 Cox's first book was a biography of M. R. James, a Victorian ghost story writer and this was published in 1983 by Oxford University Press.Between 1983 and 1997, he compiled and edited several anthologies of Victorian short stories for Oxford University Press and the first two were co-edited by R. A. Gilbert.In 1989 Cox joined Oxford University Press, where he became senior commissioning editor and there completed encyclopaedic work