snead, Eighteenth-Century Studies
To do full justice to Smallwood's careful disentangling of the knotted logic that surrounds and limits contemporary debates on the nature and function of literary criticism is impossible within the scope of this essay. It is testimony, however, to the possibilities that his application of Collingwood's thought to this problem have opened up that, unlike the other five books under review here, Reconstructing Criticism presents its readers with a reading of Pope that simultaneously takes into account form and content, "word" and "world," without nostalgia, hostility, or anachronism.
Johnson Re-Visioned: Looking Before and After (Lewisburg and London: Bucknell University Press/Associated University Press, 2001). Edited collection, with Introduction, 179 pp. 2nd. edn. (paperback) 2009.
Modern Critics in Practice: Critical Portraits of British Literary Critics (St. Martin’s Press: London and New York, 1990). Monograph, 259 pp.
The Johnson Quotation Book (Bristol Classical Press: Bristol, 1989). Based on the collection of Chartres Biron. Edition, with new Introduction, 151 pp.
Samuel Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare (1778 edn.; Bristol Classical Press: Bristol, 1985). Edition, with Introduction and Commentary, 185 pp. The most fully annotated edition of Johnson’s Preface to date.
A Concise Chronology of English Literature (Croom Helm: London, 1985). Compendium, with Introduction, 220 pp.
Essays/Chapters in Books
- “Alexander Pope,” The Oxford History of Poetry in English, Vol. 6: Eighteenth-Century British Poetry, ed. Christine Gerrard and Corrina Readioff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 10,000-word essay, forthcoming 2026).
- “Critical Friendships in the Lives of the Poets,” Samuel Johnson and the Powers of Friendship, ed. Daniel Derrin, Dani Napton and Anthony Cousins (London: Routledge, 2023), 129-144.
- ‘Cowley’s Singularity: Pindarique Odes and Johnsonian Values,’ in Abraham Cowley (1618-1667): The Seventeenth-Century English Poet Lost to History, ed. Cedric D. Reverand II and Michael Edson (Clemson-Liverpool University Press, 8,000 words, 2023), 195-216.
- ‘Johnson and Stendhal: a French Critical Connection,’ The Spirit of Every Place: Howard Weinbrot and the Precincts of Enlightenment, ed. Kevin Cope (Lehigh University Press, 2024), 275-290 (8,000 word essay.)
- ‘Beatus Ille: Pope and the Mythos of Retirement,’ in Pope's Mythologies: Alexander Pope and Myth in the Early British Enlightenment, ed. Tony Cousins and Daniel Derrin (London: Routledge, 2023), 115-32 (7,000 word essay.)
- ‘Emotion’, The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson, ed. Jack Lynch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 599-616 (8,000-word essay).
- ‘Johnson and the Essay’, in The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, ed. Greg Clingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 27-40. (5,500 word essay).
- ‘Mirrored Minds: Johnson and Shakespeare,’ in A Clubbable Man: Essays on Eighteenth-Century Literature in Honor of Greg Clingham, ed. Anthony W. Lee (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2022), 5-21. (7,000 word essay).
- ‘Literary and Aesthetic Theory’, The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Thought, ed. Frans de Bruyn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 205-26 (8,000 word essay).
- The Year’s Work in English Studies, vol. 2, 2023, p. 650: Philip Smallwood, ‘Literary and Aesthetic Theory (pp. 205-26), is an accomplished whistle-stop tour of eighteenth-century ideas about the nature of art and literature, taking in French neoclassicists, the emergence of aesthetics as a distinct discipline, the aesthetic thought of writers such as Johnson and Pope (on whom Smallwood is especially good) and the ascendance of belles-lettres in the second half of the century’
- ‘Pope’s Precocious Decade: Models of Literary History for the Age of Queen Anne’, in Alexander Pope in the Time of Queen Anne, ed. Tony Cousins and Daniel Derrin (London: Routledge, 2020), 60-76 (8,000-word essay).
- ‘Tension, Contraries, and Blake’s Augustan Values’, in Paper, Ink and Achievement: Gabe Hornstein and the Revival of Eighteenth-Century Scholarship, ed. Kevin Cope and Cedric D. Reverand II (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2020), 176-191 (8,000-word essay).
- ‘Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Philosophical Anti-Philosophy’, Shakespeare and Philosophy, ed. Craig Bourne and Emily Caddick Bourne (London: Routledge, 2019), 77-87 (6,000-word essay).
