Originally from the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland, Patrick Vincent grew up in Great Britain and the United States. He received his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis. Since 2004, he has been Professor of English and American literature at the University of Neuchâtel, where he mainly teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American literature.

Patrick Vincent is specialized in the long Romantic period, from Rousseau to Ruskin (1750-1850). His research interests include cultural exchanges between Great Britain, the European continent and America, landscape aesthetics, travel literature, literature and political theory, Anglo-Swiss relations, cultural history of the Alps, women's writing, and twentieth-century American poetry. 

Patrick currently serves on the boards of European Romantic Review, of the British Association of Romantic Studies, the Swiss Association or North American Studies, the Association Jean-Jacques Rousseau Neuchâtel and the Association for the Study of Travel in Switzerland. 

He has published two monographs on Romantic literature, The Romantic Poetess: European Culture, Politics and Gender, 1820-1840 (University Press of New England, 2004), and Romanticism, Republicanism, and the Swiss Myth (Cambridge University Press, 2022, softcover 2025).

He is also the editor of The Cambridge History of European Romantic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024), and has co-edited several other books and journals. These include a critical edition of Helen Maria Williams, A Tour in Switzerland, with Florence Widmer-Schnyder (Slatkine, 2011), an essay collection, Romanticism, Rousseau, Switzerland: New Prospects, with Angela Esterhammer and Diane Piccitto (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015),  and two special journal issues: “Romantic Prospects,” European Romantic Review, with Angela Esterhammer and Diane Piccitto (volume 24, number 3, May 2013), and "British Romanticism and Europe,” European Romantic Review, with Simon Swift and David Duff (volume 36, number 4, December 2025). 

His other monographs and editions include La Suisse vue par les écrivains de langue anglaise, collection le Savoir Suisse (PPUR, 2009), American Poetry: Walt Whitman to the Present, with Robert Rehder (Gunter Narr, 2006), Chillon: A Literary Guide (Veytaux: Château de Chillon, 2010), Dévoiler l’Ailleurs. Correspondances, Carnets et Journaux Intimes de Voyage, with Laurent Tissot and Jacques Ramseyer (Alphil, 2020), and “Visitors’ Books and Travel Culture,” a special issue of Studies in Travel Writing, with Kevin James (volume 25, number 3, 2022).

For all publications, please go to: libra - Publications scientifiques

Research 

Patrick Vincent is currently working on several projects, including a monograph entitled Liberal Imagination: Henry Brougham and Romanticism; a critical edition of Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth's Continental Journals, with Bruce Graver; a Cambridge companion to Germaine de Staël, with Diego Saglia; and a study of Switzerland in nineteenth-century American culture.

Teaching

Patrick Vincent is responsible for the BA program in English. He teaches four courses per semester at the B.A. and M.A. levels, including the spring semester segment of the first-year Introduction to Literature, and supervise M.A. and Ph.D. theses.