Staff Profile

Roles and Responsibilities

Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation (2022-)

Dean of Research and Innovation, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (2018-2022)

Founding Director, Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute (2014-2018)

Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies

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.

2005-2011: Reader in Children's Literature, School of English, Newcastle University, UK

Memberships

Past President of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS)

Member of the AHRC Peer Review College and Strategic Review Group

Chair, Seven Stories Collection Trust

Google scholar: Click here.

Research Interests

• Children's literature and culture in the 18th and early 19th centuries
• Political culture and participation in the long eighteenth century
• Children and heritage
• William Godwin and his correspondence
• Book history, particularly popular print
• Political fiction of the 1790s and early 1800s, particularly so-called 'anti-Jacobin' writing

Current/Recent Grants

2025: Humours of an Election: Annotation, Animation, Education, AHRC Follow-On for Impact and Engagement grant (£90,940), with Co-Investigators Dr Tom Schofield (Digital Cultures, Newcastle), Prof. Elaine Chalus (History, Liverpool) and project partner the Sir John Soane Museum.

2024-28: Member COST Action CA 23137: Print Culture and Public Spheres in Central Europe 1500–1800 (PCPSCE). See Action CA23137 - COST

2020-23: Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture (ECPPEC), AHRC (£948,383 + £60,000), with Co-Investigators Dr Tom Schofield (Digital Cultures, Newcastle), Prof. Elaine Chalus (History, Liverpool) and partners History of Parliament and the Institute of Historical Research.

See ECPPEC

2019-21: Children and Transnational Popular Print, 1700-1900 (CaTPoP), funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 programme as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions to bring Dr Elisa Marazzi to Newcastle (€212,934)

2018-21: Nineteenth-Century European Picture-Books in Colour (PiCoBoo), funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 programme as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions to bring Dr Francesca Tancini to Newcastle (€212,934)

2018-20: Children and Heritage, funded by Newcastle University's Research Investment Fund, to work with Dr Barbara Gribling on a new history of young people's engagement with antiquarianism and built heritage from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries

Beyond these, I am in the closing stages of editing Volume III (1806-1815) of an edition of the Letters of William Godwin  to be published by Oxford University Press. This work was supported by an AHRC Fellowship.

In the longer term, I am working towards is a book-length study of the birth and early development of children's literature. I have explored the consumers of the 'new' children's literature in the long 18th century in my book The Child Reader 1700-1840. My work on Godwin, who was (among many other things) an innovating publisher and author of children’s books, is focussing my attention on the production side. I want to join the consumption and production sides together, and ask just how 'Children's Literature' came to establish itself as a separate and successful sector of print culture in the period c.1740-1840. Some of this research – on John Newbery, on what the archives of early children’s publishers can tell us, and on the production and dissemination of popular literature – has already been published. Another fascinating element is popular print for children - whether 'literary' (such as chapbooks and ballads), didactic (such as ABCs, catechisms and conduct books), or even more ephemeral material (notices, tickets, cards, prints).

Postgraduate Supervision

I supervise M.Litt. and Ph.D. work on both children's literature, and eighteenth-century culture and writing. I would be very interested in hearing from students wishing to work in any of these areas.

Students I have supervised or am supervising have worked on subjects including these:

• 19thC cheap print
• Children, Heritage and Digital Technology
• Reimagining children’s spaces with Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books
• 18thC maritime writing
• Shelley and the Utopian Tradition
• Romantic Childhoods and Romantic Heirs 1800-1850
• Nation-Making and Nation-Breaking: Masculinities in European Literature, 1761-1817
• Working-class writers for children in the mid-twentieth century
• The historical novel for children
• Clothes and clothing in British children's literature
• Use of Narrative Structure in the Young Adult Novels of Margaret Mahy and Diana Wynne Jones
• Camping and tramping: Interwar children's fiction and the search for England
• Sleeping beauties and laughing Medusas: Myth and Fairy Tales in the work of Angela Carter, A. S. Byatt and Marina Warner
• Almost English: Jews and Jewishness in British Children’s Literature
• ‘The bold tear of manhood’: Masculinity and the Revolution Crisis of the 1790s

Esteem Indicators

• Past President of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (http://www.bsecs.org.uk)
• Member of the AHRC Peer Review College, and panel member and chair, 2009-
• AHRC Strategic Reviewer, 2013-
• Research Council of Norway Panel Member, 2016-20
• COST Association Review Panel Member, 2016-19
• External examiner of PhDs at Nottingham, Warwick, UCL, QMUL, Cambridge, Roehampton, Anglia Ruskin, Chichester, Northumbria, Glasgow, De Montfort, Lancaster and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
• External Examiner, English programme at the University of Cumbria, 2016-; and MA in Romantic and Sentimental Literature, University of York, 2012-16
• General editor, Palgrave-Macmillan Classics of Children’s Literature series.
• Visiting fellowships at Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in the History of the Emotions, Perth, Australia (2014); Mansfield College, Oxford University (2011-12); Pforzheimer Fellowship, New York Public Library (2011); Mitzi Myers Memorial Fund Research Fellowship, UCLA (2004)
• Numerous key-note and invited conference lectures in UK, Western Europe, north America, Singapore and Taiwan. 

