Robert Fraser is Professor Emeritus of English at the Open University, UK. He has previously taught and researched in Africa, Asia, the Gulf, and the UK, and held academic positions at Trinity College, Cambridge, Royal Holloway, London, and the University of Leeds. His books include studies of Proust and the English, and of the origins and influence of Sir James Frazer’s Golden Bough, biographies of twentieth-century poets, and comparative studies of international print history. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, of the Royal Asiatic Society and of the English Association.