Michael Newton
University Lecturer
- Name
- Dr. M.S. Newton
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 2165
- m.newton@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0002-5292-3267
Michael Newton is a University Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.
Fields of interest
I am a cultural historian, film critic, literary critic, editor and essayist, with a strong interest in our engagement with representations of the state of nature and with ‘the fantastic’, whether in art or in life. I am the author of two books of cultural history, Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (Faber & Faber, 2002; Picador USA, 2004) and Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981 (Faber, 2012). On film, I have written Show People: A History of the Film Star (Reaktion, 2019) and three books for the British Film Institute’s Film Classics series, on Kind Hearts and Coronets (2003), Rosemary’s Baby (2020), and It’s A Wonderful Life (2023). I have edited Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (2004), Victorian Fairy Tales (2015), and an anthology, Origins of Science Fiction (2022) for Oxford World’s Classics, and Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (2007) and The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce (2010) for Penguin Classics. With Evert Jan van Leeuwen, I have edited Haunted Europe (Routledge 2019), a book of critical essays on how Britain has imagined Europe as a Gothic space.
Research
I am presently writing a cultural history, Blithe Spirits and Demon Lovers: A History of Hauntings, Visitations and Other Encounters with the Supernatural World, both for Oxford University Press. In the spring of 2023, I shall be a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study in Amsterdam, where I’ll be working on links between literary Bohemia and radical assassins in London from the 1870s to the 1910s.
Curriculum Vitae
I was both an undergraduate and postgraduate in the English Department at University College London. From 1994-95, I was a visiting research fellow at Harvard University. In 1996, I was awarded a PhD for The Child of Nature: The Feral Child and the State of Nature; my supervisor was Professor Philip Horne, and the examiners were Professors Roy Porter and Tony Tanner. In London, between 1992 and 2003, I taught on a part-time or temporary full-time basis in the English Departments at UCL and Roehampton University, in the Cultural Studies Department at Central Saint Martins College, and also taught the Junior Seminar for Princeton University’s Study Abroad Programme at UCL. In 2003-4, I was a visiting lecturer at the Department of English at Princeton University. From 2004-6, I was a freelance writer, based in Berlin. I have been teaching English literature and film at Leiden University since 2006. In the spring of 2023, I am a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam.
In addition to my academic writing, I co-wrote and co-edited The Movie Book (Phaidon Press, 1999), was a theatre reviewer for What’s On Magazine, wrote interviews for Arts International, and have written reviews and articles for The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Times Higher Education Supplement, Poetry Review, The New Statesman, and London Review of Books. In 1992, I was awarded the Fabian Society’s Webb Essay Prize, and in 2010 I won the Royal Society of Literature’s V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize.
Teaching activities
At Leiden I am responsible for the teaching of nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature in English, and also a course introducing Anglo-American film. I have also strong teaching interests in prose fiction from Austen to Blixen, in British and American film, and in Shakespeare. I have convened MA courses on:
- London in Literature and Film, 1800-2000
- Gothic Fictions from James Hogg to David Lynch
- The Comic Spirit: Introduction to Comedy
- A Short Course About Love
- The Short Story in English, 1870-1970
- The Literature of the Fantastic, 1880-1980
- Alfred Hitchcock
Key Publications
Selected Monographs
- September 2019: Show People: A History of the Film Star (London: Reaktion Books) (444 pages) (Chinese edition due out in 2023.)
- October 2012: Age of Assassins: A History of Assassination in Europe and America, 1865-1981 (London: Faber and Faber)(726 pages). (Paperback edition published in September 2013.)
- August 2003: Kind Hearts and Coronets (in the BFI Film Classics series) (London: BFI Publishing) (87 pages).
- February 2002: Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (London: Faber and Faber); British paperback edition (2003); American hardback edition, St Martin’s Press (2003); paperback edition, Picador USA (2004); German edition, Magnus Verlag (2005); Korean edition, Jung Sim (2003); Latin American edition, Editorial Oceano (2004). (284 pages)
Selected edited books
- April 2022: Origins of Science Fiction: From Mary Shelley to W. E. B. Du Bois (Oxford University Press) (A paperback edition is due out in 2024.)
