Nick GROOM

Associate Head of Department of English

  • Honorary Professor, University of Exeter
  • Honorary Research Fellow, Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health
  • Advisor, All-Party Parliamentary Flags and Heraldry Committee (UK government)
  • Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts

Nick has written or edited over 20 books, and is the author of more than 60 academic papers; his work has been translated into several languages, including Chinese, German, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. His recent publications include:

Selected Publications: Books

  1. Twenty-First-Century Tolkien: What Middle-Earth Means To Us Today, 2nd expanded edn (London: Atlantic, 2023), xxiv + 454pp.
  2. Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today (New York: Pegasus Books, 2023), xxiv + 454pp.
  3. Twenty-First-Century Tolkien: What Middle-Earth Means To Us Today, read by Mike Grady (Leicester: W. F. Howes Ltd, 9 March 2023), online audiobook and 11 CD edn.
  4. Twenty-First-Century Tolkien: What Middle-Earth Means To Us Today (London: Atlantic, 2022), xxii + 426pp.
  5. The Vampire: A New History, 2nd revised edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020), xix + 288pp.
  6. El Vampiro: Una Nueva Historia (Madrid: Desperta Ferro Ediciones, 2020) [translation].
  7. Il Vampiro: Una Nuova Storia (Milan: Il Saggiatori, 2019) [translation].
  8. The Vampire: A New History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018), xix + 288pp.
  9. , Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818 Text) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), lxxv + 226pp.
  10. , with Nicholas Allen and Jos Smith, Coastal Works: Cultures of the Atlantic Edge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), xiv + 320pp; co-wrote Introduction, 1-18, and chapter ‘Draining the Irish Sea: The Colonial Politics of Water’, 20-39.
  11. , Ann Radcliffe, The Italian, or The Confessional of the Black Penitents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), lv + 424pp.
  12. , Matthew Lewis, The Monk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), liii + 357pp.
  13. , Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), li + 132pp.
  14. The Seasons: An Elegy for the Passing of the Year (London: Atlantic, 2013), 400pp.
  15. The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). xviii + 164pp.

