School of English

Image of Adam Rounce

Adam Rounce

Associate Professor in English Literature, Faculty of Arts

Contact

Biography

Roles in School of English:

Head of Literature, 1500-

Expertise Summary

Restoration and Eighteenth-century poetry and literature, particularly John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson. Failure in European literature and art.

I regularly review mss, articles and books in this area for publishers and academic journals. I am an associate editor of the Cambridge Works of Jonathan Swift, and the Wiley Encyclopaedia of British Literature, 1660-1789, and am on the editorial board of the John Clare Society Journal. Since 2009, I have been a consultant to the Digital Miscellanies Index, at the University of Oxford.

As well as editing Swift, I am working on two other long term projects: a book on footnotes in editions of British literature, 1660-1800 (sections on Milton and Shakespeare have already been published), and a wide-ranging, Key-to-all-Mythologies-type study of failure in literature, art and music, from 1700 to the present, ranging from Britain to France, Germany, Russia, and North America.

Teaching Summary

My teaching connects to my research in the later seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I teach all years of the undergraduate and postgraduate syllabus, from first year to MA. I… read more

Research Summary

My main ongoing research involvement is with the Cambridge edition of the Complete Works of Jonathan Swift, for which I am co-editing two volumes (of Irish writings, and personal writings), and… read more

Selected Publications

  • ROUNCE, A (ASSOCIATE EDITOR), 2015. Various entries. In: LYNCH, J, ed., The Encyclopedia of British Literature 1660 - 1789 1-3. Wiley.
  • ROUNCE, A, 2015. Clare, Cowper and the Eighteenth Century. In: KOVESI, SIMON and MCEATHRON, SCOTT, eds., New Essays on John Clare Cambridge University Press. 38-56
  • ROUNCE, A, 2014. ‘The Difficulties of Quantifying Taste’ Digital Defoe. 6(1),
  • ROUNCE, A, 2014. ‘Boswell and the Limits of Sensibility’. In: THOMPSON, PEGGY, ed., Beyond Sense and Sensibility Bucknell University Press. 22-43
  • Literary fame, celebrity, and failure.
  • Literature and poetry, from 1680-1800, especially Dryden, Swift, Pope, Johnson;
  • Eighteenth century poetry and criticism.
  • Literary biography.
  • Editing and the long eighteenth century.

My teaching connects to my research in the later seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I teach all years of the undergraduate and postgraduate syllabus, from first year to MA. I convene year 2 & 3 modules on the period 1667-1830.

Undergraduate Modules:

  • Year 1: Studying Literature; Regional Writers.
  • Year 2: From Talking Horses to Romantic Revolutionaries: Literature 1700-1830; Literature and Popular Culture.
  • Year 3: The Self & the World: Literature 1667-1775.

Postgraduate Modules:

  • ​MA in English Literature:
  • Poetry
  • Textualities

Current Research

My main ongoing research involvement is with the Cambridge edition of the Complete Works of Jonathan Swift, for which I am co-editing two volumes (of Irish writings, and personal writings), and contributing an accompanying Chronology as a reference work.

Past Research

I have published extensively on poetry and literary criticism in the 'long' eighteenth century, from Dryden and Johnson to Joseph Warton, William Cowper, Charles Churchill, and Mark Akenside. I have also published a book about literary failure in the eighteenth century, concerning the unsuccessful careers of writers that were known to Samuel Johnson.

Future Research

As well as my editorial work on Swift, I am also writing a book about the history of the English literary edition from 1660 to 1800, and the emergence of a style of editing and annotation. I am also working on a cultural history of European and American failure.

