School of English, University of Leeds | staff pages

David Fairer
Professor of Eighteenth Century Literature
tel: +44(0) 113 343 4762
fax: +44(0) 113 343 4774
email:d.fairer@leeds.ac.uk
room: 5.G.01

Professor David Fairer MA, DPhil, Oxford. FEA.

For a list of publications since 2001 click here
For a full list of publications click here

Research Interests

My research interests are centred on the field of eighteenth-century poetry, criticism, and scholarship, especially early romanticism, its sources and development. I am particularly interested in tracing connections between the eighteenth century and the so-called ‘Romantic period’, and relating them to contemporary debates about ideas of continuity – a concept that became crucial during the years of the French Revolution and its aftermath. My recent book, Organising Poetry: The Coleridge Circle, 1790-1798 (OUP, 2009), argues that in two related areas, personal identity and history, earlier eighteenth-century writers developed new organic ways of thinking about human experience in which issues of continuity were in question, and that these can offer fresh perspectives on the poetry of Coleridge, Wordsworth and their friends during these years of crisis. This is a study of how they contributed to the ‘continued organisation’ of poetry during a decade when all continuities, and the meanings and values they expressed, were being challenged. The book traces some of the issues that arise when radically-minded young poets come to embrace ideas of inheritance, retrospect, revisitings, recoveries, and friendly ‘converse’, and engage themselves with various organic geographies (streams, paths, cottages) and organic histories (national and local, literary and personal).

My previous book, English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century (Longman), set out to re-think the way eighteenth-century poetry is understood, and to question many of the structures, categories and labels that tend to package the topic. Organising Poetry is intended to be a continuation of this project.

My wider research on eighteenth-century poetry covers the full range: Pope and Swift, pastoral, landscape and georgic poetry; the work of women poets (Finch, Montagu, Leapor, Barbauld); Gray, Collins, the Wartons; Chatterton, Macpherson, Cowper, etc. I am also interested in epistolary writing of all kinds; the growth of literary history and historical scholarship in the eighteenth century; the sublime in literature and painting; eighteenth-century aesthetics; lyric, gothic and sentimental modes; Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton in the eighteenth century; Blake as poet and artist.

I currently offer a MA module on William Blake: Word and Vision. I have supervised many PhD theses on a wide range of topics within the 1700-1820 period, but would be especially interested in supervising work on a topic linked to any of the above.

Teaching

Undergraduate

Civil War and Restoration Literature
Shakespearean Comedy
Eighteenth Century Literature
Swift, Satire, and (Un)reason

Postgraduate

Blake: Word and Vision

Recommended Links

American Society for 18C Studies: http://asecs.press.jhu.edu
The William Blake Archive: http://www.blakearchive.org
British Society for 18C Studies: http://www.bsecs.org.uk
English Poetry 1579-1830: http://englishpoetry.org
The Friends of Coleridge: http://www.friendsofcoleridge.com

Contesting Creativity, 1740-1830, 12-14 September 2008

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