- ‘Johnson on Truth, Fiction and “Undisputed History,”’ The Ways of Fiction in the Eighteenth Century: New Essays on the Literary Cultures of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Nicholas J. Crowe (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars’ Publishing, 2018), 198-212 (6,000-word essay).
- ‘Histories’, Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660-1800, ed. Jack Lynch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 701-15 (8,000 word essay)
- ‘Great Anna’s Chaucer, Pope’s January and May and the Logic of Settlement’, Queen Anne and the Arts, ed. Cedric D. Reverand II (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2014), 99-117 (8,000 word essay)
- ‘R.G. Collingwood’s Autobiography as Literature’, chapter 10 of An Autobiography and Other Writings, with essays on Collingwood’s Life and Work, ed. David Boucher and Teresa Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 427-45.
- ‘Johnson and Time’, Samuel Johnson: the Arc of the Pendulum, ed. Freya Johnston and Lynda Mugglestone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 11-23.
- ‘Questioning Nature: Dryden’s Fables, Ancient and Modern,’ Teaching Dryden, ed. Lisa Zunshine and Jayne Lewis (PMLA, 2013). (2,500-word essay)
- ‘The Classical Critics’, Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, vol 3: 1660-1790, ed. David Hopkins and Charles Martindale (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 361-400.
- ‘Shakespeare and Philosophy’, Shakespeare and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Peter Sabor and Fiona Ritchie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 331-48.
- ‘Literary Criticism’, Samuel Johnson in Context, ed. Jack Lynch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 234-42.
- ‘“Dead Keen on Reason”: Critical Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Studies’, The Eighteenth Century Literature Handbook, ed. Gary Day and Bridget Keegan (London: Continuum, 2009), 145-67.
- ‘Johnson, the Arts, and the Idea of Art’, essay for Samuel Johnson After 300 Years, ed. Greg Clingham and Philip Smallwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 164-85.
- (With Greg Clingham) ‘Johnson Now and In Time’, introductory essay for Samuel Johnson After 300 Years, ed. Greg Clingham and Philip Smallwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1-14.
- Introduction to my edited special feature on ‘Critical Voices: Humor, Irony and Passion in the Literary Critics of the Long Eighteenth Century’, for 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, gen. ed. Kevin Cope, vol. 15 (2008), 184-88.
- ‘Voice and Laughter in Johnson’s Criticism’, 293-314. In the above special feature.
- ‘Johnson’s Criticism and Critical Global Studies’, The Age of Johnson, vol. 18 (Paul Korshin Memorial volume, 2007), 151-165.
- ‘The French Critics’. The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, 3: 1660-1790, ed. Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Chapter 6, 374-380.
- (With Philip Tew), ‘British Theory and Criticism 5: 1900 and After’, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Criticism and Theory, 2nd ed., edited by Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth, and Imre Szeman (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 156-62.
-
‘“To Value Still the True”: Pope’s Essay on Criticism and the Problem of the Historical Mode’, in Critical Pasts: Writing Criticism, Writing History (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2004), 75-94.
-
‘Introduction: Problems and Paradoxes in the History of Criticism’, Critical Pasts: Writing Criticism, Writing History (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2004), 1-11.
-
‘Dryden, Critical Judgment and the History of Criticism’, in Dryden and the World of Neoclassicism, ed. Wolfgang Görtschacher and Holger Klein (Tubingen: Stauffenburg-Verl., 2001), (Studies in English and Comparative Literature, 17), 27-39.
-
‘Ironies of the Critical Past: Historicizing Johnson’s Criticism’ in Johnson Re-Visioned: Looking Before and After (Lewisburg and London: Bucknell University Press/Associated University Press, 2001), 114-133.
-
‘From Illusion to Reality: R.G. Collingwood and the Fictional Art of Jane Austen’, Collingwood Studies, 4: Variations: Themes from the Manuscripts, ed. David Boucher and Bruce Haddock (University of Wales College, Swansea: Collingwood Society, 1998), 71-100.
-
‘Shakespeare: Johnson’s Poet of Nature’, The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, ed. Greg Clingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 143-160.
-
From a review in The Year’s Work in English Studies (1997), 453: ‘Fred Parker, Philip Smallwood, Paul Korshin and Robert DeMaria masterfully discuss Rasselas, the Preface to Shakespeare, The Rambler and the Dictionary’.
