Books / Edited Collections / Editions
Wordsworth's Fun (Chicago University Press, 2019), pp. 303
Crotchet Castle [for The Cambridge Edition of Thomas Love Peacock], co-ed. with Freya Johnston (Cambridge UP, 2016), pp. 328 + cxxi
Edward Lear and The Play of Poetry, co-ed. with James Williams (Oxford UP, 2016), pp. 381
The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry, ed. (OUP, 2013; pbk 2016), pp. 912
Lessons In Byron (Pan Macmillan, 2013), pp. 120
Comedy: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2012), pp. 150
The Art of Eloquence: Byron, Dickens, Tennyson, Joyce (Oxford UP, 2007; paperback 2010), pp. 302
Some Versions of Empson, ed. (Oxford UP, 2007), pp. 376
Lives of Victorian Literary Figures: Tennyson, ed. (Pickering & Chatto, 2003), pp. 504
Articles in Books
'Laughable Poetry', in Affect and Literature, ed. Alex Houen (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 222-48.
'Charles Lamb . . . Seriously', in Thinking Through Style: Non-Fiction Prose of the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Michael Hurley and Marcus Waithe (Oxford UP, 2018), 35-54
‘Introduction’ [co-written with James Williams], and ‘Falling for Edward Lear’, in Edward Lear and The Play of Poetry, co-ed. with James Williams (Oxford UP, 2016), 1-15 & 134-61
‘At Work With Victorian Poetry’, in The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry (Oxford UP, 2013), 1-16
‘Dickens by the Clock’, in Dickens’s Style, ed. Daniel Tyler (Cambridge UP, 2013; paperback 2015), 46-72
‘Byron’s Feet’, in Meter Matters: Verse Cultures of The Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Jason Hall (Ohio UP, 2011), 78-104
‘Tennyson’s Humour’, in Tennyson Among the Poets: Bicentenary Essays, ed. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Seamus Perry (Oxford UP, 2009), 231-58
‘Empson in the Round’, in Some Versions of Empson (Oxford UP, 2007), 1-20
‘Fighting Talk: Victorian War Poetry’, in The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry, ed. by Tim Kendall (Oxford UP, 2007), 7-33
Articles in Journals, Essays, Reviews, etc.
'Edward Lear's Happiness', Victorian Poetry, 58.2 (Summer 2020), 187-205
'Some Birds', Poetry (March 2020), 597-610
'Poetry by Numbers', Raritan, 37.2 (Fall 2017), 37-64
'In Search of Distraction', Poetry (November 2017), 171-94
'Unknowing Lyric', Poetry (March 2017), 575-89
‘The Funny Thing About Trees’, Raritan (Winter 2014), 86-116
‘Eliot Among the Comedians’, Literary Imagination, 16.2 (July 2014), 135-56
‘Edward Lear’s Lines of Flight’ [2012 British Academy Chatterton Lecture on poetry], Journal of The British Academy, 1 (2013), 31-69
‘Wordsworth’s Folly’, The Wordsworth Circle, 43.3 (Summer 2012), 146-51
‘Wordsworth at Play’, Essays in Criticism, 61.1 (January 2011), 54-78
‘Warring Claims: Victorian Poetry and Conflict’, Les Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, 66 (October 2007), 415-49
‘Joyce’s Love Letters’, in James Joyce Quarterly, 44.2 (2007), 354-57
‘William Empson’, 4000-word entry in The Literary Encyclopedia (2004)
‘Tennyson’s “Roses on the Terrace”: A New Manuscript’, Tennyson Research Bulletin, 8.2 (2003), 118-20
‘Volumes of Noise’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 31.2 (Autumn 2003), 577-91
‘Tennyson, Ireland, and “The Powers of Speech”’, Victorian Poetry, 39 (Fall 2001), 345-64
‘Dickens in Public’, Essays in Criticism, 51 (July 2001), 330-52
‘Temporizing Dickens’, Review of English Studies, 52 (May 2001), 171-91
‘Ruskin, Bright, and the Politics of Eloquence’, Nineteenth-Century Prose, 27.2 (Fall 2000), 177-90
‘Lecturing Ruskin’, Leeds Working Papers in Victorian Studies, 3 (2000), 122-36
‘Tennyson’s Civil Tongue’, Tennyson Research Bulletin, 7.3 (November 1999), 113-25
+ book reviews and review-essays in a range of magazines and journals, including The London Review of Books, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, Modernism/Modernity, The Byron Journal, Review of English Studies, Modern Language Review, Essays in Criticism, Cambridge Quarterly, Tennyson Research Bulletin, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and The Literary Review.
Selected review-articles / essays include:
'Giddy with Thinking' [on Kay Ryan], The New York Review of Books (Sept 2020)
'Faintly Risible, Obscurely Resonant' [on Wordsworth], Harper's (July 2020)
'On Rachael Allen', LRB (5 March 2020)
'On Douglas Crase', LRB (25 November 2019)
'Gravity's Smoothest Dream' [on A. R. Ammons], LRB (7 March 2019), 31-33
'Foiled by Pleasure' [on Elizabeth Barrett Browning], LRB (30 August 2018), 32-34
'Are you a tome?' [on Edward Lear], LRB (14 December 2017), 27-30
'It Wants to Go to Bed with Us' [on John Ashbery], Harper's (June 2017), 78-84
'Supping on Horrors' [on Thomas De Quincey], Harper's (October 2016), 85-93
‘What most I love I bite’ [on Stevie Smith] LRB (28 July 2016), 19-21
‘The lighthouse stares back’ [on Elizabeth Bishop] LRB (7 January 2016), 9-10
‘I can bite anything I want’ [on Lewis Carroll] LRB (16 July 2015), 17-20
'Damn the Respectable' [on Edward Thomas] Literary Review (May 2015)
‘It is still mañana’, [on Robert Frost] LRB (19 February 2015), 21-24
‘Metropolitan Miscreants’ [on nineteenth-century London] LRB 4 July 2013), 32-33
‘Kids Gone Rotten’ [on Treasure Island] LRB (25 October 2012), 26-28
‘Deleecious’ [on William Hazlitt] LRB (6 November 2008), 26-28