Lucy Newlyn

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Lucy Newlyn
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Lucy Newlyn
Born1956 (age 66–67)
OccupationLiterary critic, poet, professor at Oxford University
Education Lawnswood High School
Alma mater Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University
SubjectPoetry, Romanticism, Reception theory, Intertextuality

Lucy Newlyn (born 1956) is a poet and academic. She is Emeritus Fellow in English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, having retired as professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford in 2016.

Contents

Newlyn is a specialist in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century poetry. [1]

Early life and education

Lucy Newlyn was born in 1956 in Kampala, Uganda. [2] She grew up in Leeds, where she attended Lawnswood High School, winning an open scholarship to read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in 1974. She took up her Oxford place in 1975 and graduated with a congratulatory first in 1978. Her D.Phil. thesis, supervised by Dr Roy Park, was later published as an Oxford English Monograph by Oxford University Press. [3]

Career

In 1984 (after a year as a lecturer at Christ Church) Newlyn took up a Stipendiary Lectureship at St Edmund Hall. [4] Two years later, she was elected as the A.C. Cooper Fellow and Tutor in English there – a permanent post which she held in conjunction with a CUF Lecturership in the Oxford English Faculty. Newlyn gained the title Professor of English Language and Literature in 2005. [5] She is Honorary Professor at the University of Aberystwyth, an Advisory Editor of the journal Romanticism, [6] a Fellow of the English Association, [7] and a Patron of the Wordsworth Trust. [8] She was literary editor of The Oxford Magazine from 2011 to 2018. [9] She was co-founder, with Stuart Estell, of the Hall Writers' Forum, an online resource launched in 2013 for the exchange of writing and discussion of literature and the arts. [10] In 2015, she led the campaign to elect Wole Soyinka as Oxford Professor of Poetry. [11]

Work

Lucy Newlyn's longstanding research interests are eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature, especially poetry and non-fictional prose in the Romantic period; influences on Romanticism; the reception of Romanticism; creativity and multiple authorship; allusion and intertextuality; reader-response and reception theory. [12] She is an authority on Wordsworth and Coleridge, [12] and has published extensively in the field of English Romantic literature, including four books with Oxford University Press and the Cambridge Companion to Coleridge. [13] [14] Her book Reading, Writing, and Romanticism: The Anxiety of Reception won the British Academy’s Rose Mary Crawshay prize in 2001: 'a signal contribution to British Romantic studies and literary theory'. [12] [15]

Since 2003, Newlyn has been researching the prose of Edward Thomas. Her edition of his book Oxford came out in 2005. [16] This was followed by several articles on Thomas, as well as Branch-Lines: Edward Thomas and Contemporary Poetry, co-edited with Guy Cuthbertson. [17] She is general co-editor of Edward Thomas, Selected Prose Writings, a six-volume edition for Oxford University Press. [18] Together, she and Cuthbertson edited England and Wales. Newlyn's 2013 scholarly work, her book William and Dorothy Wordsworth: All in Each Other (2013), brought together many of her research interests. [19]

Poetry

Newlyn is a published poet and anthologist, as well as an academic. Her first collection, Ginnel (Oxford Poets/Carcanet, 2005) concerns her ‘intense local attachment’ to the streets and alleys of Headingley in Leeds, where she grew up. [20] ‘Baking’ was ‘Highly Commended’ by the judges of the Forward Prize and re-printed in The Forward Book of Poetry (Faber and Faber, 2005). [21] Poems from the collection have also appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Yorkshire Post, Oxford Today, The English Review, and The Oxford Magazine. [21] [22] A recording of Ginnel, read by Sherry Baines, has been published as a ‘Daisy Book’ CD by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).

Newlyn's second collection, Earth's Almanac (Enitharmon Press, 2015) was written in the fifteen years after the death of her sister. [23] In 2019, Newlyn's collection of 135 sonnets about the Wordsworths, Vital Stream, was published by Carcanet, in association with the Wordsworth Trust. In 2020, Newlyn's collection, The Marriage Hearse, was published by Maytree Press. [24] The collection explores the impact of infertility on an imaginary Edwardian couple.

