School of Critical Studies

Prof Nigel Leask

  • Head of School (School of Critical Studies Administration)

telephone: 01413304165
email: Nigel.Leask@glasgow.ac.uk


Research interests

  • Romantic literature and culture 
  • Robert Burns and Scottish literature 1750-1850
  • Romantic Orientalism
  • Travel writing and Empire
  • Anglo-Indian literature of the Romantic period

Biography

Nigel Leask was appointed to Glasgow's Regius Chair of English Language and Literature in 2004, and is currently Head of the School of Critical Studies. He was previously Reader in Romantic Literature in the English Faculty at Cambridge University. He has published widely in the area of Romantic literature and culture, with a special emphasis on empire, orientalism, and travel writing, as well as Scottish literature and thought 1750-1850. His most recent book, Robert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late-18th Century Scotland (Oxford University Press, 2010) won the Saltire Prize for the best Scottish Research Book of 2010. He is currently editing the Collected Prose Writings of Robert Burns for the AHRC-funded Oxford edition of the Collected Works of Robert Burns (general editor, Prof Gerard Carruthers).


His first book The Politics of Imagination in Coleridge’s Critical Thought was published by Macmillan in 1988. Subsequently, his British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge University Press 1992) was a pioneering study of the anxieties and instabilities of Romantic representations of the 'Orient' in the writings of Byron, Shelley, De Quincey, Southey, Moore and others. In 1997 he edited Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria for Everyman with a new introduction, text and notes. His Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770-1840: 'From an Antique Land' (Oxford University Press, 2002) was the first study of its kind to explore the Romantic obsession with the 'antique lands' of Ethiopia, Egypt, India and Mexico from a post-colonial perspective, drawing on a wide range of 18th and 19th century travel books, as well as recent scholarship in literature, history, geography and anthropology. More recently he has co-edited (with David Simpson and Peter De Bolla) a collection of essays dedicated to John Barrell entitled Land, Nation and Culture, 1740-1840: Thinking the Republic of Taste (Palgrave 2004) and (with Dr Phil Connell) Romanticism and Popular Culture in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 2009). In addition to Glasgow and Cambridge, he has held teaching appointments at the University of Bologna, Italy, and UNAM, Mexico City, and has lectured widely in Europe, the Americas, and India.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Centenary Fellow of the English Association.

Jump to: 2013 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001
Number of items: 33.

2013

Leask, N. (2013) Robert Burns. In: Carruthers, G. and McIlvanney, L. (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Scottish Literature. Series: Cambridge Companions to Literature . Cambridge University Press, pp. 71-85. ISBN 9780521189361 (In Press)

Leask, N.J. (2013) Commonplace Books, Tour Journals, and Miscellaneous Prose. Series: Collected Works of Robert Burns, 1 . Oxford University Press, Oxford. (In Press)

2011

Leask, N. (2011) Robert Burns and Romanticism in Britain and Ireland. In: Pittock, M. (ed.) The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Romanticism. Series: Edinburgh Companions to Scottish Literature . Edinburgh University Press, pp. 127-138. ISBN 9780748638468

Leask, N. (2011) Their Groves o' Sweet Myrtles': Robert Burns and the Scottish Colonial Experience. In: Pittock, M. (ed.) Robert Burns in Global Culture, 1759-2010. Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, PA, USA. ISBN 9781611480306

2010

Leask, N. (2010) Robert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late-18th Century Scotland. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199572618

2009

Connell, P. and Leask, N., (Eds.) (2009) Romanticism and Popular Culture in Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. ISBN 9780521880121

Leask, N. (2009) Burns and the poetics of abolition. In: Carruthers, G. (ed.) The Edinburgh Companion to Robert Burns. Series: Edinburgh companions to Scottish literature . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, UK, pp. 47-60. ISBN 9780748636488

Leask, N. (2009) A Degrading Species of Alchymy: ballad poetics, oral tradition, and the meanings of popular culture. In: Connell, P. and Leask, N. (eds.) Romanticism and Popular Culture in Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press, 51-72 . ISBN 9780521880121

Leask, N. (2009) Robert Burns and the stimulant regime. In: Rodger, J. and Carruthers, G. (eds.) Fickle Man: Robert Burns in the 21st Century. Sandstone Press, Dingwall, UK, pp. 145-162. ISBN 9781905207275

Leask, N.J. (2009) Romanticism and the wider world: poetry, travel literature and empire. In: Chandler, J. (ed.) The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature. Series: New Cambridge History of English literature . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. ISBN 9780521790079

McCue, K. (2009) 'An individual flowering on a common stem': melody, performance and National song. In: Connell, P. and Leask, N. (eds.) Romanticism and Popular Culture in Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press, pp. 88-106. ISBN 9780521880121

2008

Leask, N. (2008) 'His Hero's Story': Dr Currie's Burns, Moore's Byron and Romantic Biography. The Centre for Study of Byron and Romanticism, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK. ISBN 9780955574009

Leask, N.J., and Riach, A. (2008) Stepping Westward: The Inaugural Lectures of Professor Nigel Leask, Regius Chair of English Language and Literature and Professor Alan Riach, Chair of Scottish Literature, the University of Glasgow: Given on 2nd December 2006. Association for Scottish Literary Studies, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK. ISBN 9780948877841

2007

Leask, N.J. (2007) Thomas Muir and the telegraph: radical cosmopolitanism in 1790's Scotland. History Workshop Journal, 63 (1). pp. 48-69. ISSN 1477-4569 (doi:10.1093/hwj/dbm012)

Leask, N.J. (2007) Robert Burns and Scottish common sense philosophy. In: Budge, G. (ed.) Romantic Empiricism: Poetics and the Philosophy of Common Sense, 1780-1830. Series: The Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture . Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, USA. ISBN 9780838757123

Leask, N.J. (2007) Scottish literature of empire and emigration 1700-1900. In: Clancy, T.O. and Pittock, M. (eds.) The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, UK. ISBN 9780748624812

Leask, N.J. (2007) 'The shadow line': James Currie's 'life of Burns' and British romanticism. In: Lamont, C. and Rossington, M. (eds.) Romanticism's Debatable Lands. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK. ISBN 9780230507852

2006

Leask, N. (2006) ‘Travelling the Other Way’: The travels of Mirza Abu Talib Khan (1810) and romantic Orientalism. In: Franklin, M.J. (ed.) Romantic Representations of British India. Series: Routledge studies in romanticism (7). Routledge, pp. 220-237. ISBN 0415378273

Leask, N.J. (2006) Kubla Khan and orientalism: the road to Xanadu revisted. In: O'Neill, M. and Sandy, M. (eds.) Romanticism: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. Series: Critical concepts in literary and cultural studies, 2 . Routledge, London, UK, pp. 1-21. ISBN 9780415247245

Leask, N.J. (2006) A Yankee in Yucatan: John Lolyd Stephens and the lost cities of America. In: Youngs, T. (ed.) Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century: Filling the Blank Spaces. Series: Anthem nineteenth century studies . Anthem Press, London, UK. ISBN 9781843312185

2005

Leask, N.J. (2005) Burns, Wordsworth and the politics of vernacular poetry. In: Bolla, P. and Simpson, D. (eds.) Land, Nation and Culture, 1740-1840: Thinking the Republic of Taste. Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 202-222. ISBN 9781403920478

Leask, N.J. (2005) Byron and the eastern Mediterranean: Childe Harold II and the 'polemic of Ottoman Greece'. In: Bone, D. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Byron. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. ISBN 9780521781466

Leask, N.J. (2005) Easts. In: Roe, N. (ed.) Romanticism: An Oxford Guide. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. ISBN 9780199258406

2004

De Bolla, P., Leask, N.J. and Simpson, D., (Eds.) (2004) Land, Nation and Culture, 1740-1840: Thinking the Republic of Taste. Series: Palgrave studies in the Enlightenment, romanticism and cultures of print. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK. ISBN 9781403920478

Leask, N.J. (2004) Bruce, James, of Kinnaird (1730–1794), traveller in Africa. In: Matthew, H.C.G. and Harrison, B.H. (eds.) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: In Association with the British Academy: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 303-306. ISBN 9780198614111

Leask, N.J. (2004) Lawrence, James Henry [known as Chevalier Lawrence] (1773–1840), writer. In: Matthew, H.C.G. and Harrison, B.H. (eds.) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: In Association with the British Academy: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, p. 832. ISBN 9780198614111

Leask, N.J. (2004) Lewis, Matthew Gregory [called Monk Lewis] (1775–1818), novelist and playwright. In: Matthew, H.C.G. and Harrison, B.H. (eds.) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: In Association with the British Academy: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 635-639. ISBN 9780198614111

Leask, N.J. (2004) Maurice, Thomas (1754–1824), oriental scholar and librarian. In: Matthew, H.C.G. and Harrison, B.H. (eds.) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: In Association with the British Academy: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 465-466. ISBN 9780198614111

Leask, N.J. (2004) Polidori, John William (1795–1821), physician and writer. In: Matthew, H.C.G. and Harrison, B.H. (eds.) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: In Association with the British Academy: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 743-745. ISBN 9780198614111

2003

Leask, N.J. (2003) Darwin's Second Sun: Alexander von Humboldt and the Genesis of the Voyage of the Beagle. In: Tait, T. and Small, H. (eds.) Literature, Science and Psychoanalysis, 1830-1970: Essays in Honour of Dame Gillian Beer. Oxford University Press, pp. 13-36. ISBN 0199266670

2002

Leask, N.J. (2002) Irish republicans and gothic Eleutherarchs: Pacific utopias in the writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone and Charles Brockden Brown. In: Maniquis, R.M. (ed.) British Radical Culture of the 1790's. Huntington Library, San Marino, USA, pp. 91-111. ISBN 9780873281966

Leask, N.J. (2002) Curiosity and the aesthetics of travel writing, 1770-1840: from an antique land. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199247005

2001

Leask, N.J. (2001) Salons, alps and cordilleras: Helen Maria Williams, Alex von Humboldt and the discourse of romantic travel. In: Eger, E., Grant, C., O'Gallchoir, C. and Warburton, P. (eds.) Women, Writing, and the Public Sphere: 1700-1830. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 217-236. ISBN 9780521771061

This list was generated on Wed Jun 19 09:50:50 2013 BST.