James Watt is a former Director of the University of York's interdisciplinary Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. His previous publications include Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre, and Cultural Conflict, 1764-1832 (Cambridge, 1999), and an edition of Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron (2003). He has published numerous essays and articles in edited collections and in journals including Eighteenth Century Life and The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation.