J. R. Pole is Emeritus Professor of American History and Institutions, St Catherine's College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Books of which he is the author or editor include Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic (1966), The Pursuit of Equality in American History (1978), Paths to the American Past (1979), The Gift of Government: Political Responsibility from the English Restoration to American Independence (1983), and The American Constitution: For and Against (1987).
Professor Greene and Professor Pole have also co-edited Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (1984).