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 Projects

My current funded projects include:

Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture (ECPPEC), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council from 1 January 2020 to 2023 (£865,000), 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.This explores how people were able to participate with politics even if they did not have the vote. I am particularly interested in the opportunities for considering how voting behaviour (available from poll books) can be matched to the progress of election campaigns. 

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), 2019-21

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), 2018-21

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, 2019-20

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, ePub ahead of Print.
  • 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.