Christopher Hilliard is a professor at the University of Sydney, where he is currently chair of the Department of History. He grew up in New Zealand and studied at the University of Auckland before completing his PhD at Harvard. He is the author of three previous books, including English as a Vocation: The 'Scrutiny' Movement (OUP, 2012), about F. R. Leavis and his followers, and To Exercise Our Talents: The Democratization of Writing in Britain (2006), which traces a forgotten history of aspiring writers' clubs and how-to-be-an-author magazines.

"Inherent in the drama is ... the presence of the written word in the lives of the labouring poor. Against the prevailing orthodoxy that the first generation to display universal nominal literacy remained uncertain in their grasp of the basic skills, Hilliard is able to show how his cast of poor women were fully at home with newspapers, formal documents and the composition of a wide range of correspondence, including, at the heart of this story, abusive and manipulative messages to their near neighbours." -- David Vincent, English Historical Review

"The Littlehampton Libels is both a gripping read and a sophisticated analysis of class dynamics, notions of respectability, and the weaknesses of the British legal system ... Hilliard unfolds the narrative with the clarity and precision of a seasoned author of detective fiction ... The book shares the open and humane reading of working-class life that marks the author's earlier study of the democratization of writing in the period, and he investigates the way the individuals caught up in this case expressed their agency through different forms of speech and handwriting." -- Adrian Bingham, American Historical Review

"[A] dazzling work of microhistory. It uses the story of some poison pen letters in a small town to illuminate wider questions of social life in Britain between the wars..."--Bee Wilson, London Review of Books

"Chris Hilliard's The Littlehampton Libels ... is a real-crime scholarly history, but Agatha Christie fans should love it. It's Christie's world, and those dogged and courteous police officers turn out to be real."--Sheila Fitzpatrick, Australian Book Review: 2017 Books of the Year

"Gooding and Swan fell from posterity's view, but thanks to Hilliard we have a well-researched, thoroughly compelling contribution to the scarce library of working-class histories." -- Belinda Webb-Blofeld, Times Literary Supplement

"The tale unfolds with all the fascination of a mystery thriller....[F]ew towns could offer such an extraordinary story, nor hope to find a better qualified chronicler."--Sussex Life

"As an exciting experiment in merging the genre of the mystery novel with a work of historiography, Hilliard's The Littlehampton Libels succeeds in crafting an engaging, pacey, and intellectually stimulating account of an unusual criminal case in 1920s England ... The Littlehampton Libels is an engaging and ambitious work that scholars in the fields and sub-disciplines of history and English will mutually enjoy, particularly for its suggestive insights into working-class agency through literacy."--Eloise Moss, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"An absorbing book ... fascinating in its detail"--David Leafe, Daily Mail