-
‘A Time to Laugh’: Johnson’s Exuberance’, The New Rambler: Journal of the Johnson Society of London, forthcoming.
-
‘Raising the Dead: the two lives of Johnson’s “Life of Savage”’, The Age of Johnson, vol. 26 (forthcoming 2026)
-
‘Some Unfinished Business in Johnson Studies’, The Age of Johnson (forthcoming 2026).
-
‘”The Opiate of Ignorance”: Dr. Johnson and the Great Chain of Being, OR, Education and Social Mobility’, The New Rambler: : Journal of the Johnson Society of London (2023-24), 35-39 (2025).
-
‘After Guillory: Professing Johnson’s Criticism’, Johnsonian News Letter (March 2025), 31-41.
-
‘Fairy Tales, Madness and Total War’, Human Affairs: Postdisciplinary Humanities and Social Sciences Quarterly, vol. 34, Issue 4 (October 2024), 467-473.
-
‘Encounters with Johnson: Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia’, The Johnson Society of Lichfield, Transactions, 2022, 63-69.
-
‘Johnson’s Compassion’, The New Rambler: Journal of the Johnson Society of London (2018-2019), 36-53.
-
‘On Being Johnsonian In Beijing’, Johnsonian News Letter Vol. LXXI, no. 2 (September 2020), 49-53.
-
‘Petty Caviller or “Formidable Assailant”: Johnson Reads Dennis’, The Cambridge Quarterly, Vol. 46, no. 4 (Dec. 2017) 305-24.
-
‘Two Ways of Being Wise: Shakespeare and the Johnsonian Montaigne’, Poetica (Tokyo) 84 (2015), 55-76.
-
‘Majesty and the Arts: Queen Anne’s Cultural Revolution’, Eighteenth-Century Life 39: 2 (April 2015), 66-70.
-
‘Not the History of Ideas: Laughter, Music and Metaphor in Pope’s Definition of Criticism’, for special feature on ‘metaphor’ for 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era (2011), ed. Mark Pedreira. (7,000-word essay)
-
‘Annotated Immortality: Lonsdale’s Johnson’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 31:3 (2007), 76-84.
-
‘Literary Histories Old and New’, The Age of Johnson, vol. 18, (2007), 363-69.
-
‘Johnson’s Criticism and the Passage of Theory’, The New Rambler: the Journal of the Johnson Society of London, 2003-2004, 3-11.
-
‘The Johnsonian Monster and the Lives of the Poets: James Gillray, Critical History and the Eighteenth-Century Satirical Cartoon’, The British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 25, no. 2 (Autumn 2002), 217-45.
-
‘“More Creative than Creation”: The Idea of Criticism and the Student Critic’, Journal of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 1, no.1 (June 2002), 59-71. Specially commissioned essay for the inaugural edition of this journal.
-
‘“The True Creative Mind”: R.G. Collingwood’s Critical Humanism’, The British Journal of Aesthetics, 41, no. 3 (July 2001), 293-311.
-
‘Dryden’s Criticism as Transfusion’, in Dryden tercentenary number of Translation and Literature (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2001), 78-88. Reviewed in The Scriblerian, 37 (2005), 27.
-
(With Tom Mason), ‘Introducing the Long Eighteenth Century: Literary History and the New Pedagogy’, Cambridge Quarterly, 29, no. 3 (September 2000), 191-213.
-
‘Historical Re-Construction, Literary Transmission and the Value of R.G. Collingwood’, Translation and Literature, 9:1 (Spring 2000), 3-24.
-
‘“Outside the Academic Fold”: Criticism, Theorists and the Men of Letters’, English: The Journal of the English Association, 47 (Spring 1998), 1-12.
-
‘Criticism and the Meanings of “Theory”’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 37, no. 4 (October 1997), 377-385.
-
‘Criticism, Valuation and Useful Purpose’, New Literary History, 28, no. 4 (‘Philosophical Thoughts’, Autumn 1997), 711-722.
-
‘Problems in the Definition of Criticism’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 36, no. 3 (July 1996), 252-264.
-
‘The Definition of Criticism’, New Literary History, 27:3 (‘Literary Subjects’, Summer 1996), 545-554.
