Lindsay O'Neill

I teach a range of courses that cover topics such as early modern Europe, the history of drink, the Black Experience in Britain, and gender in 18th and 19th century London.

My first book The Opened Letter: Networking in the Early Modern British World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyvania Press, 2015) explored the way networks formed through letter writing helped bind together an increasing vast British world during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. During this period it became both easier to send a letter, as the postal system expanded, and more necessary, as the British settled across the globe. Understanding how the British used their letters illuminates how they thought about their society and how they navigated their changing geographic and communicative worlds.

My second book, The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth Century Journey into and and out of Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyvania Press, 2025), traces the journey of two princes from south east Africa who are sold into slavery, free themselves, end up in London, and manage to manufacture a voyage home. Besides simply being a thrilling tale, the story of these two men and those who become involved with them allows us pick apart British global power in the early eighteenth century and see Africa’s engagement with and constestation of that expansion.