Staff Profile
Professor Matthew Grenby
Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation
- Email: matthew.grenby@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 6182
- Address: Executive Office,
King's Gate,
缅北禁地,
缅北禁地 upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU
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, 缅北禁地 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, 缅北禁地, UK
Memberships
Member, European University Association (EUA) Research and Innovation Strategy Group (RISG)
Member, Oversight Group for the Concordat for the Environmental Sustainability of Research Practice
Member, UUK/Jisc Research Licensing Strategy Group
Member of the AHRC Peer Review College and Strategic Review Group
Past President of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS)
Chair, Seven Stories Collection Trust
Google scholar:
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, 缅北禁地), 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
2020-23: Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture (ECPPEC), AHRC (£948,383 + £60,000), with Co-Investigators Dr Tom Schofield (Digital Cultures, 缅北禁地), Prof. Elaine Chalus (History, Liverpool) and partners History of Parliament and the Institute of Historical Research.
See
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 缅北禁地 (€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 缅北禁地 (€212,934)
2018-20: Children and Heritage, funded by 缅北禁地'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 ()
- 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 4 PhD students.
-
Articles
- Grenby MO. . Childhood in the Past 2024, 17(1), 4-21.
- Grenby MO, Chalus E. Elections in 18th-Century England: Polling, Politics and Participation. Parliamentary History 2024, 43(1), 5-19.
- Grenby MO, Gribling B. . Modern British History 2024, 35(4), 455-474.
- Grenby M. . Romanticism 2023, 29(3), 239-252.
- Grenby MO. . Oxford Review of Education 2015, 41(4), 464-481.
- Grenby MO. . IBBYlink 2014, 40(Summer), 17-21.
- Grenby MO. . Corvey Women Writers on the Web 2007, 3.
- Grenby MO. . The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 2007, 8(3), 277-303.
- Grenby MO. . Literature Compass 2006, 3(6), 1351-1385.
- Grenby MO. . The Lion and the Unicorn 2006, 30(1), 1-24.
- Grenby MO. . Annales historiques de la Revolution francaise 2005, 342, 101-44.
- Grenby MO. . The Lion and the Unicorn 2003, 27(1), 1-26.
- Grenby MO. . British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 2002, 25(2), 185-202.
- Grenby MO. . The Eighteenth-Century Novel 2002, 2, 215-237.
- Grenby MO. . Book History 2002, 5(1), 19-38.
- Grenby MO, M O. . 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. . Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
- Grenby MO. . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- Grenby MO. . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
- Grenby MO. . Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002.
- Grenby MO. . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
-
Book Chapters
- Grenby MO. . 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. . 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. . 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. . 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. . 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. . 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. . In: O'Brien E; Stark H; Turner B, ed. New Approaches to William Godwin : Forms, Fears, Futures. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, pp.185-213.
- Grenby MO. . 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. . 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. . In: Downie, J.A, ed. The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Oxford University Press, 2016, pp.457-471.
- Grenby MO. . In: Women's Writing, 1660-1830: Feminisms and Futures. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp.117-137.
- Grenby MO. . 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. . 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. . 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. . In: Townshend, Dale and Byron, Glennis, ed. The Gothic World. London: Routledge, 2014, pp.243-253.
- Grenby MO. . In: Carrington,B ; Harding,J, ed. Beyond the Book: Transforming Children’s Literature. 缅北禁地 upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp.5-13.
- Grenby MO. . In: Cousins, T; Russo, S, ed. The Novel, Revolution and Counter Revolution. Farleigh-Dickinson University Press, 2012.
- Grenby MO. . 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. . 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. . 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. . In: Kahn, A, ed. Representing Private Lives of the Enlightenment. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011.
- Grenby MO. . 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. . 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. . 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. . In: Matthew Grenby, Julia Briggs, Dennis Butts, ed. Popular Children's Literature in Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, pp.25-46.
- Grenby MO. . 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. . 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. . In: Hunt, P, ed. Understanding Children's Literature. London and New York: Routledge, 2005, pp.140-158.
- Grenby MO. . 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. . In: Hunt, P, ed. An International Companion Encyclopaedia to An International Companion Encyclopaedia to Children's Literature. London, UK: Routledge, 2004.
-
Edited Books
- Reynolds K, Grenby M, Murphy E, ed. . London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2026. In Press.
- Grenby MO, Chalus E, ed. . Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2024.
- Appel C, Christensen N, Grenby MO, ed. . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2023.
- Juska-Bacher B, Grenby M, Laine T, Sroka W, ed. . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2023.
- Grenby MO, ed. . Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
- Grenby M, Reynolds K, ed. . London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
- Grenby MO, Immel A, ed. . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
- Briggs J, Butts D, Grenby MO, ed. . Burlington, Vermont: Asghate Publishing, 2008.
- Grenby MO, ed. . London: Pickering and Chatto, 2006.
- Grenby MO, ed. . Oxford, UK: Voltaire Foundation, 2006.
- Grenby MO, ed. . London: Pickering and Chatto, 2005.
- Grenby MO, ed. . Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004.
-
Editorials
- Grenby MO, Chalus E. . Parliamentary History 2024, 43(1), 5-19.
- Grenby M, Marazzi E, Salman J. . Quaerendo: A Journal Devoted to Manuscripts and Printed Books 2021, 51(1-2), 5-7.
-
Online Publication
- Grenby MO. . Leicester: De Montfort University, 2001. Available at: .
-
Research Dataset/Database
- Grenby MO, Schofield T, Chalus E, Packham K, Burlock H, Schoneboom J, Harris J, Foster-Smith D. . 2023. 缅北禁地 and Liverpool University.
-
Reviews
- Grenby MO. . The Times Literary Supplement 2015, (5864), 27-27.
- Grenby MO. . Times Literary Supplement 2014, (5788), 32-32.
-
Scholarly Edition
- Grenby MO. . In: Clemit, P ed. The Letters of William Godwin 2015. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 3. In Preparation.