In 2021, she published The Craft of Poetry: A Primer in Verse, a handbook on how to write poetry, written as poetry, [25] and in 2022, her collection Quicksilver was published by Lapwing Publications in Belfast. [26]

In addition to her own poetry, Newlyn has published several anthologies of poetry and coordinated a number of collaborative writing projects. Together with Jenny Lewis, she was awarded a grant from Oxford University’s Institute for the Advancement of University Learning in 2002 to undertake research based on workshops at St Edmund Hall. [27] Their findings (together with the students’ writing) were published in Synergies: Creative Writing in Academic Practice (2003; 2004). [28] Newlyn was poet-in-residence for The Guardian in November 2005. [29] She ran university workshops on ‘The Craft of Writing’ with Christopher Ricks during his tenure as Professor of Poetry; between 2001 and 2016 she ran regular writing workshops for students at St Edmund Hall. [27] Her Facebook group The Craft of Poetry was a writing workshop which ran for one year after the publication of that book.

Memoir

Newlyn's personal experience of bipolar disorder is described in her fifteen-year memoir, Diary of a Bipolar Explorer. [30] The book combines poetry with prose, and seeks to de-stigmatise mental illness. [31]

Personal life

Married to economist Martin Slater, Lucy Newlyn has two step children and one daughter. [32]

Selected publications

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References

  1. ↑ Newlyn, Lucy. "Professor (Emeritus Fellow)". St Edmund Hall. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  2. ↑ "Carcanet Press - Lucy Newlyn". www.carcanet.co.uk. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
  3. ↑ "Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language of Allusion: Paperback: Luc – Oxford University Press". ukcatalogue.oup.com. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
  4. ↑ Newlyn, Lucy. "St Edmund Hall" . Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  5. ↑ Newlyn, Lucy. "Professor of English Language and Literature" . Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  6. ↑ "Editorial Board - Edinburgh University Press". www.euppublishing.com. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
  7. ↑ "Wordsworth's Power to "Think Into the Human Heart": A Q &A with Lucy Newlyn | Priscilla Gilman". priscillagilman.com. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
  8. ↑ "Patrons of the Wordsworth Trust - Wordsworth Trust". www.wordsworth.org.uk. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
  9. ↑ "Home | St Edmund Hall". www.seh.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  10. ↑ "Hall Writers' Forum | St Edmund Hall". www.seh.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
  11. ↑ "Election of the Oxford Professor of Poetry: Hall's English Fellow leads campaign for Wole Soyinka | St Edmund Hall". www.seh.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 23 February 2017.
  12. 1 2 3 "Newlyn, Lucy | Faculty of English". www.english.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  13. ↑ "Search Results - Oxford University Press". global.oup.com. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  14. ↑ "The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge". universitypublishingonline.org. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  15. ↑ "Rose Mary Crawshay Prize 2001 - British Academy". www.britac.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
  16. ↑ Edward Thomas (2005). Oxford. Signal Books. pp. ix–lvi. ISBN   978-1-902669-85-4.
  17. ↑ Edward Thomas (2008). Branch-lines: Edward Thomas and Contemporary Poetry. Enitharmon Press. ISBN   978-1-904634-35-5.
  18. ↑ Edward Thomas: Prose Writings: A Selected Edition: Guy Cuthbertson - Oxford University Press. 17 December 2011. ISBN   978-0-19-955826-1 . Retrieved 8 November 2015.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  19. ↑ William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Hardback: Lucy Newlyn - Oxford University Press. December 2013. ISBN   978-0-19-969639-0 . Retrieved 8 November 2015.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  20. ↑ "Carcanet Press - Ginnel". www.carcanet.co.uk. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  21. 1 2 "Professor Lucy Newlyn". St Edmund Hall. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  22. ↑ "Eleven-plus by Lucy Newlyn". The Guardian. 16 July 2005. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  23. ↑ "Earth's Almanac". Enitharmon Editions. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  24. ↑ "The Marriage Hearse". Maytree Press. 14 February 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  25. ↑ "The Craft of Poetry by Lucy Newlyn".
  26. ↑ Quicksilver
  27. 1 2 "Wednesday Workshops | St Edmund Hall". www.seh.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  28. ↑ "Imaginative leap". The Guardian. 24 June 2003. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  29. ↑ "Lucy Newlyn's workshop". The Guardian. 21 November 2005. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  30. ↑ "Signal Books | Diary of a Bipolar Explorer". www.signalbooks.co.uk. Retrieved 28 April 2018.
  31. ↑ "Author Interview – Lucy Newlyn – Diary of a Bipolar Explorer (Mental Illness/Memoir/Poetry & Prose)". toofulltowrite (I've started so I'll finish). 14 April 2018. Retrieved 28 April 2018.
  32. ↑ "Carcanet Press - Lucy Newlyn". www.carcanet.co.uk. Retrieved 24 November 2015.
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