Nigel Smith is a literature professor and scholar of the early modern world. He is William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature and Professor of English at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1999. He is best known for his interdisciplinary work, bridging literature and history, on 17th-century political and religious radicalism and the literature of the English Revolution, including the poetry and prose of John Milton and Andrew Marvell. Smith was born in London and read English and History at the University of Hull. As a Commonwealth Scholar, he completed an MA in English at McGill University. He received his D.Phil. in English at Oxford University.
Career
He was Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, 1984–86; Fellow and Tutor in English at Keble College, Oxford, 1986–99, and successively Lecturer and Reader in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford, chairing the English Faculty Board, 1997–99. He joined the Princeton English Department in 1999 and currently chairs the University’s Committee for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. He is the author of several field-changing studies, considered seminal and standard works in their field: Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640–1660 ; Literature and Revolution in England, 1640–1660 ; the Longman Annotated English Poets edition of Andrew Marvell's Poems ; Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon. He has also edited the Ranter pamphlets , the Journal of George Fox, and co-edited with Nicholas McDowell the Oxford Handbook of Milton. He is currently completing Polyglot Poetics: Transnational Early Modern Literature, which expands his interest from Britain to continental Europe and some colonial contexts in the Americas and Africa. He wrote and performed songs with Paul Muldoon in Rackett and Wayside Shrines. He is currently setting some of John Donne's lyrics to music with the opera composer Andrew S. Lovett.
A Collection of Ranter Writings from the Seventeenth Century. 278 pp. Ed. with introduction. Substantially revised as A Collection of Ranter Writings: Spiritual Liberty and Sexual Freedom in the English Revolution..
Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion, 1640–1660.
Literature and Revolution in England 1640-1660..
George Fox, The Journal. 536 pp. Ed. with introduction..
A Radical's Books: The Library Catalogue of Samuel Jeake of Rye, ed. with introduction, in collaboration with Michael Hunter, Giles Mandelbrote and Richard Ovenden..
British Literary Radicalism, 1650–1830, ed. with Timothy Morton.
The Poems of Andrew Marvell, ed., with introduction and notes, Longman Annotated English Poets Series.
Is Milton better than Shakespeare?.
Oxford Handbook of Milton, ed. with Nicholas McDowell..
Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon..
Mysticism and Reform, 1400–1750, ed. with Sara S. Poor..
Radical voices, Radical ways: Articulating and Disseminating Radicalism in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century Britain, ed. with Laurent Curelly..
Politics and Aesthetics in European Baroque and Classicist Tragedy, ed. with Jan Bloemendal.