- March 2015: Victorian Fairy Tales (Oxford University Press)
- February 2010: The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce (London: Penguin Classics)
- August 2007: Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent for Penguin Classics (London: Penguin Classics)
Selected scholarly articles
- Autumn 2023: ‘The Wartime City’, in The Idea of the City in British Literature (eds. Matthew Beaumont and Gregory Dart) (Cambridge University Press) (5000 words).
- January 2017: ‘The Atavistic Nightmare: Memory and Recapitulation in Jack London’s Ghost and Fantasy Stories’, in Oxford Handbook of Jack London (ed. Jay Williams) (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 239-258.
- Autumn 2013: ‘“Nihilists of Castlebar!” Exporting Russian Nihilism in the 1880s and the Case of Oscar Wilde’s Vera, or the Nihilists’, in Russia in Britain,1880-1940: From Melodrama to Modernism, eds. Rebecca Beasley and Philip Bullock (Oxford: Oxford University Press). (10,000 words)
- June 2010: An essay on ‘Lodging’ in film and literature for Restless Cities, eds. Matthew Beaumont and Gregory Dart) (London: Verso), pp. 173-190. (Other contributors include Rachel Bowlby, Geoff Dyer, Iain Sinclair, Marshall Berman and David Trotter.)
Other publications
I have written essay reviews on film and literature for The Guardian, and on occasion for the London Review of Books. I also reviewed regularly for the Times Literary Supplement, and very occasionally for the Times Higher Education Supplement. I have also written an essay on assassination for the New Statesman and various interviews with figures from the arts for Arts International.
University Lecturer
- Faculty of Humanities
- Centre for the Arts in Society
- Moderne Engelstalige letterkunde
- Newton M.S. (2023), It's a wonderful life. London: Bloomsbury / British Film Institute.
- Newton M.S. (2022), The ghost story : [in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Victorian Literature]. New York: Oxford University Press. [database].
- Newton M.S. (Ed.) (2022), The origins of science fiction: from Mary Shelley to W. E. B. Du Bois. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Newton M.S. (2022), "I gotta be me": the remade woman and replaying the woman's part in Woody Allen's Mmovies. In: Hall M. (Ed.), Women in the work of Woody Allen. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 119-138.
- Newton M.S. (2020), Rosemary's Baby. London: Bloomsbury.
- Newton M.S. (2019), Show People: A History of the Film Star. London: Reaktion.
- Newton M.S. (2019), Show People: A History of the Film Star. London: Reaktion.
- Newton M.S. & Leeuwen E.J. van (Eds.) (2019), Haunted Europe: Continental Connections in English-Language Gothic Writing, Film and New Media. New York: Routledge.
- Newton M.S. (2019), Haunted Hotels and Murder Inns: Travelers' Tales from Europe and the Gothic Short Story from the 1820s to the 1940s. In: Newton M.S. & Leeuwen E.J. van (Eds.), Haunted Europe: Continental Connections in English-Language Gothic Writing, Film and New Media. New York: Routledge. 88-106.
- Newton M.S. (2019), "Look Into The Dark": a Ghost Story for Christmas on the Continent: An Interview with Leslie Megahey, Director of Schalcken the Painter. In: Newton M.S. & Leeuwen E.J. van (Eds.), Haunted Europe: Continental Connections in English-Language Gothic Writing, Film and New Media. New York: Routledge. 157-170.
- Newton M.S. & Leeuwen E.J. van (2019), Introduction. In: Newton M.S. & Leeuwen E.J. van (Eds.), Haunted Europe: Continental Connections in English-Language Gothic Writing, Film and New Media. New York: Routledge. 1-16.
- Newton M.S. (2017), The Atavistic Nightmare: Memory and Recapitulation in Jack London's Ghost and Fantasy Stories. In: Williams Jay (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Jack London. Oxford: Oxford University Place. 239-258.
- Newton M.S. (2017), The Atavistic Nightmare: Memory and Recapitulation in Jack London's Ghost and Fantasy Stories. In: Williams J. (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Jack London. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 239-258.
