Janet Todd

Janet Margaret Todd OBE (born 10 September 1942) is a Welsh-born academic and a well-respected author of many books on women in literature. Todd was educated at Cambridge University and the University of Florida, where she undertook a doctorate on the poet John Clare.^[1] She is currently the Herbert JC Grierson Professor of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen. On 1 September 2008, Professor Todd took up the post of President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. She is the seventh President of the college.

Janet Todd's research concerns literature and culture of the Restoration and eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over a long career, primarily in the US and the UK at Cambridge University, University of East Anglia, Glasgow University and University of Aberdeen, she has published and contributed to more than 38 books, mainly on women's writing, cultural history and the development of fiction. She also edited full scale editions of Mary Wollstonecraft (with Marilyn Butler) and Aphra Behn, as well as individual works of women such as Helen Maria Williams, Mary Shelley, Mary Carleton and Eliza Fenwick.

She is the General Editor of the nine-volume The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen, editing the volume Jane Austen in Context and co-editing Persuasion and Later Manuscripts.^[2]

Todd was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to higher education and literary scholarship.^[3][4]

Selected publications

Mary Wollstonecraft : A Revolutionary Life. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 2000. ISBN 0-231-12184-9. 

This biography of Mary Wollstonecraft argues that her life and letters are her most lasting legacy. Her story was extraordinarily scandalous in conventional terms, yet in her own terms always principled and highly moral.

The Complete Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Columbia University Press. 2004. ISBN 0-7139-9600-5. 

This volume contains the collection of all known correspondence of Mary Wollstonecraft.

Daughters of Ireland. New York: Ballantine Books. 2004. ISBN 0-345-44763-8.  (published as Rebel Daughters: Ireland in Conflict in the USA)

This is a biography of Margaret King and Mary King daughters of Robert Lord Kingsborough, later Earl of Kingston, of Mitchelstown Castle during the time of Irish rebellion. The radical Mary Wollstonecraft was hired as their governess.

The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006. ISBN 978-0-521-67469-0. 

An introduction to Jane Austen, her works and literary influences, including a summary of the literary criticism to date for each of her six published novels

Death & the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle. London: Profile Books;Berkeley: Counterpoint. 2007. ISBN 978-1-58243-339-4. 

A biography of the Fanny Wollstonecraft, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and half-sister of Mary Godwin Shelley, whose own infatuation with Percy Bysshe Shelley took a backseat when her sister eloped with the poet and who ended her life at the age of 22.

Later Manuscripts of Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2009. ISBN 978-0-521-84348-5. 

Edited with Linda Bree. This volume collects together, for the first time, all the literary manuscripts from Jane Austen's adult years, together with letters discussing the art of fiction, and her record of responses to her novels.

References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sutherland, John (21 March 2006). "Interview: Janet Todd". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 March 2012. 
2. ↑ "The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 1 March 2012. 
3. ↑ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 60367. p. 14. 29 December 2012.
4. ↑ "New Year Honours List 2013 - General List". Cabinet Office. Retrieved 29 December 2012. 

External links

• Janet Todd at Lucy Cavendish
• Janet Todd at the University of Aberdeen
• Women's Word Festival at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, Cambridge Evening News, 12 June 2009