Lucy Newlyn was born in Uganda, grew up in Leeds, and read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She is now Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University, and a Fellow of St Edmund Hall. She has published widely on English Romantic Literature, including three books with Oxford University Press, and the Cambridge Companion to Coleridge. Her book Reading Writing and Romanticism: The Anxiety of Reception (O.U.P, 2000) won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay prize in 2001. Married with a daughter and two step-children, she lives in Oxford, and is currently working on the writings of Edward Thomas. She has co-edited two volumes on Creative Writing in Academic Practice, and some of her poems appeared with Carcanet in the Oxford Poets Anthology, 2001. This is her first collection.