Rachel Carnell

Rachel Carnell is professor of 18th century British literature at Cleveland State University, with expertise on the intersection between partisan politics and literary history. She is the author of “Backlash: Libel, Impeachment, and Populism in the Reign of Queen Anne,” published by University of Virginia Press.

Her first book, Partisan Politics, Narrative Realism, and the Rise of the British Novel (2006), established a link between partisan discourse and the tropes of narrative realism in early eighteenth-century novels. In researching the links between literature and politics, she became an expert on political secret history and is co-editor, with Rebecca Bullard, of The Secret History and Literature, 1660-1820 (Cambridge 2017).

Carnell is also recognized for her expertise on the Tory political satirist Delarivier Manley. She is co-editor, with Ruth Herman, of the five-volume Selected Works of Delarivier Manley (2005) and author of A Political Biography of Delarivier Manley (2008). Research for that biography was supported by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

She holds Ph.D. in English from Boston University.