Biog
I was born two thirds of the way through the last century, in London, England. I was educated at a rundown state school in Kent, and the ancient Scottish university of Aberdeen, where I graduated with a degree in English and Classics. After this I studied for a PhD at Cambridge, the title of which was Robert Browning and the Classics. I presently work for Royal Holloway, University of London teaching English Lit and Creative Writing. I live to the west of London with my wife Rachel and our daughter Lily.
If you would like to get in touch for any reason, please feel free to use the contact page of this website.
This is what we all look like:
That's us, drawn by the one on the left. It's a good likeness of her, actually; and of Rachel. But, to speak frankly, it's not a representation of me that achieves what you'd call photographic verisimilitude. I hate to be critical, but it just isn't a good likeness. I don't (just as a for-instance) have a Hitler Moustache. Nor have I contemplated growing one. Nor can I float three feet off the ground -- I only wish that I could. But apart from that...
As to the mysterious writing in the sky: I'll leave that to the myriad fans of Dan Brown's next novel to decode all that. I havn't a clue; but I'm confident that somebody suitably skilled in cryptography will be able to wrest meaning from its mystery.
Here's another rendering of me. Less moustache, more (apparently, and without reference to reality) eyeliner:
I appear to be punching myself in the face, I know. Not sure about that at all.
One final instance of art: this, of Lily.
A friend of mine, on seeing this image, made a memorable remark about it which I feel encapsulates pretty much the entirety of my mouse-sized abilities as an artist. He said: "hmmm, yes, hands are very hard to do, aren't they?"
Truer words were never spoken.
But that's enough pictures for now I think: I shan't post one of Rachel, for how could my scratchy pen capture her beauty?
My other publications
I'll be honest with you, I find it hard to imagine anybody's going to be particularly interested in all these pettifogging CV-worthy details. But just on the offchance you are, here are some of my publications:
(a) Novels
- Salt (London: Victor Gollancz 2000)
- On (Gollancz 2001)
- Stone (Gollancz 2002)
- Polystom (Gollancz 2003)
- The Snow (Gollancz 2004)
- Gradisil (Gollancz 2006)
- Land of the Headless (Gollancz 2007)
- Splinter (Solaris 2007)
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(b) Parodies
- The Soddit (Gollancz 2003)
- The McAtrix Derided (Gollancz 2004)
- The Sellamillion (Gollancz 2004)
- Star Warped (Gollancz 2004)
- The Da Vinci Cod (Gollancz 2005)
(c) Novellas and collections of short stories
- Park Polar (London: PS Publishing 2001)
- Jupiter Magnified (London: PS Publishing 2003)
- Swiftly: Stories (San Francisco CA: Nightshade Books 2004)
In addition to my novels, I have published some short stories in various magazines and story collections. My story 'Swiftly' [Scifiction June 2002, Infinity Plus 2 Anthology (ed. Nick Gevers and Keith Brooke, PS 2003] was collected in Terri Winding and Ellen Datlow's The Years Best Fantasy and Horror (NY: Griffin 2003). Other recently stories include 'The Imperial Army' (Spectrum 9, 2002), 'The Order of Things' (in Pete Crowther ed., Constellations, New York, Daw 2005), 'New Model Computer' in Lou Anders (ed) Live Without a Net (2003); 'Roads Were Burning' Postscripts (2004; nominated for a British Fantasy Award 2005), 'The Afterlives of SweetDeath' in M W Anderson and Brett Savory (eds), The Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three (Vancouver: Aresnal Press 2004); 'Dick Does Time' in Lavie Tidhar, ed., A Dick and Jane Primer (forthcoming), and 'Man You Gotta Go' in Lou Anders (ed) Futureshocks (forthcoming). My next novel will be Gradisil (Gollancz forthcoming 2006).
II. Academic Books, editions etc.
- (ed) The Oxford Authors: Robert Browning (intro by Daniel Karlin; Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997. ISBN: 0192542036. Pp.xxxii +828). Reissued with corrections 2005.
- Robert Browning Revisited (New York: Twayne 1997. ISBN: 0805745904. Pp.177)
- Silk and Potatoes: Contemporary Arthurian Fantasy (Amsterdam/Athens GA: Rodopi 1998; ISBN: 9042003065. Pp.188)
- The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens (Edited by Paul Schlicke. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999. ISBN: 0198662130. Pp.654). I was associate editor on this project. In addition to various editorial duties I contributed a number of entries amounting to c. 10,000 words ('Novelists and the Novel During Dickens's lifetime', 'Thomas Gray', 'Thomas Moore', 'William Wordsworth', 'Edward Bulwer-Lytton', 'Charles Lever', 'Poetry and poets during Dickens's lifetime', 'Matthew Arnold', 'Robert Browning', 'Thomas Hood', 'L.E.L', 'Walter Savage Landor', 'Samuel Rogers', 'Tennyson', 'Gothic Fiction', 'Historical Fiction', 'Criticism: Post-structuralist criticism').
- Romantic and Victorian Long Poems: a Guide (London: Ashgate 1999. ISBN: 1859281567. Pp.223).
- (ed. and introd.) The Oxford Authors: Tennyson (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000. ISBN: 0192880489. Pp. xxv + 626).
- Science Fiction (London: Routledge: New Critical Idiom series, general editor John Drakakis, 2000. ISBN: 0415192048 hbk, 0415192046 pbk). A revised second edition of this book will be published by Routledge early in 2006. I was enormously glad to have had the chance to revise this book; the first edition was marred with error, largely on account of a deplorable haste of composition.
- Fredric Jameson (London: Routledge: Routledge Critical Thinkers, general editor Robert Eaglestone, 2000. ISBN: 0415215226 hbk, 0415215234 pbk).
- Victorian Culture and Society: the Essential Glossary (London: Arnold/Hodder Headline 2003 ISBN 034080761X hbk, 0340807628 pbk)
- (ed. and introd.) Homer's Iliad, translated by George Chapman (Wordsworth Classics 2003; ISBN: 1853262420); Homer's Odyssey, translated by George Chapman (Wordsworth Classics; 2003 ISBN: 1853260258 pbk)
Other book projects in progress or forthcoming:
- The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press). General editor: Michael Meredith. Volume X, Containing Balaustion's Adventure, Aristophanes' Apology and the Agamemnon of Aeschylus with various other shorter Greek poems. To appear 2006. I am editing this volume with Yopie Prins (Univ. of Michigan): the MS is completed and presently with the General Editor.
III. Articles in Academic Journals:
- 'A Note on the Intrinsic Structure of Swinburne's Laus Veneris', Victorian Poetry 28 (1990), 89-92
- 'Dickens as Journalist', Dutch Dickensian 12 (1990), 34-44
- 'Using Myth: Browning's Fifine at the Fair', Browning Society Notes 20 (1990), 12-30
- 'A Tennyson Letter', Notes and Queries 37 (1990), 425-426
- 'Euripidaristophanising: Browning's Aristophanes' Apology', Browning Society Notes 21 (1991), 32-45
- 'Hunting and Sacrifice in Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon and Erechtheus', Studies in English Literature 31 (1991), 757-771
- 'A Source for Browning's Agamemnon', Victorian Poetry 29 (1991), 180-183
- 'Trollope in The Prime Minister', Notes and Queries 39 (1992), 183-184
- 'D. H. Lawrence and Wells' Future Men', Notes and Queries 40 (1993), 67-68
- 'Dickens' Megalosaurus', Notes and Queries 40 (1993), 478-479
- 'The Star Within the Mere: Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette', Victorian Poetry 32 (1994), 183-194
- 'Me/not me: Browning's “A Death in the Desert”', Browning Institute Studies,22 (1995), 123-32
- 'Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Mrs Radcliffe's Mariner', Notes and Queries 42 (1995), 177-178
- 'Keats's “Attic Shape”: Ode on a Grecian Urn and Non-Euclidian Geometry', Keats-Shelley Review 9 (1995), 1-14
- 'Dickens's Jarndyce and Bulwer-Lytton's Gawtry', Notes and Queries 43 (1996), 45-6
- 'Geborish: a Reading of Landor's Gebir', English 45 (1996), 32-43
- 'Skimpole, Leigh Hunt and Dickens' “Remonstrance”', The Dickensian 92 (1996), 177-86
- 'The Giaour's Sabre: a Reading of Beckford's Vathek', Studies in Romanticism 35 (1996), 199-212
- 'Lytton's Lucile and Browning's Fifine at the Fair: A Study in Influence', Browning Society Notes, 23 (1996), 13-26
- 'The Ring and the Book: the Mage, the Alchemist and the Poet', Victorian Poetry (1998)
- 'Dropping the 'H': Derek Walcott's Omeros' English 51 (2002), 45-62
IV. Chapters in Books
- 'Arnold', 'Romantic Poetry', 'Percy Shelley', 'Swinburne' and 'Victorianism', all entries in Mark Hawkins-Daley (ed), The Readers Guide to Literature in English (London/New York: Fitzroy Dearborn 1996)
- 'Letitia Landon (L.E.L), The Improvisatrice', in Duncan Wu (ed), A Companion to Romanticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 294-300
- 'Felicia Hemans, Records of Woman', in Duncan Wu (ed), A Companion to Romanticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 313-19
- 'Me/Not Me: the Narrator of “A Death in the Desert”', in John Woolford (ed), Robert Browning in Contexts (Winfield KS: Wedgstone Press 1998), 47-60
- Lin Carter, Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings (Gollancz 2003; ISBN: 0575075481 hbk). I updated this 1969 critical study throughout, wrote a new chapter ('After Tolkien') and supplied a full bibliography.
