Professor Alan Downie

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

Staff details

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

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2013. Printing for the Author in the Long Eighteenth Century. In: Sandro Jung, ed. British Literature and Print Culture. 2013 London: Boydell & Brewer, pp. 58-77. ISBN 978-1-84384-343-6

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2013. The Topicality of A Tale of a Tub. In: Kirsten Juhas; Herman J Real and Sandra Simon, eds. Reading Swift: Papers from The Sixth Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, pp. 133-147. ISBN 978-3-7705-5430-0

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2013. The Topicality of A Tale of a Tub 2013. In: Kirsten Juhas; Hermann J Real and Sandra Simon, eds. Reading Swift: Papers from the Fourth Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift. Wilhelm Fink, pp. 133-148. ISBN 978-3770554300

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2012. Biographical Form in the Novel. In: Robert L. Caserio and Clement Hawes, eds. The Cambridge History of the English Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 30-45. ISBN 978-0-251-19495-2

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2010. 'Reviewing What We Think We Know about Christopher Marlowe, Again'. In: Sarah K Scott and M L Stapleton, eds. Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman. Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp. 33-46. ISBN 978-0754669838

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2008. Henry Fielding, Magistrate. In: , ed. Henry Fielding In Our Time: Papers Presented at the Tercentenary Conference. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 113-131. ISBN 9781847189875

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2008. “Gulliver’s Travels, the Contemporary Debate on the Financial Revolution, and the Bourgeois Public Sphere”. In: , ed. Money, Power, and Print: Interdisciplinary Studies on the Financial Revolution in the British Isles. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, pp. 115-134. ISBN 978-0-87413-027-0

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2008. “Gulliver’s Fourth Voyage and Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding”. In: , ed. Reading Swift: Papers from the Fifth Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift. Munich, Germany: Wilhelm Fink, pp. 453-464. ISBN 978-3-7705-4402-8

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2006. 'Literature and Drama'. In: H T Dickinson, ed. Eighteenth Century Britain (Blackwell Companions to British History). John Wiley & Sons; New Ed, pp. 329-343. ISBN 978-1405149631

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2006. 'Marlowe: Facts and Fictions'. In: Tim Parnell, ed. Constructing Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge University Press, pp. 13-29. ISBN 978-0521030519

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2005. Public opinion and the political pamphlet. In: J. Richetti, ed. The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780. Cambridge University Press, pp. 549-571. ISBN 0521781442

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2005. Public and Private: The Myth of the Bourgeois Public Sphere. In: C. Wall, ed. A Concise Companion to the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. Blackwell, pp. 58-79. ISBN 1405101172

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2002. 'The Political Significance of Gulliver's Travels'. In: Alberto J Riverio, ed. Jonathan Swift, 'Gulliver's Travels': A Norton Critical Edition. NY and London: W. W. Norton & Co, pp. 334-352. ISBN 978-0393957242

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2001. 'New Wine in Old Bottles: The "New Historicism" and the Eighteenth Century'. In: Kevin Cope and Rudiger Ahrens, eds. Talking Forward, Talking Back: Critical Dialogues with the Enlightenment (AMS Studies in the Eighteenth-Century). AMS Press, pp. 265-279. ISBN 978-0404635350

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 2000. 'Johnson's Politics'. In: Paul J Korshin and Jack Lynch, eds. The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, Vol. 11. Ams Pr Inc, pp. 81-104. ISBN 978-0404627614

Downie, Alan (J. A.) . 1998. 'Swift and Locke's Two Treatises of Government'. In: Rudolf Freiburg; Arno Löffler; Wolfgang Zach and Jan Schnitker, eds. Swift: The enigmatic dean : Festschrift for Hermann Josef Real (Studies in English and comparative literature). Stauffenburg, pp. 27-34. ISBN 978-3860573129

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.