Wood’s work is interested in the relationship between the early novel and personal identity. His first monograph, Producing Romantic Identities in the British Novel in Letters, under contract with Anthem Press, explores the writing of character in epistolary fiction, asking what work minor, flat, or less person-like representations of character do in creating an account of the ‘self’. Looking ahead, Wood is interested in the experimental and anarchic book marketplace of the 1700s-1730s. Wood’s new project will assess how novelistic character responded to the political, social, and economic pressures of the early eighteenth-century book marketplace by focusing on the publishing career of the prolific Whig printer and bookseller, J. Roberts. Wood has published work on early matchmaking services, the racialisation of British class identities in Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778), and the work of Anglo-Irish poet, novelist, and dramatist, Mary Davys.
Wood’s teaching and supervision interests range across the history of the novel, queer literary history, and women’s writing. Wood is interested in supporting PhD and Master’s projects which bring fresh approaches to the study of long-eighteenth century, Romantic, and Gothic literature.