Currently (co-)supervising of 5 PhD students. 

• Articles

  • Grenby MO. Towards a History of Children and Heritage: Young People, Heritage Education and the Eighteenth-Century 'Grand Tour'. Childhood in the Past 2024, 17(1), 4-21.
  • Grenby MO, Chalus E. Elections in Eighteenth-Century England: Polling, Politics and Participation. Parliamentary History 2024, 43(1), 5-19.
  • Grenby MO, Gribling B. 'But there's no history here!': Children, Heritage Education and the BBC Broadcasts for Schools, 1924-45. Modern British History 2024, 35(4), 455-474.
  • Grenby M. ‘Godwin versus Godwin’: Negotiating the War of Ideas in Charles Lloyd’s Isabel, A Tale. Romanticism 2023, 29(3), 239-252.
  • Grenby MO. Children’s literature, the home, and the debate on public versus private education, c.1760-1845. Oxford Review of Education 2015, 41(4), 464-481.
  • Grenby MO. Persistent pedestrianism: the ‘Tour book’ as an enduring form of children’s instructional literature. IBBYlink 2014, 40(Summer), 17-21.
  • 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. Chapbooks, Children, and Children's Literature. The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 2007, 8(3), 277-303.
  • 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. Tame fairies make good teachers: The popularity of early British fairy tales. The Lion and the Unicorn 2006, 30(1), 1-24.
  • Grenby MO. The British Literary Response to the French Revolution. Annales historiques de la Revolution francaise 2005, 342, 101-44.
  • 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. '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. Adults Only? Children and Children's Books in British Circulating Libraries 1748-1848. Book History 2002, 5(1), 19-38.
  • 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.

• Authored Books

  • Grenby MO. Children's Literature, Second Edition. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
  • Grenby MO. The Child Reader, 1700-1840. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  • Grenby MO. Children’s Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
  • 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.

