Betty Schellenberg

Education

• BEd, BA (Winnipeg)
• MA, PhD (Ottawa)

Biography

Betty Schellenberg's expertise is in manuscript and print cultures of the 18th century. She has worked especially on the topics of author professionalization and literary coteries, and her archival research has focused on authors' correspondence, author professionalization and literary coteries, and her archival research has focused on authors' correspondence, Bluestocking letter collections, and the records of manuscript-exchanging literary coteries.

Professor Schellenberg's current, SSHRC-funded research project is the first-ever study of manuscript verse miscellanies. These are unique, personal poetry anthologies created by “ordinary people” out of poetry copied from magazines, the writing of people in their networks, and their own compositions. What these people chose to copy, imitate, adapt, and juxtapose offers us a rare glimpse into the lively poetry scene of the eighteenth century. A spin-off from this project is an open-access database of miscellanies scattered throughout archives in the UK and North America.

Professor Schellenberg is the founding member of the Department of English's Print Culture MA specialization.