- Newton M.S. (1 May 2017), Cults, Human Sacrifice and Pagan Sex: How Folk Horror is Flowering Again in Brexit Britain. The Guardian, G2: 7-8.
- Newton M.S. (2016) Review of 'The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales', ed. Jack Zipes, in 'Modern Language Review', Vol. III, Part 4 (Modern Humanities Research Association' (October 2016): 1118-1119. Review of: .
- Newton M.S. (16 September 2016), 'Star Trek' At 50. The Guardian: 16.
- Newton M.S. (29 July 2016), Barry Lyndon: Kubrick's Vision of a Compromised Life. The Guardian, Saturday Review: 16.
- Newton M.S. (8 January 2016), Jean-Luc Godard: The Artist and His Muse. The Guardian: 16.
- Newton M.S. (2016), Review of: Lindop G. (2015), Charles Williams: The Third Inkling. Oxford. London Review of Books 38(17): 29-30.
- Newton M.S. (12 August 2016), '"First Light" Review - A Celebration of Alan Garner. The Guardian, Saturday Review: 16.
- Newton M.S. (11 November 2016), Officer and a Gentleman: How Sidney Poitier United a Divided America. The Guardian, Saturday Review: 16.
- Newton M.S. (2016), Four Notes on Aspects of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent. In: Niland R. (Ed.), Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent. New York and London: Norton. 363-379.
- Newton M.S. (2016), Paper on haunted hotels at 'Haunted Europe' conference, at Leiden University (June 2016). .
- Newton M.S. (2016), Four Notes on Aspects of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent' in 'The Secret Agent' (Norton Critical Edition) (ed. David Rinaldi) (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016): 363-379.
- Newton M.S. (2016), review of Rogert Luckhurst, 'Zombies: A Cultural History' in London Review of Books, 18 February 2016.
- Newton M.S. (2016), review of Grevel Lindop, 'Charles Williams' in London Review of Books, 8 September 2016.
- Newton M.S. (2016) The Thrill of It All: a review of Roger Luckhurst, 'Zombies: A Cultural History'. Review of: Luckhurst R. (2015), Zombies: A Cultural History. Reaktion. London Review of Books 38(4): 27-28.
- Newton M.S. (3 June 2016), What Steven Spielberg's Science Fiction Tells Us About America. The Guardian, Saturday Review: 16.
- Newton M.S. (6 May 2016), Lonely Rangers: The Dark Side of Westerns. The Guardian, Saturday Review: 16.
- Newton M.S. (2015), Paper on children in Edwardian ghost stories at the Edwardian Culture Network's 'Enchanted Edwardians' conference at Bristol University (March 2015). .
- Newton M.S. (19 February 2015), 'Where Am I In All This'. Review of Marius Kotowksi, 'Pola Negri'. London Review of Books: 33-34.
- Newton M.S. (Ed.) (2015), Victorian Fairy Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Newton M.S. (4 April 2015), 'Away With The Fairies': Fairy Tale Films. The Guardian, Review: 16-17.
- Newton M.S. (8 August 2015), Why Vittorio di Sica is one of Europe's greatest tragic film-makers. The Guardian, Review: 16-17.
- Newton M.S. (15 May 2015), Fellini. The Guardian, Review: 16-17.
- Newton M.S. (19 December 2015), Bah, Humbug!: The Many Faces of Scrooge. The Guardian, Review: 16.
- Newton M.S. (31 October 2015), Haunted Half-Hours: How the BBC made Christmas creepy. The Guardian, Review: 16.
- Newton M.S. (13 November 2015), Loved But Not Lost: David Lean's 'Brief Encounter' and 'Dr Zhivago'. The Guardian, Review: 16-17.
- Newton M.S. (Ed.) (2015), Victorian Fairy Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Newton M.S. (2015), How Orson Welles Shattered His Hollywood Image. The Guardian, Culture - Film.
- Newton M.S. (15 February 2015), Article on Polan Negri. London Review of Books.
- Newton M.S. (14 March 2015), 'Like Tears in Rain': On 'Blade Runner'. The Guardian, Review: 16.