Reviews and Review Essays (from 1998)
-
Review of Edward Tomarken, Ethical Criticism: Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, New Rambler: Journal of the Johnson Society of London (2023-2024).
-
Review of Joseph Hone, Alexander Pope in the Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. The Scriblerian, Spring, 2024.
-
‘Romantics De-Romanticised?’ Review of ‘Genial’ Perception: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Myth of Genius in the Long Eighteenth Century, by William Edinger. Clemson University Press, 2022. Cambridge Quarterly, Vol. 52, no. 2 (2023), 187-193.
-
‘Choosing Johnson.’ Review of Samuel Johnson: Selected Works, ed. Robert DeMaria Jr., Stephen Fix and Howard D. Weinbrot (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), and 21st-Century Authors: Samuel Johnson, ed. David Womersley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), New Rambler:Journal of the Johnson Society of London (2022), 76-82.
-
Review of Johnson in Japan (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2021), The Johnsonian News Letter (September 2021), 57-61.
-
‘Pope Well-Noted’. Review of Paul Baines and Julian Ferraro (eds.), the Longman Annotated Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 (London: Routledge, 2019), Eighteenth-Century Life 45: 2 (April 2021), 56-62.
-
Review of Anthony W. Lee, ‘Johnson’s “French Authors”: Rambler 5 and 87’, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews (26 August, 2019). The Scriblerian (Fall 2020).
-
Review of Melvyn New and Robert G. Walker, “‘Curious Particulars’: The Will of Thomas Cumming, the Fighting Quaker,” Johnsonian News Letter 70 (September 2019): 18-27. The Scriblerian (Fall 2020)
-
Reviews of Anthony W. Lee, “Johnson, Statius, and the Classical Motto,” Johnsonian News Letter, Volume LXIX, No. 1 (March 2018), 16-23; “‘Gaping Heirs’: Line Forty-Eight of Samuel Johnson’s THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES,” The Explicator (2017), vol. 75, no. 3, 160-65; “‘Look, My Lord, It Comes’: Ghostly Silences in the Boswell/Johnson Archive,’ Notes and Queries (2017), 1-5. The Scriblerian, Vol. LII, no, 2 (Spring 2020),155-157.
-
Review of Anthony W. Lee (ed.) New Essays on Samuel Johnson: Revaluation (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2018), Notes & Queries (December 2019).
-
‘Johnson’s Works and the Hinterlands of Biography’, ed. O M Brack, Jr., and Robert DeMaria, Jr., The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. 19 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016), The New Rambler (2015-2016), 67-74.
-
Review of Howard D. Weinbrot, Samuel Johnson: New Contexts for a New Century. Ed. Howard D. Weinbrot (San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 2014), The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (May 2017), 299-300.
-
Review of John B. Radner, Johnson and Boswell: A Biography of Friendship (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (January 2017), 153-54.
-
‘Definitively Johnson?’ Review of The Yale Edition of Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets, The New Rambler (2010-2011), 81-90.
-
Review of Ruth Mack, Literary Historicity: Literature and Historical Experience in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2010.
-
Review of Fred Inglis, History Man: the Life of R.G. Collingwood, Times Higher Education Supplement ‘Book of the Week’, 2010.
-
Review of Paul Davis, Translation and the Poet’s Life: the Ethics of Translating in English Culture, 1646-1726 for the Review of English Studies, Vol. 60, Issue 246 (September 2009), 653-654.
-
‘A Polemicist’s Progress’, ‘Book of the Week’, Review of Gary Day’s Literary Criticism: A New History, the Times Higher Education Supplement, 19th June, 2008.
-
Review of Freya Johnston, Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking, 1709-1791 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), The New Rambler, 2006-2007.
-
Review of Nicholas Hudson, Samuel Johnson and the Making of Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), The 18th Century: A Current Bibliography.
-
Reviews of new articles on Dryden’s translations for The Scriblerian, 36, no. 1 (Autumn 2003), 13 and 15-16.
-
‘England’s Literature Restored?’ Review essay on A History of English Literature, by Michael Alexander, Essays in Criticism, 51, no. 4. (October 2001), 442-450.
-
Review of Eighteenth-Century Literary History, ed. Marshall Brown, Comparative Literature Studies, 37: 4 (2000), 442-48.
-
Review of Kevin Hart, Samuel Johnson and the Culture of Property, The New Rambler (1999-2000), 50-52.
