Professor Chloe Houston

I work on the representation of cross-cultural encounter in the early modern period. I am interested in how different worlds, places, peoples and religions were depicted in early modern English writing, and especially travel literature and drama. My first monograph, The Renaissance Utopia (2013), was a study of ideal-state writing from More’s Utopia to the Restoration, and my second, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530-1699: The Imagined Empire (2023), explored the depiction of the Persian empire on the early modern stage. I have also edited two collections of essays: New Worlds Reflected: Travel and Utopia in the Early Modern Period (2010) and, with Sophie Lemercier-Goddard and Ladan Niayesh, Writing Distant Travels and Linguistic Otherness in Early Modern England (c. 1550–1660) (2025). With Eva Johanna Holmberg I co-edited a special issue of the journal Journeys: The International Journal of Travel & Travel Writing on ‘Shaping Strangers in Early Modern English Travel Writing’, and I have contributed articles to various journals, including Renaissance Studies, Studies in English Literature, Journal of Early Modern Studies, Journal of the British Academy, Seventeenth Century, Utopian Studies, and Studies in Travel Writing. My first novel, The Book Game, co-authored with Professor Adam Smyth under the pseudonym Frances Wise, was published by 4th Estate in 2025.