Freya Johnston

• Professor of English, University of Oxford

On 1 September 2025 I began in the role of Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education).

I have published two books about Samuel Johnson (2005, 2012) and am general editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Novels of Thomas Love Peacock (the first two volumes, Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle, appeared in 2016; the next two, Headlong Hall and Melincourt, in 2022) as well as volume editor of his penultimate novel, Crotchet Castle (1831). In 2017, Kathryn Sutherland and I produced a newly edited and annotated text of Jane Austen's Teenage Writings for the Oxford World's Classics series; in 2018, I edited a selection of Eric Griffiths's lectures called If Not Critical for Oxford University Press. My most recent book, Jane Austen, Early and Late, was published by Princeton University Press in 2021 and appeared as a paperback in 2023; in 2024, it was shortlisted for the Marilyn Gaull Book Award. I am now writing a book about Samuel Johnson's unwritten texts, forthcoming with Princeton University Press, and working on a life-in-letters of Jane Austen for Cambridge University Press. With John Mullan I am co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Jane Austen.

My other research interests include Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, William Hazlitt, German literature (especially Franz Kafka), epic and mock-epic, prose style, fiction, and practical criticism.

I regularly publish reviews and essays in the Literary Review and the London Review of Books.

With Christopher Ricks and Seamus Perry, I am co-editor of the journal Essays in Criticism: A Quarterly Journal of Literary Criticism (Oxford University Press).

• –present Professor of English, University of Oxford

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