-
Review Essay: The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Volume IV: The Eighteenth Century, ed. H.B. Nisbet and Claude Rawson, The Age of Johnson, ed. Paul J. Korshin (New York: AMS Press) Vol. 10 (1999), 392-399.
-
Review of The Age of Johnson, 7: Samuel Johnson and Jacobitism (New York: AMS Press, 1996), British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 21, no. 1(1998), 91-92.
2025
- ‘A Time to Laugh: Johnson’s Exuberance’, The Richard Thrale Memorial Lectures, Johnson Society of London, 13th Dec. 2025.
- ‘States of Happiness in Abraham Cowley and Samuel Johnson’, the David Fleeman Memorial Lecture, the Johnson Society of Australia, Melbourne 8th March, 2025.
- ‘Raising the Dead: the Two Lives of Johnson’s Life of Savage’, Macclesfield Lecture to the Melbourne Savage Club, 27th February 2025.
2024
- ‘”Perpetually a poet”: Johnson’s Poetry in Prose and Verse’. Johnson Society of Lichfield Mary Baker Winter Lecture 21st January, 2024.
2023
- ‘Johnson, Pope’s Iliad and Total War’. Johnson Club, Lincoln College, Oxford, 19th May, 2023.
2021
- ‘Happiness in Pope and Johnson’. Lecture, University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China, 17th December 2021.
- ‘Johnson and the Essay’. Lecture to the Johnson Society of London, 13th February 2021.
2019
- ‘The Poetic Precocity of Alexander Pope: “the little Queen Anne’s Man”’; ‘“As a mother weeps over her babe.” Samuel Johnson, Shakespeare and Emotion’; ‘General Nature and the Humanity of the “Lives of the Poets”’. Three lectures delivered at the University of the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences, Beijing, China.
- ‘Samuel Johnson and the Rhythm of the Lives.’ Talk at Dr. Johnson’s House, Gough Square, London.
- ‘In his own words—Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing’. Address to the English Speaking Union, Bristol (with Pam Smallwood)
2018
- ‘Dr Johnson and Mr Pope,’ talk at Dr Johnson’s House in aid of Pope’s grotto appeal.
- ‘Johnson’s Compassion’, Annual Wreath Laying at Westminster Abbey and Richard Thrale Memorial Lecture, Johnson Society of London, December 2018.
2016
- ‘Two Comprehensive Minds: Samuel Johnson and William Shakespeare’, The Shakespeare Club, Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, 8th November 2016.
- ‘Two Ways of Being Wise: Shakespeare and the Johnsonian Montaigne’, Guest Lecture, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, April 2016.
2015
- ‘”As a mother weeps over her babe”: Johnson’s Shakespeare and the Truth of Feeling’, Guest Lecture, Johnson’s Shakespeare Festival, Dr Johnson’s House, Gough Square, London, September, 2015.
- Contributor to Roundtable on Johnson’s Shakespeare Edition, Johnson’s Shakespeare Festival, Dr Johnson’s House, Gough Square, London, August, 2015.
2012
- ‘Theory and Practice in the History of Poetry’, A Lecture. Symposium on the Philosophy of History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, March 2012.
2011
- ‘R. G. Collingwood and Literature’. Paper to the Symposium on the Philosophy of History, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, June 2011.
2010
- ’Johnson, Philosophy, and the Criticism of Shakespeare’, Invited address to the Spring 2010 meeting of the Johnson Club of Great Britain. At the invitation of the Secretary, Sir Malcolm Jack.
2009
- ‘Samuel Johnson and Time’. Inaugural lecture at the Samuel Johnson Tercentenary Conference, Pembroke College, Oxford University, at the invitation of the organisers, September 2009.
- ‘Johnson’s Criticism and the Reign of Historicism’. Houghton Library Johnson Tercentenary Symposium, Harvard University, August 2009.
- ‘The Classical Critics’. AHRC/University of Bristol-sponsored symposium in preparation for publication of the Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, forthcoming Bristol, June 2009.
- Recorded interview with Professor Sir Christopher Ricks (quondam Oxford Professor of Poetry), Professor Leo Damrosch Jr. and the poet David Ferry, Bucknell University Johnson Symposium, March 2009.
2008
- ‘Collingwood’s An Autobiography as Literature’. Invited lecture. University of Chichester, December 2008.
