Professor Alan Downie

Alan’s interests range from Early Modern literature and politics, and the history of the book, newspapers and pamphlets.

Staff details

Professor Alan Downie

Position

Emeritus Professor of English

Department

English and Creative Writing

Email

a.downie (@gold.ac.uk)

BA (Hons), MLitt, PhD, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Stott Fellow, University of Wales, 1975-7; Lecturer in English Literature, Leeds University, 1977-8; appointed Goldsmiths College, 1978.

Teaching

  • Detective Story to Crime Fiction
  • Engaging Poetry
  • Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature

Areas of supervision

  • The novel, especially between 1660 and 1820
  • Detective/crime fiction
  • Literature and politics between 1590 and 1832
  • Satire

Publications and research outputs

Book

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2015. Jonathan Swift: Political Writer (Routledge Revivals). London: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-13-881309-0

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2009. A Political Biography of Henry Fielding. London, UK: Pickering & Chatto. ISBN 9781851969159

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2008. Robert Harley and the press: propaganda and public opinion in the age of Swift and Defoe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521070744

Edited Book

Seager, Nicholas and Downie, Alan (J. A.) , eds. 2023. The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198827177

Downie, J. A., ed. 2016. The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 970-0-19-956674-7

Downie, Alan (J. A.) , ed. 2008. Henry Fielding In Our Time: Papers Presented at the Tercentenary Conference. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 9781847189875

Book Section

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2023. Daniel Defoe and the Social Structure of Pre-Industrial England. In: Nicholas Seager and Alan (J. A.) Downie, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 232-248. ISBN 9780198827177

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2018. ‘The best of Poets in that age’: Christopher Marlowe’s Posthumous Reputation. In: Kirk Melnikoff and Roslyn L. Knutson, eds. Christopher Marlowe, Theatrical Commerce, and the Book Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 258-271. ISBN 9781107126206

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2015. Authorial Contexts: Connections between Fielding's Novels and His Legal and Journalistic Writing. In: Jennifer Preston Wilson and Elizabeth Kraft, eds. Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Henry Fielding. 139 New York: The Modern Language Association of America, pp. 48-53. ISBN 978-1-60329-223-8

Article

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2014. The Chronology of Mansfield Park. Modern Philology, 112(2), pp. 427-434. ISSN 0026-8232

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2014. Paying for Poetry at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century, with Particular Reference to Dryden, Pope, and Defoe. Digital Defoe, 6(1), pp. 1-18. ISSN 1948-1802

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2013. Defoe's Birth. The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, 45(2), pp. 225-230.

Research Interests

My research interests range from literature and politics c. 1590 to c. 1832, including the history of the book, newspapers, and pamphlets to the early novel, and Defoe, Swift, and the Scriblerian satirists. I have recently published on Christopher Marlowe, Henry Fielding and Jane Austen. Currently, I am editing The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel.