Robert Fraser’s many books include studies of Marcel Proust, J.G.Frazer, Ben Okri and Victorian quest romance. His biography of the twentieth-century British poet George Barker was Spectator Book of the Year for 2002. He is currently writing for the Oxford University Press a life of Barker’s friend, the poet David Gascoyne. Professor Fraser is an author of the forthcoming History of the Oxford University Press, to be published by the Press in 2012. He is also a frequent contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. He has lectured at the universities of Cape Coast, Leeds, and London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was Director of Studies in English. He is now Professor of English at the Open University in the UK, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.