David Nokes was for many years a professor of English Literature at King’s College London, where he taught eighteenth-century literature and pioneered the Creative Writing course. His books include Jonathan Swift, A Hypocrite Reversed, which won the James Tait Black Memorial prize in 1985, and biographies of John Gay (1995), Jane Austen (1997) and Samuel Johnson (2009). His adaptation of Clarissa for BBC TV was nominated for a Bafta award in 1991. David Nokes died in 2009.