- Newton M.S. (17 October 2014), 'Growing Up With Science Fiction'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (26 December 2014), 'Eric Rohmer'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (12 September 2014), 'Peter Lorre: Master of the Macabre'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (28 June 2014), 'The Glorious Folly of Dance on Film'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (30 May 2014), 'Under the Skin of Dennis Potter'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (7 February 2014), 'Paranoid Celluloid: Conspiracy on Film'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (2014), Paper on ghosts and night terrors at the Sights and Frights: Victorian Visual Culture Conference at Sussex University (June 2014). .
- Newton M.S. (18 July 2014), 'Some Like It Hot'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (2013), Feral and Wild Children', in 'Oxford Bibliographies Online: Childhood Studies' (New York: Oxford University Press. 2013): 1-26.
- Newton M.S. (2013), ‘“Nihilists of Castlebar!” Exporting Russian Nihilism in the 1880s and the Case of Oscar Wilde’s Vera, or the Nihilists’. In: Beasley R. & Bullock P.R. (Eds.), Russia in Britain, 1880-1940: From Melodrama to Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 35-52.
- Newton M.S. (27 July 2013), HOLY FOOLS: The Films of the Boulting Brothers. The Guardian: 12-13.
- Newton M.S. (18 April 2013), MR CAPRA GOES TO HOLLYWOOD. INTERVIEWEE. [interview].
- Newton M.S. (2013), Nihilists of Castlebar!Exporting Russian Nihilism in the 1880s and the Case of Oscar Wilde's Vera, or the Nihilists', in Russia in Britain, 1880-1940 (eds. Rebecca Beasley and Philip Bullock) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 35-52.
- Newton M.S. (2 June 2013), WERNER HERZOG. The Guardian: 16-17.
- Newton M.S. (19 January 2013), "A Feeling For Crime - On G. K. Chesterton's 'Father Brown' Stories". The Guardian: 20-20.
- Newton M.S. (26 December 2013), 'The Innocents: Angels and Demons'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (26 October 2013), 'The Devil's Work: Gothic Film'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (22 November 2013), 'Vivien Leigh: A Life on Screen'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (13 December 2013), 'Charade: The Last Sparkle of Hollywood'. The Guardian, Culture: 16.
- Newton M.S. (27 October 2012), 'The Natural History of Ghosts'. The Guardian: 9-9.
- Newton M.S. (8 November 2012), "What A Ghost Wants - Review of Laurent Binet, 'HHhH'". London Review of Books.
- Newton M.S. (9 November 2012), 'The Assassin's Creed'. New Statesman: 26-30.
- Newton M.S. (6 October 2012), 'Natural Born Killers: The Assassin on Film'. The Guardian: 16-17.
- Newton M.S. (2012), Feral and 'Wild' Children. In: , Oxford Bibliographies Online in Childhood Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. 1-26.
- Newton M.S. (2012), Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violence, 1865-1981. London: Faber & Faber.
- Newton M.S. (21 April 2012), A Better World: The Films of Whit Stillman. The Guardian: 16-17.
- Newton M.S. (2012), The Assassin's Creed' in 'The New Statesman', 9-15 November 2012, pp. 26-30, : .
- Newton M.S. (2012), Review of Stieg Larson, The Expo Files, in The Guardian, 18 May 2012.
- Newton M.S. (2012), Review of Roger Clarke, A Natural History of Ghosts in The Guardian, 26 Oct 2012. The Guardian.
- Newton M.S. (19 May 2012), 'Articles of Faith: Review of "The Expo Files" by Stieg Larsson. The Guardian: 9-9.
- Newton M.S. (13 January 2012), Article on Woody Allen. The Guardian.
- Newton M.S. (2012), Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Political Violece (London: Faber & Faber, 2012, paperback 2013).
- Newton M.S. (2012), Review of Laurent Binet, 'Hhhh' in London Review Of Books, 8 November 2012.
- Newton M.S. (7 October 2011), 'Loitering In Neverland: J. M. Barrie and Peter Pan. The Guardian: 16-17.
- Newton M.S. (2 July 2011), Act of Creation: The Films of Terrence Malick. The Guardian: 16-17.
- Newton M.S. (19 February 2011), 'Growing Backwards into Childhood: The Films of Francois Truffaut'. The Guardian: 16-16.
