Nigel Wood is Professor of Literature at Loughborough University. Born in Sheffield and educated there at King Edward VII School, he took theatre skills courses at Rose Bruford College before entering University College Oxford. He graduated from the latter with a First in English Literature and Language. He won a James Knott scholarship at the University of Durham, to pursue a PhD on ‘pastoral poetry 1680-1730’, and he still treasures the memory of receiving his doctorate from Dame Margot Fonteyn, then Chancellor of the University of Durham. After teaching at Indiana University, where he was also awarded an MA, he then held a TA post at the University of Leicester, before returning to Durham when awarded a University Research Fellowship in Arts. This was followed by a Senior Lectureship at the University of Birmingham and a Research Professorship at De Montfort University, before he moved to Loughborough University in 2002.
Nigel’s research interests reside principally in Shakespeare and in eighteenth-century literature and he has published widely in these areas. He is currently writing a new biography of Alexander Pope for Princeton University Press, and his most recent book is Shakespeare and Reception Theory (Arden Bloomsbury, 2020). He has published on literary theory including, with David Lodge, three editions of the widely-cited Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, Other research interests include twentieth-century literature including Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh, with an edition of Put Out More Flags underway for the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh (Oxford). He has held visiting fellowships at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, and the Clark Library, UCLA. Most recently he has been awarded a Visiting Fellowship at the Folger Institute, Washington D.C. He also maintains a long and fruitful association with colleagues in the English department at the University of Malta. He is an Honorary Research Associate of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and is on the executive of the University English subject association.
Nigel’s home is in Leicester, where he and his family have lived since 1980. He is a passionate supporter of both and Sheffield United, Leicester City FC, and Leicestershire County Cricket Club. He loves the theatre and over the years has much enjoyed directing student theatre groups.