- 'The Matrix Trilogy' and 'Delany: Nuances of a Theme by Stevens' in Lou Anders (ed) Projections: Science Fiction in Literature and Film (Austin TX: Monkeybrain 2004), 67-83, 285-94
V. Academic Reviews
- 'Keats and Music' (John Minahan, Word Like a Bell), Keats-Shelley Review 8 (1993- 4), 71-72
- 'The Given With Which We Must Work' (Barbara Gelpi, Shelley's Goddess), Keats-Shelley Review 8 (1993-4)
- 'Pre-Victorian Dickens' (Michael Slater (ed), Dickens' Journalism), English 43 (1994), 271-273
- 'Shelley: New Criticism' (Karen Wiseman, Imageless Truths: Shelley's Poetic Fictions), Keats-Shelley Review 9 (1995), 79-82
- 'Romantic Victorians' (G. Kim Blank and Margot Louis (eds), Influence and Resistance in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry), Keats- Shelley Review 9 (1995), 82-85
- 'Spitting Images' (David Kent and D. R. Ewen (eds), Romantic Parodies), Keats-Shelley Review 9 (1995), 85-88
- 'Everyman Dickens: Series Editor Michael Slater', Dickensian 91:1 (1995), 40-42
- 'Hand-me-downs' (Anny Sadrin, Parentage and Inheritance in the Novels of Charles Dickens), English 44 (1995), 268-272
- 'Flash Upon That Inner Ideology...' (Forest Pyle, The Ideology of Imagination), Keats-Shelley Review 10 (1996), 122-26
- 'The Criticism of Otranto' (E. J. Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction), Keats-Shelley Review 10 (1996), 126-30
- 'Ohio Browning, vol. VI', Notes and Queries n.s.45 (1998), 132-33
- 'Keats' (Andrew Motion, Keats), Keats-Shelley Review 12 (1998), 150-55
- 'Ideology and Utopia' (Nicholas Williams, Ideology and Utopia in the Poetry of William Blake; Anne Janowitz, Lyric and Labour in the Romantic Tradition), Keats-Shelley Review 13 (1999), 147-49
- 'Oxford Browning vol., VII', Notes and Queries n.s.46 (1999), 402-403
- 'For “Eye” Read “Key”' (Robert W Hill ed. Tennyson's Poetry), English (2000), 83-90
- 'The Limitations of Duckology' (Eleanor Birne and Martin McQuillan, Deconstructing Disney), New Formations 44 (2001), 170-3
VI. Unpublished Dissertation.
'Robert Browning and the Classics'. PhD thesis, Cambridge 1991.
VII. Conference Papers.
- 'Browning as Translator', Browning Society Annual Conference, King's College University of London, 1992
- 'Dworkin vs. Fish: Discourses of Law and Literature', One Day Conference on Interdisciplinarity in Law, Law Dept., Southampton University.
- 'A Yankee in the Spaceship of King Arthur', British Association for American Studies (BAAS) Annual Conference, Leeds University 1996
- 'The Family in Dickens', One day conference on the Family, English and French Deptartments, Royal Holloway, 1996
- 'Boorman's Excalibur', Reading University Film Seminar 1997
- 'Race in Sonnenfeld's Men in Black', BAAS Annual Conference, Norwich 1998
- 'Wyndham's Midwich Cuckoos: holocaust fiction', one-day conference 'Death and Technology', Birkbeck London 2003