• Book Chapters

  • Grenby MO. Spreading the words: Global networks and the circulation of cheap instructional and religious children’s print. In: Grenby, MO; Appel, C; Christensen, N, ed. Transnational Books for Children 1750–1900. Producers, consumers, encounters. Amsterdamn, The Netherlands: John Benjamins, 2023, pp.18-45.
  • Grenby MO. La nascita della letteratura per l’infanzia in Gran Bretagna (1740-1840). In: Braida L; Ouvry-Vial B, ed. Leggere in Europa. Testi, forme, pratiche (secoli xviii-xxi). Rome: Carocci editore, 2023, pp.165-189.
  • Grenby MO. Catechism Primers in England. In: Juska-Bacher B; Grenby MO; Laine T; Sroka W, ed. Learning to Read, Learning Religion. Catechism Primers in Europe from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2023, pp.177-190.
  • Grenby MO, Alderson B. "No effort, no invention … shall be left untried": The Godwins, Their Juvenile Library, and Beauty and the Beast. In: Alderson, Brian & Immel, Andrea, ed. Profits from the Nursery : Booksellers Discover Children's Books in the Hand-Press Period. Princeton, New Jersey, and London: Cotsen Children's Library and the Children's Book History Society, 2023, pp.189-223.
  • Grenby MO, Packham K. Electoral Animals in Eighteenth-Century England. In: Stefanie Stockhorst, Jürgen Overhoff, and Penelope J. Corfield, ed. Human-Animal Interactions in the Eighteenth Century: From Pests and Predators to Pets, Poems and Philosophy. Leiden: Brill, 2022, pp.147–164.
  • Grenby MO. I chapbook per bambini. In: Marazzi, E, ed. Stampe per cresere. Imparare e sognare con le immagini nell’Europa moderna. Pergine Valsugana, Trento: Publistampa Edizioni, 2021, pp.27-37.
  • Grenby MO. Godwin’s Popular Stories for the Nursery. In: O'Brien, Eliza; Stark, Helen; Turner, Beatrice, ed. William Godwin: Forms, Fears, Futures. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, pp.185-213.
  • Grenby MO. Tarry-at-home antiquarians: children's 'tour books', 1740-1840. In: Rachel Bryant Davies and Barbara Gribling, ed. Pasts at Play: Childhood encounters with history in British Culture, 1750-1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020.
  • Grenby MO. Les débuts de la literature enfantine et ses usages. Grande-Bretagne, 1740-1840. In: Lodovica Braida; Brigitte Ouvray-Vial, ed. Lire en Europe. Textes, formes, lectures (XVIIe-XXIe siecle). Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020, pp.129-149.
  • Grenby MO. The Anti-Jacobin Novel. In: Downie, J.A, ed. The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Oxford University Press, 2016, pp.457-471.
  • Grenby MO. Pay, professionalization and probable dominance? Women writers and the children’s book trade. In: Women's Writing, 1660-1830: Feminisms and Futures. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp.117-137.
  • Grenby MO. Thomas Spence, Children’s Literature, and ‘Learning … Debauched by Ambition’. In: Gordon Pentland; Michael T Davis, ed. Liberty, Property and Popular Politics England and Scotland, 1688-1815. Essays in Honour of H. T. Dickinson. Edinburgh University Press, 2015, pp.131-146.
  • 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, 2015, pp.495-512.
  • Grenby MO. Children’s and juvenile literature. In: Peter Garside and Karen O'Brien, ed. The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 2: English and British Fiction 1750-1820. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp.495-512.
  • Grenby MO. Gothic and the Child-reader, 1764-1850. In: Townshend, Dale and Byron, Glennis, ed. The Gothic World. London: Routledge, 2014, pp.243-253.
  • Grenby MO. Before the Book? Manuscript, Household Reading and the Origins of Children’s Literature. In: Carrington,B ; Harding,J, ed. Beyond the Book: Transforming Children’s Literature. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp.5-13.
  • 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. 'Very Naughty Doctrines': Children, Children's Literature, Politics and the French Revolution Crisis. In: A. D. Cousins, Dani Napton and Stephanie Russo, ed. The French Revolution and the British Novel in the Romantic Period. New York: Peter Lang, 2011, pp.15-35.
  • 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
  • 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 Napoleon. In: Elizabeth Goodenough and Andrea Immel, ed. Under Fire: Childhood in The Shadow Of War. 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. Bibliography and children's literature. In: Hunt, P, ed. Understanding Children's Literature. London and New York: Routledge, 2005, pp.140-158.
  • 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. An International Companion Encyclopaedia to An International Companion Encyclopaedia to Children's Literature. London, UK: Routledge, 2004.

• Edited Books

  • Grenby MO, Chalus E, ed. Elections in 18th‐Century England: Polling, Politics and Participation. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2024.
  • Appel C, Christensen N, Grenby MO, ed. Transnational Books for Children 1750-1900: Producers, Consumers, Encounters. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2023.
  • Juska-Bacher B, Grenby M, Laine T, Sroka W, ed. Learning to Read, Learning Religion. Catechism Primers in Europe from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2023.
  • Grenby MO, ed. Little Goody Two-Shoes and Other Stories: Originally Published by John Newbery. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
  • Grenby M, Reynolds K, ed. Children's Literature Studies: A research handbook. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
  • Grenby MO, Immel A, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
  • Briggs J, Butts D, Grenby MO, ed. Popular Children's Literature in Britain. Burlington, Vermont: Asghate Publishing, 2008.
  • 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, ed. Dorothea; or, A Ray of the New Light. A Novel. By Mrs. Bullock. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2005.
  • Grenby MO, ed. The Infernal Quixote, by Charles Lucas. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004.

• Editorials

  • Grenby MO, Chalus E. Elections in 18th-Century England: Polling, Politics and Participation. Parliamentary History 2024, 43(1), 5-19.
  • Grenby M, Marazzi E, Salman J. Special Issue: European Dimensions of Popular Print Culture. Quaerendo: A Journal Devoted to Manuscripts and Printed Books 2021, 51(1-2), 5-7.

• Online Publication

  • Grenby MO. Hockliffe Project website. Leicester: De Montfort University, 2001. Available at: http://www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/hockliffe.

• Research Dataset/Database

  • Grenby MO, Schofield T, Chalus E, Packham K, Burlock H, Schoneboom J, Harris J, Foster-Smith D. Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture. 2023. Newcastle University and Liverpool University.

• Reviews

  • Grenby MO. Swallows and apple pie. The Times Literary Supplement 2015, (5864), 27-27.
  • Grenby MO. The dogs do bark. Times Literary Supplement 2014, (5788), 32-32.

• Scholarly Edition

  • 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.