Visiting Fellow Professor Kristen Poole publishes Philip Pullman and the Historical Imagination

Visiting Fellow Professor Kristen Poole’s book Philip Pullman and the Historical Imagination: Seventeenth-Century Literature, Science, and Religion in His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust will be published in April by Oxford University Press.

The book explores seventeenth-century thought and how this time period influenced Exeter alumnus and Honorary Fellow Sir Philip Pullman (1965, English) in his writing of the two trilogies His Dark Materials (1995-2000) and The Book of Dust (2017-present).

Professor Poole guides readers through ‘the only book-length study of Pullman and the historical side of his thinking’ and explores the historical context behind Pullman’s worlds and characters.

Professor Poole became a Visiting Fellow at Exeter College in 2023, and is the author of several books, including Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England (2000) and Supernatural Environments in Shakespeare’s England: Spaces of Demonism, Divinity, and Drama (2011). Her publications cover a wide range of topics in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, religion, and science, with a special emphasis on the works of Shakespeare and Milton. Professor Poole is also the General Editor for Routledge Resources Online: The Renaissance World, a comprehensive digital compendium of original essays on global history from 1300 to 1700, for both students and scholars.

You can discover more about Philip Pullman and the Historical Imagination: Seventeenth-Century Literature, Science, and Religion in His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust and purchase a copy here.

There will be a book launch at Exeter College, attended by Kristen Poole and Philip Pullman on 19 June, preceded by an event at Blackwell’s.