Professor of Romanticism Studies
J. A.Mee@warwick.ac.uk
I came to Warwick in 2007 after over a decade in the English Faculty at Oxford where I was Margaret Candfield Fellow in English at University College (the one that threw Shelley out for atheism 200 years ago) and Professor of Literature of the Romantic Period. Prior to moving to Oxford, I was a Senior Lecturer at the Australian University. I am currently writing a book on literature, conversation, and contention 1711-1832 funded by a Phillip J. Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. It will be published under the title Conversible Worlds: Literature and the Idea of Conversation in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Period by Oxford University Press in 2011. During the course of working on the book, I have held fellowships at the University of Chicago (2008), the Yale Centre for British Art (2009), and the Australian National University (2009).
Among other recent talks, I was a plenary speaker at the 2009 British Association of Romantic Studies international conference at Roehampton University and an invited speaker on the panel 'Major Romantic Authors. at this year's (2009/10) Modern Language Association conference in Philadelphia. The latter paper, 'Thomas Paine's "Tendency,"' will be published in the on-line journal Romantic Praxis later this year. 2009 also saw a very light brush with fame when my revised edition of Keats's Letters for Oxford University Press was used in Jane's Campion's film Bright Star. It appeared in the film's credits after the name of the company that provided the snow!
Other research interests: culture and politics in the long romantic period (1760-1832); social romanticism; space into place in romantic period London; gender and sociability in the Romantic period; British popular radicalism in the 1790s, especially in relation to its print and social culture; literature, censorship, and the law; Marxist literary theory; communicative ethics and literature; William Blake; Anna Laetitia Barbauld; Mary Hays; Mary Wollstonecraft; William Godwin, the Joseph Johnson circle and Rational Dissent; Robert Merry; William Hazlitt; Charles Dickens; Dickens and film; the contemporary Indian novel in English.
I welcome enquiries about graduate supervision on any topic in the period 1760-1832 (the long romantic period) or on Charles Dickens (the novels, the journalism, and/or adaptations). Please email me with any queries in this regard.
Publications
Forthcoming
'Thomas Paine's "tendency"' Romantic Praxis (on-line journal) 2010/11.
William Hazlitt, 'The Spirit of Controversy' and Other Essays, ed. with Kevin Gilmartin, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Conversible Worlds: Literature and the Idea of Conversation in the Eighteenth Century and Romantic Periods (Oxford University Press, 2011)
“The Uses of Conversation”: William Godwin’s Conversible World and Romantic Sociability', Studies in Romanticism, 2011.
The Cambridge Introduction to Charles Dickens (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
'Popular Radical Culture' in The Cambridge Companion to British Writing on the French Revolution, 1789-1800, ed. Pamela Clemit (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
'Morals, Manners and Liberty: British Radicals and Perceptions of America in the 1790s' in The American Experiment and the Idea of Democracy in British Culture, 1776-1914, ed. Ella Dzelzainis and Ruth Livesey (Ashgate, 2010)
‘”The Press and Danger of the Crowd”: Godwin, Thelwall and the Counter-Public Sphere’ in Robert Manaquis and Victoria Myers (eds) The Godwinian Moment (University of Toronto Press, 2010).
Books
Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation: Poetics and the Policing of Culture in the Romantic Period (Oxford University Press, 2003). Paperback, 2005.
Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s (Oxford University Press, 1992) 251pp. Paperback , 1994. An extract was reproduced in the Longman Critical Reader William Blake (1998), pp. 43-50, edited and introduced by John Lucas, and also in Blake’s Poetry and Designs, 2nd ed., Mary Lynn Johnson and John E. Grant (eds) (Norton 2007).
Edited Collections of Essays and Editions
Ed. with Colin Jones and Josephine McDonagh, A Tale of Two Cities and the French Revolution (Palgrave 2009). Essay collection.
Ed. with Tone Brekke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Ed. with Sarah Haggarty, Blake and Conflict (Palgrave, 2008). Essay collection.
Ed. with John Barrell, Trials for Treason and Sedition, 1792-4, 8 vols (Pickering and Chatto, 2006-7).
Ed. with Thomas Keymer, The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1740-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Essay collection.
Ed. with Iain McCalman and Clive Hurst, Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (Oxford World’s Classics, 2003).
Ed. The Selected Letters of John Keats revised edition with introduction and notes, (Oxford World’s Classics, 2002).
