Perry was born in
Aldershot in
Hampshire in 1967. He attended various local schools, including
Heron Wood Boys' School, before studying at
St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he took his undergraduate (1989) and graduate (1995) degrees. He was Oakeshott Junior Research Fellow at
Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1995 to 1998 before moving to the
University of Glasgow from 1998 to 2003 where he was lecturer and then reader in English Literature. On his return to the
University of Oxford in 2003 he became a fellow of
Balliol College, Oxford, and a lecturer in the English Faculty. With the British
literary critic and scholar Sir
Christopher Ricks and
Freya Johnston he is co-editor of the journal
Essays in Criticism: A Quarterly Journal of Literary Criticism (OUP), the general editor of the series
21st-Century Oxford Authors (OUP) and the Oxford edition of the works of William Empson. Perry is a trustee of the
Wordsworth Trust and a member of the Advisory Council of the
Institute of English Studies in the
School for Advanced Studies at the
University of London. He was elected a fellow of the
English Association in 2005. He is a fellow librarian of Balliol College, where he is also fellow for Charity Matters. ==Publications==