Skip to main content
School of the Arts
  1. School of the Arts
  2. People
  3. Academic and research staff
  4. English

Dr Jake Poller

Jake

Email: j.r.poller@qmul.ac.uk
Website: https://brill.com/view/title/34052

Profile

I am the author of Aldous Huxley (Reaktion Critical Lives, 2021), Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality (Brill, 2019) and Christopher Isherwood (Reaktion Critical Lives, 2025). I also edited the essay collection Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, 2019). My articles have appeared in Textual Practice, Aries, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Literature and Theology, the D.H. Lawrence Review and the Aldous Huxley Annual. I recently published a chapter on Aldous Huxley in the edited collection The British Novel of Ideas: George Eliot to Zadie Smith (Cambridge University Press, 2024). 


Teaching

I have taught on a wide range of modules, including RTI (ESH 102), Architexts (ESH 243), Modernism (ESH 213), High and Low Moderns (ESH 6003), Narrative (ESH 123), The Early Twentieth Century Short Story (ESH 347) and the English Research Dissertation (ESH 6000).

Research

Publications

Books

  • Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality (Brill, 2019). ISBN: 978-90-04-40689-6 (356 pages; 143,359 words).  
  • Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Jake Poller (Routledge, 2019). ISBN: 978-0-367-18376-9.
  • Aldous Huxley, Critical Lives series (Reaktion Books, 2021). ISBN: 978-1-78914-427-7 (207 pages; 56,735 words)
  • Christopher Isherwood, Critical Lives series (Reaktion Books, 2025). ISBN: 978-1-83639-009-1 (208 pages). 

Peer-reviewed articles and chapters

  • ‘Aldous Huxley: Mysticism and Science’, in The British Novel of Ideas: George Eliot to Zadie Smith, ed. by Rachel Potter and Matthew Taunton (Cambridge University Press, 2024),166-179. Print. ISBN: 978-1-316-51432-0 (5985 words).
  • ‘New weird fiction and the oneirologic of both-and’, Textual Practice, 36.8 (2022), 1-16. Online. DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2022.2111701 (7,189 words).
  • ‘A Kind of Magic: Dreams and the Occult in Alan Moore’s Providence’, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 32.1 (2021), 70-89. Print. ISSN: 0897-0521 (9,077 words).
  • ‘Fully Human Being: Aldous Huxley’s Island, Tantra and Human Potential’, International Journal for the Study of New Religions 10, 1 (2019), 25-47. Print. ISSN: 2041-9511 (9,466 words). 
  • ‘Introduction’, in Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Jake Poller (New York: Routledge, 2019), 1-44. Print. ISBN: 978-0-367-18376-9 (19,192 words).
  • ‘The Herald of the King: Benjamin Creme and the Theosophical Imagination’, in Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Jake Poller (New York: Routledge, 2019), 149-166. Print. ISBN: 978-0-367-18376-9 (7,676 words).
  • ‘D.H. Lawrence, Fascism, and the Logic of Contamination’, D.H. Lawrence Review, 43, 1&2 (2018), 25-43. Print. ISSN: 0011-4936 (8,238 words).
  • ‘Under a Glamour: Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater and Neo-Theosophy’, in The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875-1947, ed. by Christine Ferguson and Andrew Radford (New York: Routledge, 2018), 77-93. Print. ISBN: 978-1-4724-8698-1 (7,224 words).
  • ‘Beyond the Subliminal Mind: Psychical Research in the Work of Aldous Huxley’, Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, 15, 2 (2015), 247-266. Print. ISSN: 1567-9896 (6,932 words).
  • ‘The Transmutations of Arthur Machen: Alchemy in “The Great God Pan” and The Three Impostors’, Literature and Theology, 29, 1 (2015), 18-32. Print. ISSN: 0269-1205 (6,917 words).
  • ‘The Philosophy of Life-Worship: D.H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley’, D.H. Lawrence Review, 34-35 (2010), 75-91. Print. ISSN: 0011-4936 (8,005 words).
  • ‘Aldous Huxley’s Antic Hay: London in the Aftermath of World War I’, Literary London Journal, 8, 2 (2010). ISSN: 1744-0807 (3,771 words).
  • ‘State versus Individual: Civil Disobedience in Brave New World’, in Bloom’s Literary Themes: Civil Disobedience, ed. by Harold Bloom and Blake Hobby (New York: Chelsea House, 2010), 89-100. Print. ISBN: 978-1-60413-439-1 (3,982 words).
  • ‘“God-Intoxicated”: An Essay on Jiddu Krishnamurti and His Relationship with Aldous Huxley’, Aldous Huxley Annual, 9 (2009), 115-132. Print. ISBN: 978-3-643-10846-3 (6,453 words).
  • ‘“These Maximal Horrors of War”: Aldous Huxley, Garsington and the Great War’, Aldous Huxley Annual, 6 (2006), 63-76. ISBN: 978-3-8258-1436-6 (5,106 words). 
Back to top