Co-editor with Iain McCalman (General editor), Gillian Russell, and Clara Tuite, An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age (Oxford University Press, 1999).
Chapters in Books
'Introduction' with Josephine McDonagh and Colin Jones in Mee, Jones, and McDonagh.
‘The Dungeon and the Cell’: The Prison Verse of Coleridge and Thelwall in Steve Poole (ed) John Thelwall: Radical Romantic and Acquitted Felon (Pickering and Chatto 2009), pp. 107-116.
'Introduction' with Sarah Haggarty in Haggarty and Mee, pp. 1-11.
'A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action: Blake, Mutuality, and Converse' in Haggarty and Mee, pp. 126-143.
‘Barnaby Rudge’ in A Companion to Dickens, ed David Parroissien (Blackwell, 2008), chap. 23
'The Magician No Conjuror and the Political Alchemy of the 1790s' in Unrespectable Radicals: Essays in Honour of Iain McCalman, ed. Michael T. Davis and Paul A. Pickering (Ashgate, 2007), pp. 41-55.
‘Policing Enthusiasm in the Romantic Period: Literary Periodicals and the “Rational” public Sphere’ in Spheres of Influence: Intellectual and Cultural Publics from Shakespeare to Habermas, ed. Alex Benichimol and Willy Maley (Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 175-195.
‘”Severe Contentions of Friendship”: Conversation, contention, and dispute’ in Repossessing the Romantic Past: Essays Celebrating the Work of Marilyn Butler, ed. Heather Glen and Paul Hamilton (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 21-39.
‘Bloody Blake: Nation and Circulation’ in Blake, Nation and Empire, ed David Worrall and Steve Clark (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006), pp. 63-82.
with Mark Crosby, ‘”This Soldierlike Danger”: William Blake’s Trial for Sedition’ in Resisting Napoleon: The British Response to the Threat of Invasion, 1797-1815, ed. Mark Philp (Ashgate, 2006), pp. 111-124.
‘”Images of truth new born”: Iolo, William Blake, and the Literary radicalism of the 1790s’ in Rattleskull Genuis: The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg, ed. Geraint Jenkins (University of Wales Press, 2005), pp. 173-93.
’”A Bold and Outspoken Man”: The Strange Career of Charles Pigott II’ in Cultures of Whiggism: New Essays on English Literature and Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. David Womersley, (University of Delaware Press, 2005), pp. 330-50.
‘Blake and the poetics of enthusiasm’ in The Cambridge Companion to Literature, 1740-1832, ed. Keymer and Mee (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 194-210.
‘Temporality and the Transition to Modernity in A Suitable Boy’ in Vikram Seth: An Anthology of Recent Criticism, ed. GJV Prasad (Pencraft International, 2004), pp. 108-121.
‘Libertines and Radicals in the 1790s: The Strange Case of Charles Pigott I’ in Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty and Licence in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell (Palgrave, 2004), pp. 183-203
‘Millenial Visions’ in The Enlightenment World, ed. Martin Fitzpatrick, Peter Jones, Iain McCalman, and Christa Knelwolf (Routledge, 2004), pp. 536-550.
‘After Midnight: The novel in the 1980s and 1990s’ in Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English, ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, (Permanent Black, 2003), pp. 318-36.
with Shyamala A. Narayan, ‘Novelists of the 1950s and 1960s’ in Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English, ed Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, (Permanent Black, 2003), pp. 219-31.
‘Blake’s Politics in History’ in The Cambridge Companion to Blake, ed. Morris Eaves (Cambridge University Press 2003), pp. 133-149.
‘”The Burthen of the Mystery”: Imagination and Difference in The Shadow Lines’ in Amitav Ghosh: A Critical Companion, ed. Tabish Khair (Permanent Black, 2003), pp. 90-108.
‘“Portentous as the written word”: Blake’s Illustrations to Night Thoughts’ in Prophetic Character: Essays on William Blake in Honour of John E. Grant, ed. Alexander Gourlay (Locust Hill Press, 2002), pp. 171-203.
‘The Strange Career of Richard “Citizen” Lee’ in British Literary Radicalism, 1650-1830: From Revolution to Revolution, ed. Timothy Morton and Nigel Smith (Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 151-166.
‘“Reciprocal Expressions of Kindness”: Robert Merry at the Limits of Sociability’ in Romantic Sociability: Social Networks and Literary Culture in Britain, 1770-1840, ed. Gillian Russell and Clara Tuite, (Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 104-122.
‘History in a Pickle’ in The Fiction of St Stephens ed. Aditya Bhattarcharjea and Lola Chatterjee (Ravi Dayal, New Delhi, 2000), pp. 101-16
‘Austen’s treacherous ivory’ in Post-colonial Jane Austen, ed. You-Me Park and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (Routledge 2000), pp. 74-92
‘Innocence and Experience’ in Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake, ed. David Womersley (Blackwells 2000), pp. 402-7
‘The Political Showman at Home: Reflections on Popular Radicalism and Print Culture in the 1790s’ in Radicalism and Revolution in Britain 1775-1848: Essays in Honour of Malcolm I. Thomis, ed. M. T. Davis (Macmillan, 2000), pp. 41-55.
‘Language’ in The Oxford Companion to the Romanticism Age, ed. Iain McCalman et al (Oxford University Press 1999), pp. 369-78
The following short entries (100-1000 words) were also contributed to the Companion: Anti-Jacobins (500), John Abernathy (100), Autobiography (500) Robert Bage (250), Thomas Beddoes (250), Behemenism (250), Hugh Blair (250), William Blake (1000), Richard Brothers (250) Thomas Chatterton (500), Hartley Coleridge (100) Barry Cornwall (100) Della Crusanism (500) Isaac D'Israeli (250), Francis Douce (500) William Drummond (250) John Galt (250) William Hamilton (250), William Hayley (250), Hellenism (1000), Jacobin novel (250), Joseph Johnson (250), Johnson circle (250), W. S. Landor (250), John Linnell (250) Charles Maturin (250), Robert Merry (250), Milton (500), Moravians (100), National debt (250), Ossianism (250), Peasant Poets (500), Thomas Percy (250), Charles Pigott (250), William Mackworth Praed (250), W. H. Pyne (100), Joseph Ritson (500), Rousseau (500), Spenserianism (250), William Taylor (250), J. HorneTooke (1000), Comte de Volney (500), Thomas Warton (250).
’”The Doom of Tyrants”: William Blake, Richard “Citizen” Lee, and the Millenarian Public Sphere’ in Blake, Politics, History, ed. Jackie Di Salvo, Tony Rosso, and Christopher Z. Hobson (Garland, 1998), pp. 97-114.
‘Is there an Antinomian in the House?’ in Historicizing Blake, ed. Steve Clarke and David Worrall (Macmillan, 1994) pp. 43-58
‘”Examples of Safe Printing”: Censorship and Popular Radical Literature in the1790s’ in Literature and Censorship, ed. Nigel Smith (D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp.81-95
‘William Blake and John Wright: Two Ex-Swedenborgians’ in Imagining Romanticism: Essays on English and Australian Romanticisms, ed. Deirdre Coleman and Peter Otto (Locust Hill, 1992), pp. 73-84.
Articles in Refereed Journals
‘“Mopping Up Spilt Religion”: The Problem of Enthusiasm,’ Romanticism on the Net, 25 (2002)
‘Not at Home in English?: India’s Foreign-Returned Fictions,’ The Round Table, 362 (2001), 711-720.
‘Anxieties of Enthusiasm, Coleridge, Prophecy, and Popular Politics in the 1790s’, Huntington Library Quarterly 60 (Winter 1998) 1-25. (this collection of essays was also published separately in book-form as Enthusiasm and Enlightenment in Europe, 1650-1850 ed. Lawrence E. Klein and Anthony J. la Vopa (Huntington Library, 1999)).
‘After Midnight: The Indian Novel in English of the 80s and 90s’, Postcolonial Studies 1 (1998) 127-141. This article was reprinted in Rethinking Indian English Literature, ed. Prafulla Kar and U. M. Nanavati, (Pencraft International, New Delhi, 1999)
“‘itihasa, thus it was’: Mukul Kesavan’s Looking through Glass and the Rewriting of History,” ARIEL: A Review of International Literature in English, 29 (1998), 145-161.
‘The “Insidious Poison of Secret Influence”: A New Historical Context for Blake’s "Sick Rose"’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 22 (1998) 111-122
‘Apocalypse and Ambivalence: The Politics of Millenarian Discourse in the 1790s’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 95 (1996) 671-697.
‘The Radical Enthusiasm of Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 14 (1991), 51-60.
Professor of Romanticism Studies
J. A.Mee@warwick.ac.uk
