Joseph Hone

Writer - Non-fiction

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Joseph Hone was born in 1989 and grew up on the Devon coast. He studied and taught at Oxford before taking fellowships at Harvard, Yale, and Cambridge. Most recently he is the author of ALEXANDER POPE IN THE MAKING, published by Oxford University Press. His debut work of creative non-fiction, THE PAPER CHASE, was published by Chatto & Windus in 2020. He lives and works as a writer and academic in Newcastle. In 2022 he was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize for his contribution to literary studies.

His new non-fiction book, THE BOOK FORGER: THE TRUE STORY OF A LITERARY CRIME THAT FOOLED THE WORLD, will be published by Chatto & Windus in March 2024.

Praise for ALEXANDER POPE IN THE MAKING (2021):

‘This elegant and adroit investigation of the literary and political coteries in which the young Alexander Pope came to maturity offers a radically different version of the poet’s early life.’ Peter Davidson, Literary Review

'Joseph Hone’s meticulous, powerfully argued new monograph Alexander Pope in the Making, puts a different spin on how Pope used print publication strategically to build his youthful identity' Sophie Gee, Times Literary Supplement

'As Joseph Hone shows in Alexander Pope in the Making, Pope began his writing life as a predominately manuscript poet writing for tight knit recusant networks in the Thames Valley … As Hone suggests, that readership was a crucial component in Pope’s art, however he tried to hide it. His early experience writing for a group of recusants enabled him to develop his later style of nudges, winks and insinuations' Colin Burrow, London Review of Books

'Another excellent new study, Joseph Hone’s Alexander Pope in the Making [directs] us toward the strategic manner in which Pope constructed himself as a “classic author” during his lifetime, seeking to fix his reputation before others could fix it for him.' Clare Bucknell, New York Review of Books

'[A] very good work of scholarship that sets out to paint a highly political version of the young Pope’s formation as a covert or cultural Jacobite in the time of Queen Anne . . . He gets there by performing a deep dive into the archives and it is fascinating' Robert Phiddian, Australian Book Review

'Alexander Pope in the Making offers not merely a new interpretation of the poetry but also a way of reading that considers the context from which the poetry emerged. This new light on a poet who is often deemed difficult creates a modern appreciation for both Pope and his contemporaries. Hone’s work is a valuable contribution to the study of 18th-century literature.' M. H. Kealy, Choice

Praise for THE PAPER CHASE (2020):

**Longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown**

'An elegant blend of scholarship and detection that reanimates the dangerous, exciting, clandestine world of Fleet Street at the start of the modern age' Peter Moore, author of Endeavour

'A brilliantly original, immersive and thrilling tale told by a fine scholar and storyteller' Jessie Childs, author of God’s Traitors

'A remarkable achievement . . . an eye for detail and sense of narrative drive worthy of a fiction writer […] The evocations of London’s thoroughfares, printing houses and taverns are the result of exhaustive research, but they also have the gripping immediacy and plausible detail of an Iain Pears historical novel' Marcus Nevitt, The Spectator

'Enthralling microhistory . . . provides, in Hone’s skilled hands, the clearest view to date of the murky world of underground printing in late Stuart London' Tom Keymer, London Review of Books

'An exciting story told with vigour . . . manages to combine a lively, almost novelistic narrative style with a confident and scholarly knowledge of his subject. That’s no mean feat.' Adrian Tinniswood, Literary Review

Praise for LITERATURE AND PARTY POLITICS AT THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN ANNE (2017):

**Shortlisted for the University English Book Prize**

‘Hone’s first monograph establishes him, already, as one of the best critical voices in eighteenth-century scholarship.’ Robert Scott, The Year’s Work in English Studies

‘Hone has a keen eye for both detail and constitutional macro-narratives […] an impressive monograph.’ Ophelia Field, Times Literary Supplement

'An impressive debut by a promising young scholar, whose dogged research has uncovered primary documents never before discussed in modern scholarship, and whose engagement with the existing scholarship is serious and thorough […] fresh, original, and persuasive.’ James A. Winn, Modern Philology

‘A subtly revisionist account of literary politics […] grounded insistently and illuminatingly, in the political and cultural contexts of the period.’ Philip Connell, The Seventeenth Century

‘Scrupulously accurate, clearly argued, solidly supported and admirably even-handed.’ Juan Christian Pellicer, Journal for Eightenth-Century Studies  

‘Well-researched, cogently organized, and lucidly written […] essential reading.’ Melissa Shoenberger, Eighteenth-Century Studies

‘An impressive book, learned and thoughtful, and almost always careful in its claims.’ Ashley Marshall, Eightenth-Century Life

Non-Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes
2017

OUP Oxford

Literature and Party Politics at the Accession of Queen Anne is the first detailed study of the final Stuart succession crisis. It demonstrates for the first time the centrality of debates about royal succession to the literature and political culture of the early eighteenth century. Using previously neglected, misunderstood, and newly discovered material, Joseph Hone shows that arguments about Anne's right to the throne were crucial to the construction of nascent party political identities. Literary texts were the principal vehicle through which contemporaries debated the new queen's legitimacy. This book sheds fresh light on canonical authors such as Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, and Joseph Addison by setting their writing alongside the work of lesser known but nonetheless important figures such as John Tutchin, William Pittis, Nahum Tate, John Dennis, Henry Sacheverell, Charles Leslie, and other anonymous and pseudonymous authors. Through close historical analysis, it shows how this new generation of poets, preachers, and pamphleteers transformed older models of succession writing by Milton, Dryden, and others, and imbued conventional genres such as panegyric and satire with their own distinctive poetics. By immersing the major authors in their milieu, and reconstructing the political and material contexts in which those authors wrote, Literature and Party Politics demonstrates the vitality of debates about royal succession in early eighteenth-century culture.