Professor Dr. David Womersley

Biography

Professor David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature and a Professorial Fellow at St Catherine's College, University of Oxford. His research interests primarily focus on the ‘long eighteenth century’ and less on the early modern period. He holds a doctorate in history and has written significant works including monographs on Edward Gibbon and the edited Penguin edition of 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. He possesses a long-standing interest in sixteenth-century historiography and historical drama, which was the subject of his monograph ‘Divinity and State’, published by OUP in 2010. Womersley serves as General Editor for the Cambridge University Press series on the ‘Complete Writings of Jonathan Swift’ and is focused on a current research project centering on Gibbon's commerce and the concept of barbarism as it pertains to Western Europe from antiquity to the present day. His editions include the noteworthy ‘Writings and Correspondence of Edward Gibbon’, consisting of projected 26 volumes. He has also published works highlighting the significance of the libraries owned by Whig Thomas Hollis, particularly relating to liberty. Womersley's teaching encompasses a variety of subjects including English literature in relation to the French Revolution and notable authors like Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. Additionally, he has supervised numerous graduate projects spanning topics in English literature from 1640-1796.

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