Fenella Copplestone was born and educated in Northern Ireland, reading English at Queen’s University Belfast. She holds an MA in American Studies from the University of Sussex and an M.Phil in the teaching of poetry from the Universy of Exeter. Trained as an English teacher at Makerere University, Kampala, she taught English first in Uganda and thereafter in Northern Ireland, England and Scotland, ending her teaching career as acting head of a comprehensive school. She has been a publisher’s reader and a reviewer of poetry, and worked on Shakespearean topics with her husband Gamini Salgado before developing her current interest in eighteen-century literature. Her home is in Rennes, Brittany.