Selected Publications: Papers

  1. ‘The Undead and Eternal: Vampires of Enlightenment’, A Cultural History of Death, vol 4: In the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Jeffrey Freedman (London, New York, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), 167-185.
  2. ‘“The Ghostly Language of the Ancient Earth”: Tolkien and Romantic Lithology.’ The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Julian Eilmann and Will Sherwood (Zurich: Walking Tree, 2023), 99-124.
  3. ‘Thomas Chatterton: Four Ways of Literary Terra-Forming’, Journal of the British Academy 10 (2022), 135-55 (https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/010.135).
  4. ‘Polidori’s “The Vampyre”: Composition, Publication, Deception.’ Romanticism1 (April 2022), 46-59.
  5. Alexander J. Smalley, Mathew P. White, Timothy X Atack, Rebecca Ripley, Eliza Lomas, Mike Sharples, Peter A. Coates, Nick Groom, Ann Grand, Ailish Heneberry, Lora E. Fleming, and Michael H. Depledge, ‘Forest 404: Using a BBC Drama Series to Explore the Impact of Nature’s Changing Soundscapes on Human Wellbeing and Behavior.’ Global Environmental Change 74 (May 2022): 102497 (14pp.) (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102497).
  6. ‘Malone and the Trials of Forgery: William Henry Ireland and the Shakspeare Papers.’ Bodleian Library Record1-2 [published 2022], 124-46.
  7. ‘Nazgûl Taller Than Night: Tolkien and Speculative Realism’, Twenty-First Century Receptions of Tolkien: Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Winter Seminar 2021, ed. Will Sherwood (Edinburgh: Luna Press, 2022), 38-57.
  8. ‘Malone Unmasking Forgery: Thomas Chatterton and the Rowley Controversy.’ Bodleian Library Record1-2 [published 2021], 124-46.
  9. ‘The English Literary Tradition: Shakespeare to the Gothic.’ A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart Lee, 2nd edn (Hoboken, NJ and Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2022), 283-96.
  10. , with Hollis Beach. ‘Thomas Chatterton.’ Poetry Criticism, vol. 239, ed. Carol A. Schwartz (Farmington Hills: Gale, 2021), 1-204.
  11. ‘Tolkien y la literatura gótica’, R. R. Tolkien y la Tierra Media: Once Ensayos sobre el Mayor Mito Literario del Siglo XX, ed. Martin Simonson and José R. Montejano (Aces de Candamo: Jonathan Alwars, 2021), 269-310.
  12. ‘The Union Jack belongs to Everyone, not just the Government.’ History & Policy (13 April 2021), https://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/the-union-jack-belongs-to-everyone-not-just-the-government
  13. ‘The Term “Gothic” in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680-1800.’ The Cambridge History of the Gothic, ed. Angela Wright, Dale Townshend, and Catherine Spooner, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), i. 44-66.
  14. ‘Introduction: CoronaGothic, Culture, and Crisis’, with William Hughes, Critical Quarterly, special issue CoronaGothic: Cultures of the Pandemic, ed. Nick Groom and William Hughes, 62.4 (2020), 2-6.
  15. ‘Viral Vampires.’ Critical Quarterly, special issue CoronaGothic: Cultures of the Pandemic, 62.4 (2020), 7-14.
  16. ‘Thomas Chatterton and the Death of John William Polidori: Copycat or Coincidence?’ Notes & Queries, gjaa152, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjaa152.
  17. ‘The Union Jack belongs to Everyone, not just the Government.’ History & Policy (13 April 2021), https://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/the-union-jack-belongs-to-everyone-not-just-the-government.
  18. ‘Tolkien y la literatura gótica’, R. R. Tolkien y la Tierra Media: Diez Ensayos sobre el Mayor Mito Literario del Siglo XX, ed. Martin Simonson (Asturias: Jonathan Alwars, 2021), 269-312.
  19. ‘Hallowe’en and Valentine: The Culture of Saints’ Days in the English-Speaking World. The Thirty-Seventh Katharine Briggs Memorial Lecture, November 2017.’ Folklore 129 (2018), 331-352.
  20. Stephen HinchliffeMark A. JacksonKatrina WyattAnne E. BarlowManuela BarretoLinda ClareMichael H. DepledgeRobin DurieLora E. FlemingNick GroomKaryn MorrisseyLaura Salisbury, and Felicity Thomas, ‘Healthy Publics: Enabling Cultures and Environments for Health.’ Palgrave Communications, 4:57 (2018), 1-10 (doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0113-9).
  21. ‘Catachthonic Romanticism: Buried History, Deep Ruins.’ Romanticism, 24.2 (2018), 118-33.
  22. ‘Romanticism before 1789.’ The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism, ed. David Duff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 13-29.
  23. Dracula’s Prehistory: The Advent of the Vampire.’ The Cambridge Companion to Dracula, ed. Roger Luckhurst (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 11-25.
  24. ‘Rings and Flies: Tolkien and Golding, Lords of ’54.’ Critical Insights: Lord of the Flies, ed. Sarah Fredericks (Ipswich, Mass.: Grey House Publishing/Salem Press, forthcoming 2017), 175-87.
  25. ‘“Let’s discuss over country supper soon”: Rural Realities and Rustic Representations’, in Creating the Countryside: The Rural Idyll Past and Present, ed. Verity Elson and Rosemary Shirley (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2017), 49-60.
  26. ‘Plastic Daffodils: The Pastoral, the Picturesque, and Cultural Environmentalism.’ Climate Change and the Humanities: Historical, Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Contemporary Environmental Crisis, ed. James Cullis, Vinita Damodara, and Alex Elliott (Houndmills: PalgraveMacmillan, 2018), 117-139.
  27. ‘“The Celtic Century” and the Genesis of Scottish Gothic.’ Edinburgh Companion to the Scottish Gothic, ed. Carol Davison and Monica Germana (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 14-27.
  28. ‘Otranto: Racconto per il Compleanno.’ Chi ha Paura di Horace Walpole? Da un Castello di Otranto all’altro, ed. and trans. Luigi Ballerini (Otranto: Stampato Presso, 2016), 11-28.
  29. ‘The Poet as “Fraud”.’ The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660-1800, ed. Jack Lynch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 227-46.