What are you currently reading?
- William Congreve, Love for Love
- Julie Ellison, Cato's Tears
- Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes
- Erich Auerbach, Mimesis
- Elizabeth George, Payment in Blood
- John Banville, The Sea (but I'm not enjoying it much -- my brother-in-law gave it to me, and he likes very depressing books)
What are your five favourite texts?
- This is a list that changes frequently, but here it is for now:
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
- Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
What are the top five texts that you find to be the most useful for teaching?
Impossible to answer! Depends on the day, the students, how much coffee I've drunk... But ok, here's a go:
- Jonathan Swift, "The Lady's Dressing Room"
- John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"
- Jane Austen, Emma
- William Thackeray, Vanity Fair
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
What texts have you had the most fun researching?
Seriously, how is it possible to choose?? Um, I liked writing an article on Eliza Haywood, because I got to sit around reading romance novels for a whole summer (she wrote over 80 works, most of them trashy fiction...).
What would you be if you weren't an English professor?
Well, to be honest, I'm an English professor because I'm not very good at anything else. I'm especially bad at anything requiring practical skills or hand-eye coordination, which cuts out a lot of possibilities.