- Newton M.S. (2010), Lodging. In: Dart G. & Beaumont M. (Eds.), Restless Cities. London: Verso. 173-190.
- Newton M.S. (Ed.) (2010), THE PENGUIN BOOK OF GHOST STORIES: FROM ELIZABETH GASKELL TO AMBROSE BIERCE. LONDON: PENGUIN BOOKS.
- Newton M.S. (2010), 'The Premises': winning short story in the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize. [other].
- Newton M.S. (18 December 2010), 'Honest to Goodness': The Films of Frank Capra. The Guardian: 14-15.
- Newton M.S. (2010), Lost In Beauty: Review of Amy Lawrence, 'The Passion of Montgomery Clift', London Review of Books 32(19): 27-29.
- Newton M.S. (2009), Anarchism. In: Simmons A.H. (Ed.), Joseph Conrad in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 117-123.
- Newton M.S. (2009), Review of Molly Haskell, "Frankly My Dear: 'Gone With the Wind Revisited', London Review of Books 31(15): 37-38.
- Newton M.S. (2009), Review of Cheeta, "Me Cheeta", London Review of Books 31(2): 28-29.
- Newton M.S. (Ed.) (2007), Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. London: Penguin Classics.
- Newton M.S. (2007), 'Four Notes on "The Secret Agent": Sir William Harcourt, Ford and Helen Rossetti, Bourdin's Relations, and a Warning Against Triangle. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press.
- Newton M.S. (28 October 2006), When We Were Young: A Compendium of Childhood. TLS: The Times Literary Supplement: 31.
- Newton M.S. (2006), Electricity. In: Herd D. & Sansom I. (Eds.), The Enthusiast Almanack. London: Quercus.
- Newton M.S. (2006), Til I'm Grown: Reading Children's Films; Reading Walt Disney's The Jungle Book. In: Collins F.M. & Ridgeman J. (Eds.), Turning the Page: Children's Literature in Performance and the Media. Oxford/Bern/Berlin: PeterLang.
- Newton M.S. (2006), Review of Lee Server, "Ava Gardner", London Review of Books 28(17): 9-10.
- Newton M.S. (2006), 'The Voyeur's Tale': A Review of Paul Theroux's "Hotel Honolulu", Contemporary Literary Criticism. . Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson and Gale.
- Newton M.S. & Cobbe F.P. (2006), The Consciousness of Dogs, The Enthusiast 7: 10-18.
- Newton M.S. (23 February 2006), Tsk, Ukh, Hmmm: A Review of Daniel Heller-Roazen, Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language. London Review of Books: 25-26.
- Newton M.S. (5 November 2004), Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies. TLS: The Times Literary Supplement: 28-28.
- Newton M.S. (Ed.) (2004), Edmund Gosse's Father and Son. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Newton M.S. (2004), I See Myself Among the Crowd: The Poetry of Charlotte Mew, The Poetry Review 94(1): 56-64.
- Newton M.S. (2003), Kind Hearts and Coronets. London: British Film Institute.
- Newton M.S. (2003), Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children. New York: St Martin's Press.
- Newton M.S., Kramer Cheryce & Martyn Trea (2003), Literature and Science, 1660-1834: Volume 1: Science as Polite Culture. London: Pickering & Chatto.
- Newton M.S. (2002), Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Childen. Lonodon: Faber & Faber.
- Newton M.S. (1999), Bodies Without Souls: The Case of Peter the Wild Boy. In: Fudge Erica, Gilbert Ruth & Wiseman Susan (Eds.), At the Borders of the Human: Beasts, Bodies and Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Period. London: Palgrave. 196-214.
- Newton M.S. & Sabin R. (Eds.) (1999), The Movie Book. London: Paidon Press.
- Newton M.S. (1994), The Child on the Frontier, International Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 9(3): 150-161.
- Newton M.S., Hall Sean & Crick Bernard (1992), Is Equality Dead?. London: The Fabian Society.
- Secretary for the Harting Scheme
- on the Examencommissie (ALAS) for Literary Studies (MA)
- Harting co-ordinator / study-abroad co-ordinator
- SAP for English Literature section