2007
- ‘Johnson and the Idea of the Arts’. Invited lecture. Bucknell University. September 2007
2006
- ‘A Question of Tone: Johnson’s Critical Voice on Shakespeare and the Poets’; talk, by invitation, at Dr Johnson’s House, London, November 2006.
- ‘Metaphor and Metamorphosis: Pope, Criticism and Critical History’, invited paper to the Research Seminar of the University of Northampton, January 2006.
2005
- ‘What Is a History of Criticism?’ Nottingham Trent University research seminar, invited paper, November 2005.
2004
- ‘Ways of Seeing and Ways of Reading: Literature, Critical History, and the Eighteenth-Century Satirical Caricature’, invited paper to the University of Oxford ‘Restoration to Reform’ Research Seminar, Mansfield College.
2003
- ‘Johnson’s Criticism and the Passage of Theory’. The Johnson Society of London, October 2003.
- ‘What Is a History of Criticism? The Limits of “Radicality”’. Plenary address to the inaugural conference on ‘Criticism and Radicality’, Centre for Critical Practice, University of Central England, September 2003.
- ‘“To Value Still the True”: Pope’s Essay on Criticism, Reception Aesthetics and the Problem of Critical History’. Columbia University, New York, Eighteenth-Century European Culture Faculty Seminar, April 2003.
2002
- ‘Father Beating, Holy Text and the History of Criticism’, colloquium on ‘Making and Unmaking the Canon’, at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, April 2002.
2001
- ‘Poetical Justice, Natural Justice and the Death of Cordelia: Johnson on King Lear’, to the Ethics and Aesthetics Seminar, School of Advanced Study, Senate House, University of London, March 2001.
2000
- ‘Critical Pasts’, Annual Churchill Lecture to the Department of English, University of Bristol (by invitation from the Head of Department).
1998
- ‘Writing History/Writing Criticism’, to the Departments of English and Philosophy, Bucknell Univ., Pennsylvania (by invitation from the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Humanities).
- ‘Collingwood and Literary Criticism’, to the Department of English and the Department of Philosophy, Penn State University, State College, PA, March 1998 (at the invitation of the Head of the Department of English).
1997
- ‘On the Idea of Criticism’, Camille Hess Lecture: Department of English, University of Virginia (by invitation from the Editor of New Literary History).
1992
- ‘Johnson’s Critical Humanism’, Johnson Society of Lichfield Lecture.
Recent and Forthcoming International Conference Contributions
2026
- ‘Grandeur and Intimacy in Johnson’s Poetry: A Legacy to the Thrales’, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Pembroke College, Oxford, January, 2026.
- Chair of ‘Johnson According to Scale’, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Pembroke College, Oxford, January, 2026.
2025
- ‘How to be Happy’: Abraham Cowley’s “Essays in Verse and Prose,”’ British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Pembroke College, Oxford, January 9th 2025.
2024
- ‘After Guillory: Professing Johnson’s Criticism’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies,’ Toronto, March 2024.
- ‘”Pere du romanticisme: Johnson and Stendhal,’ British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference, Oxford, January 2024.
2022
- ‘Johnson and Friendship’ for the East Central American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Wilmington, Delaware, October 2022.
2021
- ‘Cowley’s Pindarics and Johnsonian Values’ for the panel The Unseen Abraham Cowley: Vast Bodies Unexplained, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Toronto, March 2021 (online conference).
2018
- Session Chair: ‘The Presence of the Past: John Dryden’s Translated Verse’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Orlando, Florida, March/April 2018.
- ‘Pope’s Precocious Decade,’ American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Orlando, Florida, March 2018.
2017
- ‘Johnson on Truth and “Undisputed History” in Dryden and Pope’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Minneapolis, Minnesota, March/April 2017.
2016
- ‘“Petty Caviller” or “Formidable Assailant”: Johnson Reads John Dennis’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 2016.
2015
- ‘Improbable Liaisons—Johnson’s Shakespeare, the Sum of Life and the Wisdom of Montaigne’, Conference in Celebration of the 250th anniversary of the publication of Johnson’s Shakespeare, Pembroke College, Oxford, August 2015.
- ‘Laughter at Critics Old and New’, Roundtable, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Los Angeles, California, March 2015.
- ‘Johnson According to Leavis: Irony in Revolt’, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford, January 2015.
