Connell's study is based on an astounding amount of research into print and manuscript sources of the period, here synthesized with enviable grace and fluency. It is a book of enormous erudition and subtlety
Philip Connell was educated at the University of Liverpool and completed his Ph.D. at King's College, Cambridge. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of English and a Fellow of Selwyn College at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely on English literature and its contexts between 1650 and 1840, with a particular emphasis upon interdisciplinary studies in the fields of poetry, politics, and intellectual history.