Professor Susan Manning (1953-2013)

Friends, colleagues, students and staff mourn the unexpected passing of Professor Susan Manning, Grierson Professor of English Literature and, for the last 7 years, Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. Susan died peacefully soon after a stroke on Tuesday, 15th January 2013. This news came as a profound shock to all of us at IASH, in the English Department, the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and many others around the world whose lives were touched by Susan’s kindness, inspiration and scholarship. Susan’s contribution to the University has been enormous and her influence has been felt across the world through the excellence of her scholarship, her warm support of colleagues and her influential roles in many learned societies and professional networks. Our thoughts and sympathy are with her family at this very difficult time.

About Susan

Susan was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and a Trustee of the Kennedy Memorial Trust. As a member of the Press Committee of Edinburgh University Press and of the Gifford Lectureships Committee, and Deputy Chair of the Research Committee of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, she took an active role in the developing research agenda for Arts and Humanities at Edinburgh. Susan also served on the Advisory Boards of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels and the Stirling/South Carolina Edition of the Works of James Hogg.

Her primary research interests lay in the fields of the Scottish Enlightenment and in Scottish-American literary relations, the subjects of her books The Puritan-Provincial Vision(CUP, 1990), and the transatlantic study Fragments of Union (Palgrave, 2002). She was one of the co-editors of The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature which was published in three volumes in 2006, and (with Andrew Taylor) of the first Reader in Transatlantic Literary Studies. She has edited several collections of essays in Enlightenment studies, as well as the works of Henry Mackenzie (including a new edition of Julia de Roubigné), Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward, Washington Irving’s The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., and Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer. Her edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun was published by OUP in 2002.

Susan was a Board Member and Past President of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society; with Dr Nicholas Phillipson, she convened a three-year research project on The Science of Man in Scotland, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She also co-ordinated the Carnegie funded STAR (Scotland’s Transatlantic Relations) initiative. Recent research projects included a new EUP series on “Transatlantic Literatures”, a major study of Character, and the development of methodologies for interdisciplinary and transnational studies.

Memorial lecture

Baroness Onora O’Neill gave a Special Gifford Lecture in Memory of Susan Manning on Monday, 28 October 2013. The lecture, entitled “From Toleration to Freedom of Expression”, was held in the Playfair Library, Old College, South Bridge.

Click here for a video recording of the lecture.


Susan Manning Postdoctoral Fellowship

The University of Edinburgh is establishing the Susan Manning Postdoctoral Fellowship to begin later in 2013. This is to honour the memory of Professor Susan Manning, Grierson Professor of English Literature and, for 7 years, Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. This fellowship will reflect her many inter-disciplinary interests alongside her commitment and enthusiasm for mentoring younger scholars. Numerous IASH fellows, colleagues within the English Department, the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as many other friends around the world were inspired by Susan’s kindness, energy and scholarship.

The University is now actively seeking funds to ensure its development over many years in the future. In donating to this fellowship you will help to honour Susan’s work and vision.

To make a donation, click on one of the links below:

Single gift:

http://www.donate.ed.ac.uk/singlegift?destination=Susan-Manning-Fund

Regular gift:

http://www.donate.ed.ac.uk/regulargift?destination=Susan-Manning-Fund


Obituaries


Funeral Service, 25 January 2013:

Tribute from Rod Hunt
Tribute from Jill Hanna
Tribute from Jean Gooder
Tribute from Betta Adams


Service of Appreciation and Thanksgiving held on 24 May 2013 at the University of Edinburgh:

Order of Service
A reflection by Dr. Linda Andersson Burnett, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh
A reflection by Dr. Penny Fielding, Head of English Literature, University of Edinburgh
A reflection by Dr. Richard Gooder, Emeritus Fellow, Clare College, University of Cambridge

Tributes