JEREMY GIBSON was born in Crawley West Sussex in 1967. He obtained his Doctorate at the University of Sussex, an MA (Distinction) at the University of Leicester and BA (Hons.) from the University of Liverpool. In 1995 he joined the Higher Education Quality Council, where he quite soon attained the position of Project Officer. It was about this time Jeremy Gibson began his long held ambition to write a critical study of Peter Ackroyd's fiction, for which that author had already agreed to provide him with interviews. In the Autumn of 1996, while cycling along the sea-front cycle path in Brighton, Jeremy Gibson plunged down an unprotected stair-well and died later that day without regaining consciousness.JULIAN WOLFREYS is the editor of numerous books and has also written Being English: Narratives, Idioms and Performance of National Identity from Coleridge to Trollope (1994), The Rhetoric of Affirmative Resistance: Dissonant Identities from Carroll to Derrida (1997), Deconstruction - Derrida (1998), and Writing London: The Trace of the Urban Text from Blake to Dickens (1998).

'The Laughter of Peter Ackroyd - no, this is not a novel by Agatha Christie, it is just what this exhilarating and brilliant book by two critics, one deceased, the other alive, and who never met, will make you hear: a polyphonic and polymorphous perverse laughter that keeps resounding in the ludic labyrinth of our libraries. Jeremy Gibson and Julian Wolfreys lead us in and out of this enjoyable maze by writing definitive autotextography of the most gifted literary murderer and resurrectionist of today.' - Jean-Michel Rabate, Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania 'Julian Wolfreys and Jeremy Gibson provide readers with the kind of original and far-reaching criticism that Peter Ackroyd's oeuvre has always deserved. Innovative and thought-provoking, this insightful volume should inspire a new scholarly appreciation for Ackroyd's considerable artistic accomplishments.' - Kenneth Womack, Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University 'Much like Ackroyd's novels, Peter Ackroyd becomes a moving and entertaining conversation which readers will want to join in with...' - Jenny Bavidge, University of Greenwich, MLR

• Abbreviations Foreword by Peter Nichols Acknowledgements Introduction: The 'Ludicrous' Text of Peter Ackroyd 'A Tiny Light/Seen in the Mind's Eye as a Phoneme': The Poetry 'A Bit of a Game': The Styles of Peter Ackroyd I: The Great Fire of London, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde, Hawksmoor 'A Bit of a Game': The Styles of Peter Ackroyd II: Chatterton, English Music, First Light, Milton in America 'Endless Variety': Writing the City in the Biographies, The House of Doctor Dee , and Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem Three Interviews with Peter Ackroyd: 26th August, 1989, 4th January, 1995 and 21st December, 1997 Works Cited Index