2013
- ‘Tensions, Contrarieties, and Blake’s Augustan Values’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Cleveland, Ohio, April 2013.
2011
- ‘Readers Curious and Common: Johnson’s “Lives” and Warton’s “History.”’ International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Graz, Austria, July 2011. At the invitation of the panel coordinator for ‘Critical Authority,’ Sabine Volk-Birke.
2010
- ‘The Lives of the English Poets and Critical Modernity’, Roundtable, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 2010.
- Organiser and Chair of panel on ‘Critical History and Eighteenth-Century Philosophy’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 2010.
2009
- Chair of panel, ‘Samuel Johnson and Europe’, Houghton Library Johnson Symposium, Harvard University, August 2009.
- ‘Samuel Johnson and the Theory of History’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Richmond, Virginia, March 2009.
- Organiser of panel on ‘Johnson’s Shakespeare’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Richmond, Virginia, March 2009.
2008
- ‘Johnson and the Arts’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Portland, Oregon, March 2008.
- Organiser of panel on ‘Johnson Imagined and Re-Imagined’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Portland, Oregon, March 2008.
2007
- ‘Johnson and French Criticism’, International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Montpellier, France, July 2007.
- ‘On Re-Writing the History of Literary Criticism, 1660-1800’, Eighteenth-Century Narratives Conference, University of Exeter, April 2007.
- ‘The Ignis Fatuus in Butler, Rochester, Dryden, and Johnson’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Atlanta, March 2007.
- Organiser and chair of panel on ‘Satirical Attacks on Critics and Criticism in the Long Eighteenth Century’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Atlanta, March 2007.
- ‘Johnson’s Critical Tone’, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford, January 2007.
2006
- ‘Johnson’s Critical Satire’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Montreal, March 2006.
- Organiser and chair of panel on ‘Alexander Pope and the Spirit of Criticism’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Montreal, March 2006.
- ‘Dryden, Literary Criticism and Comic Humanism’ for panel on ‘Dryden’s Comic Humanism’, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford, January 2006.
2005
- Contributor to panel on R.G. Collingwood’s Philosophy of Enchantment, R.G. Collingwood Conference, Coniston, July 2005.
- ‘Critical Friends and Critical Enemies: Johnson and Joseph Warton’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Las Vegas, Nevada, March 2005.
- Organiser and chair of panel on ‘Johnson’s Criticism and the World of Theory’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Las Vegas, Nevada, March 2005.
2004
- ‘The Tragic and Comic Narrative of Eighteenth-Century Literary Criticism’, conference on Eighteenth-Century Narratives, Exeter University, July 2004.
- ‘Pope, Criticism and Making it New’. American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Boston, March 2004.
- Organiser and chair of panel: ‘The Critical Muse: Poets as Critics in the Long Eighteenth Century’. American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Boston, March 2004.
2003
- ‘Johnson’s Criticism of Cowley’s Pindaric Odes: A Question of Judgment’. Northeastern Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Providence College, Rhode Island, 6th-9th November, 2003.
- ‘Samuel Johnson and the Globalization of Shakespeare’, International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Los Angeles, August, 2003.
- ‘Eighteenth-Century Literary History and the Satirical Caricature’, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford, Jan. 2003
2002
- Organiser and chair of panel, ‘”Dead Men Don’t Bite”: Historicity and Eighteenth-Century Literary Criticism’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Colorado Springs, April 2002.
- ‘Samuel Johnson’s Critical Comedy’, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Colorado Springs, April 2002.
- ‘Samuel Johnson and the Literary Canon’, British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Cambridge, January 2002.
2001
- ‘Johnson and Criticism After Theory’ (by invitation), North Eastern American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Halifax, Nova Scotia, October/November 2001.
- ‘“Motion without Progress”: Recovering Literary Criticism’, De Montfort University conference on ‘Post-Theory’, September 2001.
- ‘Johnson’s Periodical Essays in Criticism’ at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference, New Orleans, April 18th-22nd, 2001.
- Organiser and chair of panel on ‘“The Muse’s Handmaid”?: The Idea of Criticism in the Eighteenth Century’, at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference, New Orleans, April 18th-22nd, 2001.
- ‘On Writing the History of Eighteenth-Century Criticism: An Allusion to R.S. Crane’ (by invitation) at the North Eastern Modern Language Association of America conference, Hartford, Connecticut, 30th-31st March, 2001.