  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2022. Suffering. In: JACK LYNCH, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson Oxford University Press. 536-50
  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2022. 'In Silence and Darkness: Johnson's Verdicts on Artistic Failure'. In: ANTHONY LEE, ed., A Clubbable Man: Essays in Honor of Greg Clingham Bucknell University Press. 54-70
  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2021. Organizing Metaphor in the Eighteenth Century: Anthologies and Metaphor 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics and Enquiries in the Early Modern Era. 26, 141-62
  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2019. Banter, Nonsense, and Irony: Churchill and his Circle. In: PADDY BULLARD, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century Satire Oxford University Press. 108-24
  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2019. Satire on Scholarship in the Eighteenth Century. In: NICHOLAS NACE and EVAN R. DAVIS, eds., Teaching Modern British and American Satire Modern Language Association of America. 171-80
  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2018. Pleasure or Weariness: Inclusions and Exclusions from The Lives of the Poets. In: ANTHONY LEE, ed., New Essays on Samuel Johnson University of Delaware Press. 47-67
  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2018. 'Unassisted Hill': Churchill's Satire and the Fate of the Virtuoso. In: CLARE BRANT and GEORGE ROUSSEAU, eds., Fame and Fortune: Sir John Hill and London Life in the 1750s Palgrave Macmillan.
  • ROUNCE, ADAM and HAYTON, DAVID, eds., 2017. Jonathan Swift, Irish Political Writings after 1725: A Modest Proposal and Other Works The Cambridge Writings of Jonathan Swift Cambridge. (In Press.)
  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2017. The Digital Miscellanies Index and the Canon Eighteenth-Century Life. 41(1), 158-178
  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2017. Looking Homeward: Thomas Warton's editing of Milton, and the Poetic Tradition. In: MICHAEL EDSON, ed., Annotation in Eighteenth Century Poetry Lehigh University Press. 151-66
  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2017. Editorial Annotations in Shakespeare Editions after 1733. In: PETER KIRWAN and EMMA DEPLEDGE, eds., Canonising Shakespeare: Stationers and the Book Trade, 1640-1740 Cambridge University Press. 201-15
  • ROUNCE, ADAM, 2016. In: LYNCH, JACK, ed., The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660-1800 Oxford University Press. 685-700
  • ROUNCE, A (ASSOCIATE EDITOR), 2015. Various entries. In: LYNCH, J, ed., The Encyclopedia of British Literature 1660 - 1789 1-3. Wiley.
  • ROUNCE, A, 2015. Clare, Cowper and the Eighteenth Century. In: KOVESI, SIMON and MCEATHRON, SCOTT, eds., New Essays on John Clare Cambridge University Press. 38-56
  • ROUNCE, A, 2015. Authorship in the Eighteenth Century Oxford Handbooks Online.
  • ROUNCE, A, 2014. ‘The Difficulties of Quantifying Taste’ Digital Defoe. 6(1),
  • ROUNCE, A, 2014. ‘Boswell and the Limits of Sensibility’. In: THOMPSON, PEGGY, ed., Beyond Sense and Sensibility Bucknell University Press. 22-43
  • ROUNCE, A, 2014. ‘Poetry Anthologies and the Birth of Literature’,. In: DEMARIA, R and ET AL, eds., The Blackwell Companion to British Literature 3. Blackwell. 174-188
  • ROUNCE, A., 2013. Fame and failure, 1720-1800: the unfulfilled literary life. Cambridge University Press.
  • ROUNCE, A., 2013. Swift’s texts between Dublin and London. In: BULLARD, P. and MCLAVERTY, J., eds., Jonathan Swift and the eighteenth-century book Cambridge University Press. 199-213
  • ROUNCE, A., 2013. Young, Goldsmith, Johnson and the idea of the author in 1759. In: REGAN, S., ed., Reading 1759: literary culture in mid-eighteenth-century Britain and France Bucknell University Press.
  • ROUNCE, A, 2011. Editions. In: JACK LYNCH, ed., Samuel Johnson in Context Cambridge University Press..
  • ROUNCE, A, 2009. ‘Toil and Envy: Some Responses to the Lives of the Poets’. In: PHILIP SMALLWOOD AND GREG CLINGHAM, ed., Samuel Johnson After 300 Years Cambridge University Press..
  • ROUNCE, A., 2008. Joseph Warton’s enthusiasms 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era. 15, 315-334
  • ROUNCE, A, 2008. ‘Fame and Failure in The Spectator’ Media History. 14,
  • ROUNCE, A, 2007. ‘Eighteenth-Century Responses to Dryden’s Fables’ Translation & Literature. 16,
  • ROUNCE, A, 2007. ‘“We share something then don’t we?” Allusion in A Frolic of His Own’. In: BRIGITTE FELIX, ed., Reading William Gaddis University of Orleans Press.
  • ROUNCE, A, 2006. ‘Akenside’s Pleasures of Imagination’. In: CHRISTINE GERRARD, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Eighteenth Century Poetry Blackwell.
  • ROUNCE, A, 2005. ‘William Warburton’s Literary Squabbles’ The Age of Johnson. 16,
  • ROUNCE, A, 2005. ‘Akensides’s Clamours for Liberty’. In: DAVID WOMERSLEY, ed., Cultures of Whiggism University of Delaware Press.
  • ROUNCE, A, 2005. ‘Wilkes, Churchill, and Anti-Scottishness’ Eighteenth-Century Life. 18,
  • ROUNCE, A, 2005. ‘Charles Churchill’s Anti-Enlightenment’ History of European Ideas. 31,
  • ROUNCE, A, 2004. ‘Success and Failure in Grub-Street: Samuel Johnson and Percival Stockdale’ New Rambler. 8,
  • ROUNCE, A, 2004. ‘“With Love and Wonder”: Empson, Donne and Milton’. In: PHILIP SMALLWOOD, ed., Critical Pasts: Writing Criticism, Writing History Bucknell University Press.
  • ROUNCE, A, ed., 2004. The Selected Poetry of Charles Churchill Trent Editions.
  • ROUNCE, A, ed., 2003. Alexander Pope and his Critics
  • ROUNCE, A and MASON, T. A, 2001. ‘Representations of Johnson’s Criticism’. In: PHILIP SMALLWOOD, ed., Johnson Revisioned: New Century Essays Bucknell University Press.
  • ROUNCE, A and GROOM, N, 2000. ‘Literature 1756-1776’. In: DAVID WOMERSLEY, ed., The Blackwell Companion to English Literature from Milton to Blake Blackwell.
  • ROUNCE, A and MASON, T. A, 2000. ‘Alexander’s Feast: the Passes of the Mind’. In: DAVID HOPKINS & PAUL HAMMOND, ed., John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays Oxford University Press.

School of English

Trent Building
The University of Nottingham
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0) 115 951 5900
email: english-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk