Newcastle University

Roles and Responsibilities

Director of Research.

Qualifications

M.A. University of Edinburgh, 1992.

Ph.D. University of Edinburgh, 1997

Previous Positions

1998-1999: Fulbright-Robertson Professor of British History, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, USA.

1999-2004: Senior Research Fellow, Department of English, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

Memberships

Editor, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Member of the executive committee of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS).

Member of the AHRC Peer Review College.

Reviewer for Irish Research Council (IRC) 

Research Interests

Children's literature and culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; William Godwin and his correspondence; book history; the Romantic-era novel in Britain; political fiction of the 1790s and early 1800s, particularly so-called 'anti-Jacobin' writing.
These areas overlap considerably, many writers having produced both children's books and political fiction: William Godwin, for instance, plus Maria Edgeworth, Hannah More, Sarah Trimmer, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, and many others including the man sometimes thought of as the 'founder' of modern children's literature, the publisher John Newbery.

Current Work

My next major project is volume III of an edition of the Letters of William Godwin, spanning the years 1806-1815. This is to be published by Oxford University Press.

I'm also working on political children's literature in the pre-Victorian era, and moving towards a large study of just how 'Children's Literature' came to establish itself as a separate and successful sector of print culture in the eighteenth century. 

I am a General Editor of a new Palgrave-Macmillan 'Classics of Children’s Literature' series.

Research Roles

I am editor of the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (http://www.bsecs.org.uk/journal/). 

Postgraduate Supervision

I supervise M.Litt. and Ph.D. work on both children's literature, especially pre-Victorian material, and later eighteenth-century writing, especially the political fiction of the 1790s.

Esteem Indicators

Editor, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. 

Member of the Executive Committee of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (http://www.bsecs.org.uk)

Member of the AHRC Peer Review College.

Reviewer for Irish Research Council.

General editor, Palgrave-Macmillan Classics of Children’s Literature series.

External examiner of PhDs at Nottingham, Warwick, London and Roehampton Universities.

Advisory Board, University of Maryland Digitisation of Early Children’s Books project.

Numerous key-note and invited conference lectures in UK, western Europe, north America and Taiwan. 

Module leader:

Writing New Worlds, 1688-1789 (stage two undergraduate module)

Beyond Wonderland: Children's Fiction to 1939 (stage three undergraduate module)

Various teaching for first year undergraduates, and at master's level, including supervision of an annual cohort of students undertaking the MLitt in English Literature specialising in children's literature.

Supervision of 8 PhD students. 

• Grenby MO. The Letters of William Godwin, Volume III. In: Clemit, P ed. The Letters of William Godwin 2015. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 3. In Preparation.
• Grenby MO. Juvenile and Children’s Literature. In: Garside, P; O’Brien, K, ed. The Oxford History of the Novel: 1750-1820. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Grenby MO. The Novel for Children and the War of Ideas. In: Cousins, T; Russo, S, ed. The Novel, Revolution and Counter Revolution. Farleigh-Dickinson University Press, 2012.
• Grenby MO. The Child Reader, 1700-1840. Cambridge, UK:Cambridge University Press ,2011.
• Grenby MO. The Anti-Jacobin Novel. In: Downie, J.A, ed. The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Routledge, 2012. In Press.
• Grenby M, Reynolds K, ed. Children's Literature Studies: A research handbook. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
• Grenby MO. History in Fiction: Contextualization as Interpretation in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. In:Vallone, L., Mickenberg, J., ed. The Oxford Handbook to Children's Literature.New York, USA:Oxford University Press,2011, pp. 275-292.
• Grenby MO. Captivating enlightenment: eighteenth-century children’s books and the private life of the child. In:Kahn, A, ed. Representing Private Lives of the Enlightenment.Oxford:Voltaire Foundation,2011.
• Grenby MO. Novels of Opinion. In:Clemit, P., ed. The Cambridge Companion to British Literature of the French Revolution in the 1790s.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,2011, pp. chapter 11.
• Grenby MO. Children’s Literature: Birth, Infancy, Maturity. In: Janet Maybin and Nicola J. Watson, ed. Children’s Literature: Approaches and Territories. Basingstoke & Milton Keynes: Palgrave Macmillan & Open University, 2009, pp. 39-56.
• Grenby MO, Immel A, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Grenby MO. The Origins of Children's Literature. In: M.O. Grenby and Andrea Immel, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 3-18.
• Grenby MO. Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain 1790-1832. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 2009. JOURNALS DIVISION, 5201 DUFFERIN ST, DOWNSVIEW, TORONTO, ON M3H 5T8, CANADA: UNIV TORONTO PRESS INC, 22(1), 133-135.
• Grenby MO. Children’s Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
• Grenby MO, Briggs J, Butts D. Popular Children's Literature in Britain. Burlington, Vermont: Asghate Publishing, 2008.
• Grenby MO. Before Children's Literature: Children, Chapbooks and Popular Culture in Early Modern Britain. In: Matthew Grenby, Julia Briggs, Dennis Butts, ed. Popular Children's Literature in Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, pp. 25-46.
• Grenby MO. "Surely there is no British boy or girl who has not heard of the battle of Waterloo!" War and Children's Literature in the Age of Romanticism. In: Andrea Immel and Elizabeth Goodenough, ed. Under Fire: Childhood in The Shadow Of War, a festschrift in honour of Mitzi Myers. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008, pp. 39-57.
• Grenby MO. Rebels Denied a Cause: Fiction, Anti-Jacobinism and the Irish Rebellion. In: Broich, U; Dickinson, HT; Hellmuth, E; Schmidt, M, ed. Reactions to Revolutions. The 1790s and their Aftermath. Munster, Germany: Lit-Verlag, 2007, pp. 61-84.
• Grenby MO. Chapbooks, Children, and Children's Literature. The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 2007, 8(3), 277-303.
• Grenby MO. Early British Children's Books: Towards an Understanding of their Users and Usage. Corvey Women Writers on the Web 2007, 3.
• Grenby MO, ed. The Wanderings of Warwick (1794); The Banished Man (1794). London:Pickering and Chatto,2006.
• Grenby MO, ed. British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies: Special Issue: The Cultures of Childhood. Oxford, UK:Voltaire Foundation,2006.
• Grenby MO. Tame fairies make good teachers: The popularity of early British fairy tales. The Lion and the Unicorn 2006,30 1 1-24.
• Grenby MO. Writing Revolution: British Literature and the French Revolution Crisis, a Review of Recent Scholarship. Literature Compass 2006, 3(6), 1351-1385.
• Grenby MO, ed. Dorothea; or, A Ray of the New Light. A Novel. By Mrs. Bullock. London:Pickering and Chatto,2005.
• Grenby MO. "A Conservative Woman Doing Radical Things": Sarah Trimmer and The Guardian of Education. In:Ruwe D, ed. Culturing the Child 1690-1914: Essays in Memory of Mitzi Myers.Lanham, Maryland:Scarecrow Press,2005, pp. 137-161.
• Grenby MO. Bibliography and children's literature. In:Hunt, P., ed. Understanding Children's Literature.London and New York:Routledge,2005, pp. 140-158.
• Grenby MO. The British Literary Response to the French Revolution. Annales historiques de la Revolution francaise 2005,342 101-44.
• Grenby MO. Bibliography and children's literature. In:Hunt, P., ed. An International Companion Encyclopaedia to An International Companion Encyclopaedia to Children's Literature.London, UK:Routledge,2004.
• Grenby MO, ed. The Infernal Quixote, by Charles Lucas. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004.
• Grenby MO. Politicising the Nursery: British Children's Literature and the French Revolution. The Lion and the Unicorn 2003, 27(1), 1-26.
• Grenby MO. Adults Only? Children and Children's Books in British Circulating Libraries 1748-1848. Book History 2002, 5(1), 19-38.
• Grenby MO. 'Real Charity Makes Distinctions': Schooling the Charitable Impulse in Early British Children's Literature. British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 2002, 25(2), 185-202.
• Grenby MO. Orientalism and Propaganda: The Oriental Tale and Popular Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain. The Eighteenth-Century Novel 2002, 2, 215-237.
• Grenby MO. The Guardian of Education. A Periodical Work (1802-1806) by Sarah Trimmer. A new edition with an introduction and notes. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002.
• Grenby MO. The Anti-Jacobin Novel: British Conservatism and the French Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Grenby MO. Hockliffe Project website. Leicester: De Montfort University, 2001. Available at: http://www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/hockliffe.
• Grenby MO, M O. Politicised Fiction in Britain 1790-1810: An Annotated Checklist. The European English Messenger 2000, 9, 47-53.
• Grenby, M. O. The Anti-Jacobin Novel: British Fiction, British Conservatism and the Revolution in France. History: the Journal of the Historical Association 1998, 83, 445-71.
• Grenby MO. Delightful Instruction? Assessing Children’s Use of Educational Books in the Long Eighteenth Century. In: Mary Hilton and Jill Shefrin, ed. Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain: beliefs, cultures, practices. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2008, pp. 181-198.