ABOUT ME

I am a writer of fiction and nonfiction, focusing on culture, history and literature. My work has been published in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Magazine, the Spectator, the Telegraph, Apollo Magazine, History Today, and Slightly Foxed Quarterly, among other places. My first nonfiction book, The Ground Beneath Our Feet, won a Society of Authors K Blundell Award and is forthcoming from Reaktion Books.  My first novel is currently longlisted for the Hachette New Writing North Award.

I earned a doctorate from Oxford University, researching nostalgia and historical fiction in the nineteenth-century novel. My book based on this research, Twilight Histories, was published by Brill in 2023.

I have taught at Oxford University, for Middlebury College’s Oxford Humanities Programme, and at the University of Lüneburg. I have also created and led courses for widening participation initiatives such as Universify and the Brilliant Club.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Twilight Histories: Homesick for History in the Victorian Novel (Boston/Leiden: Brill)

Of Innocence and Experience, Slightly Foxed Quarterly

A History of Gardens. The Telegraph

Will We Ever Know the Real George Orwell? The Spectator.

How Bismarck Redrew the Map of Europe. The Telegraph.

Putting Up Fences. History Today.

The Brothers Grimm. The Telegraph.

Bleak Winter. History Today.

School for Women. The Times Literary Supplement.

Gainsborough’s Gaze. Apollo Magazine.

Nostalgia or das Heimweh. Journal of Victorian Culture.

Settler Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century Culture. Victoriographies.

Twilight Histories. Studies in Scottish Literature.

Stranger in Fiction. The Times Literary Supplement.

Everyday Words. The Times Literary Supplement.

Writing the Frontier. The Times Literary Supplement.

Words and Pictures. The London Magazine.

Brave New Worlds. Programme essay for The Tempest directed by Phelim McDermott at Oxford Playhouse and Northern Stage.

A Hitherto Unpublished Poetic Draft by Thackeray. Notes and Queries.

Geographies of Gender. Journal of Victorian Culture.

Iron Times and Golden Ages. English.

Prometheus in the Nineteenth Century. Critical Comparative Studies.

Charles Kingsley. Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction.

Fournier Street; Our Mutual Friend; Henry Mayhew; London Labour and the London Poor; After London. The East End: A Short Encyclopaedia.