Staff profile

• My disciplinary home ground is in the literatures and cultures of the British Isles during the period loosely covered by "Restoration and Eighteenth Century", with a wide variety of methodologies. While my objects are usually poems and the objects on which they are inscribed from 1660-1800, I use a variety of methodologies to think about them. I pursue my work through book history, manuscript studies, digital humanities, and critical theory, but these approaches are rooted in a historicist and materialist understanding of the period, which I use to frame historically-appropriate formalisms.
• My first monograph, "Literary Authority: an Eighteenth-Century Genealogy" (Stanford UP, 2023), looks at literary cultures with opposing reactions to the Revolution of 1688 and argued that Alexander Pope in particular found in them sets of rhetorical and metaphorical structures ready-made to confer literary authority; I closed by showing how Samuel Johnson's key engagement was with the figure of Pope as literary exemplum. With Elaine Treharne I am co-author of Text Technologies: a History (Stanford UP, 2019), a very long history and theory of textual production.
• I am currently at work on a couple of different digital projects in the histories of the novel, the prosopography of the English Enlightenment, visual and commodity culture in the 1720s and 30s, and a transhistorical project on poetics and disinterest.
• I am interested to hear from prospective Ph.D. students with concentrations in literary cultures 1660-1760, including those with interests in the intersections of literature and politics, the history of literary forms, historical poetics, manuscript or book histories, or other approaches to the cultural productions of the period.

Authored book

• Literary Authority: An Eighteenth-Century Genealogy
  
  Willan, C. (2023). Literary Authority: An Eighteenth-Century Genealogy. Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.11126/stanford/9781503630864.001.0001
• Text Technologies: a History
  
  Treharne, E., & Willan, C. (2019). Text Technologies: a History. Stanford University Press.

Book review

• Poets Laureate of the Long Eighteenth Century, 1668–1813: Courting the Public by Leo Shipp (review)
  
  Willan, C. (2026). Poets Laureate of the Long Eighteenth Century, 1668–1813: Courting the Public by Leo Shipp (review). Eighteenth-Century Studies, 59(3), 468-470. https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2026.a993303
• Reading Swift's Poetry by Daniel Cook, and: Alexander Pope in the Making by Joseph Hone (review)
  
  Willan, C. (2023). Reading Swift’s Poetry by Daniel Cook, and: Alexander Pope in the Making by Joseph Hone (review). Eighteenth-Century Studies, 56(4), 619-623. https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.a900662
• Writing in Public: Literature and the Liberty of the Press in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Trevor Ross. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. Pp. x+302.
  
  Willan, C. (2020). Writing in Public: Literature and the Liberty of the Press in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Trevor Ross. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. Pp. x+302. Modern Philology, 117(3), E184-E191. https://doi.org/10.1086/707062

Chapter in book

• The Presence of the Book
  
  Willan, C. (2017). The Presence of the Book. In E. Treharne & G. Walker (Eds.), Textual Distortion (pp. 150-166). Boydell and Brewer Limited. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781787441538.011

Journal Article

• Addison’s First Letter to Pope
  
  Willan, C. (2025). Addison’s First Letter to Pope. Review Of English Studies. Advance online publication, Article hgaf079. https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgaf079
• “All the modes of story”: Genre and the Gendering of Authorship in the Year 1771
  
  Mazella, D., Willan, C., Bishop, D., Stravoski, E., Barta, W., & James, M. (2022). “All the modes of story”: Genre and the Gendering of Authorship in the Year 1771. ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830, 12(1), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.12.1.1256
• Introduction to "Special Feature on John Dennis"
  
  Willan, C. (2020). Introduction to "Special Feature on John Dennis". 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Enquiries in the Early Modern Era, 25, 107-128.
• Seeing the King over the Water, Two Ways
  
  Willan, C. (2017). Seeing the King over the Water, Two Ways. English Studies, 98(5), 483-505. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838x.2017.1332023
• The Proper Study of Mankind in Pope and Thomson
  
  Willan, C. (2017). The Proper Study of Mankind in Pope and Thomson. ELH, 84(1), 63-90. https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2017.0002
• The French Enlightenment Network
  
  Comsa, M. T., Conroy, M., Edelstein, D., Edmondson, C. S., & Willan, C. (2016). The French Enlightenment Network. The Journal of Modern History, 88(3), 495-534. https://doi.org/10.1086/687927
• “Pearl” and the Flawed Mediation of Grace
  
  Willan, C. (2014). “Pearl” and the Flawed Mediation of Grace. Modern Philology, 112(1), 56-75. https://doi.org/10.1086/676499
• ‘Mr Pope's Penmanship’: Edmund Curll, Alexander Pope, and Rawlinson Letters 90
  
  Willan, C. (2011). ‘Mr Pope’s Penmanship’: Edmund Curll, Alexander Pope, and Rawlinson Letters 90. The Library, 12(3), 259-280. https://doi.org/10.1093/library/12.3.259