Welcome to David Chandler's website

​​About me

I was promoted to professor in the English Department at Doshisha University, Kyoto, in April 2013. Prior to that, I had been a senior lecturer and associate professor, also at Doshisha. A British citizen, I was born and raised in various villages in the beautiful county of Suffolk, England.


My primary speciality is the literature and culture of the British Romantic period (roughly 1780–1830). My M.Phil and D.Phil were obtained at the University of Oxford, where I completed a thesis entitled “Norwich Literature 1788-97: A Critical Survey.” A greatly reduced version of this was subsequently published in Eighteenth-Century Studies as ‘The Athens of England’: Norwich as a Literary Center in the Late Eighteenth Century.


Since about 2006, I have been just as interested in opera and musical theatre. This webpage features Luigi Caldanzano’s magnificent poster for Italo Montemezzi’s L’Amore dei Tre Re (1913), my favourite opera. I have edited two books on Montemezzi, Essays on the Montemezzi-D’Annunzio “Nave” (2012) and Americans on Italo Montemezzi (2014). I am currently writing a critical biography of Montemezzi in collaboration with Raffaele Mellace of the University of Genoa. I am also a founding director of the recording company Retrospect Operaand a regular contributor to Opera. At the moment, I have a particular research interest in the composer and writer Charles Dibdin (1745–1814). For an interview I gave on Dibdin, see here.


For more details of my career and many publications see my CV.