I am a scholar of eighteenth-century and Romantic-era British literature. My first book, Writerly Hate in Eighteenth-Century Britain, is out now in the UK with Oxford University Press. If you order it directly from the OUP website, the code AUFLY30 gets you 30% off.

I completed my PhD in English at Harvard University and studied for my BA and MA at the University of Toronto. Between 2023–6 I was a research fellow in English Literature at the University of Sassari, Italy. 

I am editor of Transactions, the annual journal of the Johnson Society (Lichfield).

My email is leonardroy24@gmail.com

Please find below some of my published work and work in progress.

Work in progress

Literary Sardinia / Sardegna letteraria, digital project that maps the itineraries and literary record of British and Irish travellers in Sardinia.

The 'Eighteenth Century – Prose' section of YWES. 

A chapter on ‘Periodicals and Journalism’ for the Oxford Handbook to Jane Austen.

An article on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's and Byron’s letters written in Italy.

An article on Byron, Venice, and anti-tourism.

An article on the English pasquin. 

A long-term, archival project on the cultural history of eighteenth-century studies. Recent talks on this research include 'Nostalgia and longing at the beginning of eighteenth-century studies' (ISECS 2023, Rome) and 'Towards a cultural history of the editorial factory' (BSECS 2026, Oxford). 

A novel, Giallo. 

Some published and forthcoming work

Writerly Hate in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press, 2026). 

'Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Hostile Feelings', Literature Compass, 23.2 (2026). 

Six entries in London (ed.), The Cambridge Guide to the English Novel, 1660–1820 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

co-authored with L. Salis,'Inventing Tourism: Mary Davey, Charles Edwardes and British Travel Literature on Sardinia', in Rotondo, Devilla, and Bassu (eds), Il governo del patrimonio linguistico e culturale per lo sviluppo sostenibile delle destinazioni (Giappichelli, 2025).

'L’inventore del turismo in Sardegna', Il Post (26 June 2024).

'Boswell’s Self-hatred', Review of English Studies, 73 (2022), 919–33.

'Samuel Johnson and Good Hating', Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 44 (2021), 41–57.

'Clarissa in the Streets', The Rambling, 11 (2021).

Review of Knights and Morton (eds), The Power of Laughter and Satire in Early Modern Britain: Political and Religious Culture, 1500-1820 (Boydell Press, 2017), in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 32 (2019), 216–19.