Although rich in information about and insights into historical writing, the major contributions of Things that Didn't Happen are to literary criticism, through its reliance on close textual analysis. McTague is an excellent, often brilliant, close reader of texts and groups of texts.

- Martine W. Brownley, Journal of British Studies

[L]ively and intelligent . . . adventurous in both its argument and its archival range; and it is also unexpectedly topical in our time of fake news and post truth politics. One of the very refreshing things about this book is the way it puts the canonical and the overlooked or ephemeral into sparkling dialogue with one another.

Studies in English Literature

Things That Didn't Happen is a rich new account of historiographical strategies in an era of British literature and politics that saw seismic changes in attitudes to truth and unprecedented growth in the range and reach of polemical writings. In subtle ways it is also a reflection on (and of) our own age, when political polarization, bad-faith contestations of history, fake news, and conspiracy theories make it salutary and necessary to understand the "eventfulness" of things that didn't happen.

- Nicholas Seager, Eighteenth-Century Studies