Background

Isobel Grundy was born on May 23, 1938, in Surrey, United Kingdom. She is a daughter of Gerald Charles Nash Grundy and Nora Isobel McLean (Henry) Grundy.

Education

Isobel Grundy studied at St Anne's College. She also attended the University of Oxford and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1960. In 1971 she received a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

Career

Isobel Grundy started her career as a teacher of English at secondary school in Jämsänkoski, Finland in 1960. Then she worked in the editorial department. In 1963, Grundy took up a post of research assistant at Columbia University and held this post until 1966. In 1971, she started to work at Queen Mary University of London as a lecturer and later she became reader in English and department head. Grundy worked as a Henry Marshall Tory Professor at the University of Alberta from 1990 to 2003. In 2003 she became Professor Emeritus.

Isobel Grundy was one of the authors and editors of The Feminist Companion. Her book Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Comet of the Enlightenment was published by Oxford University Press in 1999. Practically, all of her books are about Samuel Johnson and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Achievements

• Isobel Grundy is an English writer and educator, who is famous for her books devoted to English writers of the Medieval period. Her famous books are Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Samuel Johnson and the Scale of Greatness.
  
  In September 2000 Grundy was awarded the University of Alberta’s highest honor, the University Cup, for excellence in research and teaching. She also received Gamble scholarship from St. Anne’s College. She was a junior research fellow of St. Hugh's College from 1970 to 1971.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

    (With interest growing in the tradition of women's writing...)

    1999
  • The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Woman Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present

    (Describes the lives and work of female literary figures.)

    1990
  • Virginia Woolf: New Critical Essays 1983
  • Samuel Johnson and the Scale of Greatness 1986
  • The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 1: The Medieval Period 2006

Membership

Isobel Grundy is a member of Jane Austen Society of North America, Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• We are indebted ... to Isobel Grundy for presenting us with Lady Mary’s writings. Over many years, Grundy has edited Mary Wortley Montagu’s essays, poems, plays and fiction—most of which existed only in manuscript until very recently."
  
  "Grundy prefers to take short views of her author and to describe his customary habits of mind and composition.

Connections

Father:

Gerald Charles Nash Grundy

Mother:

Nora Isobel McLean Henry