2000
- ‘“The True Creative Mind”: R.G. Collingwood and the Traditions of Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism’ at the conference on British Idealism at the Millennium, The Collingwood and British Idealism Centre, Cardiff University, 14th-16th December, 2000.
- ‘Dryden’s Critical Transfusions’ (by invitation of the organizers) to the Tercentenary Conference on ‘John Dryden (1631-1700): Poet, Classicist, Translator’, Department of English/Department of Classics/Centre for the Classical Tradition, University of Bristol, July, 2000.
- ‘The Culturalization of Eighteenth-Century Studies’ (as member of panel chaired by Professor Jill Campbell [Yale University] on ‘The Category of “Literature” in Literary Studies Today: Beliefs and Methodologies’ at the annual conference of the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Philadelphia, April 2000).
- Organiser and chair of panel on ‘Johnson’s Critical Judgments Today’ at the annual conference of the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Philadelphia, April 2000.
1999
- ‘Historicizing Johnson’s Criticism’ (as panel member for ‘Johnson at the Millennium: Looking Before and After’, the 10th International Congress on the Enlightenment, Dublin, July 1999).
- ‘Introducing the Eighteenth Century: “Smug Men” and “Tight Little Couplets”’, delivered at the annual conference of the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Oxford, January 1999.
1998
- ‘Johnson, Cowley and Such Gaiety of Fancy’, to the Annual Conference of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford, January 1998.
1997
- ‘What Criticism Is: Reflections on the Present Tense of the Verb “To Be”’, keynote lecture at conference on ‘Criticism and its Temporalities’, University of Kent, July 1997.
- ‘In Defence of Judgment: Samuel Johnson and the Idea of Criticism’, to the Annual Meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford, January 1997.
1996
- ‘Alexander Pope and the Definition of Criticism’ to the Annual Convention of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of Texas, Austin, March/April 1996.
Performances
‘Now and in Time’: Birmingham City University celebrates the tercentenary of the birth of Samuel Johnson, October 20th, 2009, Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, readings presented in collaboration with the Birmingham Book Festival.
Online publications
‘The Life of Samuel Johnson’ in The Literary Dictionary (on-line edition) ed. Robert Clarke. 2002. (Others commissioned on major individual works by Johnson).
Selected Early Publications in brief
Miscellaneous Notes and Queries from late 1970s/early 1980s on poetic and critical sources of works by Dryden, Pope and Johnson; paper for Transactions of the Johnson Society; various Introductions to reprinted facsimile editions of translations of French seventeenth-century critical works (including The Art of Criticism, translated by ‘A Person of Quality’ (1705), from Dominique Bouhours’ La manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages d’esprit (New York, Scholars’ Facsimiles, 1981), reprinted with new Introduction, pp. v-xvii, and Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie, translated by Thomas Rymer (1674; London: Gregg International, 1979), reprinted, with new Introduction, 5-14). I am also the author of several professional and pedagogic publications for the Society for Research in Higher Education, Times Educational Supplement etc.
Recent Fellowships
2013: American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies/Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowship, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas. To research Pope’s Chaucer.
Media Work
Editorial board of Eighteenth-Century Life.
Reviews for The Times Higher Educational Supplement.
Published correspondence in The New Statesman: Letter of the Week “The Value of the Humanities,” NS, 19-25 January 2024; Letter of the Week: “(Boris) Johnson’s Simulacrum of Seriousness,” NS, 19-25 November, 2021; “Lessons of History” (on Hitler’s long shadow and R.G. Collingwood’s “Man Goes Mad”), NS, 6-12 September 2019; “Monumental Times” (on the pulling down of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol), NS 19-25 June, 2020; “Pope’s Prelude” (on errors in Kathleen Jamie’s review of Jonathan Bate’s Radical Wordsworth), NS, 1-7 May, 2020; Letter of the Week “The Human Cost of War,” NS, 16 December 2017.
Work With Industry
From 1990 I held a Civil Aviation Authority Basic Commercial Pilot’s Licence and an Assistant Instructor’s Rating (now lapsed).
Links and Social Media
- 'Criteria of the Heart: Dr. Johnson at the Travelodge', a new blog by Philip Smallwood, author of THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF SAMUEL JOHNSON