Susan Sellers
Encyclopedia
Susan Sellers is a British author, translator, editor and novelist. She is Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of St Andrews
, and co-General Editor of the Cambridge University Press
edition of the writings of Virginia Woolf
. Sellers' novel, Vanessa and Virginia, is a fictionalised account of the life of Vanessa Bell
and of her complex relationship with her sister (Two Ravens, 2008 and Harcourt, New York). It has also been translated into Dutch (Artemis, 2009), Swedish (Ordfront, 2010), Spanish (emece, 2011), French (editions autrement, 2011) and Dutch and was adapted for the stage by Elizabeth Wright in 2009, touring in the UK, France, Germany and Poland (Moving Stories Theatre, see references).
in 1992, having previously received a Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies from the University of Paris
(Sorbonne
). While in Paris, Sellers became involved with leading French feminist writers, and has written on their work (see, for example, "Language and Sexual Difference" [Macmillan, 1995]). She has worked especially closely with Hélène Cixous
, and has been influential in introducing her work to the English-speaking world, in books such as "The Hélène Cixous Reader" (Routledge, 1994), "Hélène Cixous: Authorship, Autobiography and Love" (Polity and Blackwell, 1996), "Hélène Cixous: Live Theory (with Ian Blyth, Continuum, 2004), and in translations such "Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing" (with Sarah Cornell, Columbia University Press, 1993) and "Coming to Writing and Other Essays" (with Sarah Cornell, Deborah Jenson and Ann Liddle, Harvard University Press, 1991).
Sellers' work has been oriented towards women's writing. Her "Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Fiction" (Palgrave, 2001) is an investigation into the ongoing resonance of myth and fairy tale for contemporary women's fiction, drawing on material by Sigmund Freud
, Carl Jung
, Bruno Bettelheim
, Roland Barthes
, Jack Zipes
and Marina Warner, as well as French feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray
and Julia Kristeva
, to read works by such writers as A. S. Byatt
, Angela Carter
, Anne Rice
, Michèle Roberts
, Emma Tennant
and Fay Weldon
. Sellers has also written on and edited a number of collections concerned with feminist theory and criticism, including "A History of Feminist Literary Criticism" (with Gill Plain, Cambridge University Press, 2007) and "Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice" (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991).
Sellers' interest in the writings of Virginia Woolf has led to her involvement in the Cambridge University Press edition of Woolf's writings, which she co-directs with Jane Goldman. Goldman and Sellers received a major Arts and Humanities Research Council
Award in 2005 for this project. The edition aims for transparency in its mapping of the variants between the first British edition of Woolf's texts and those she subsequently oversaw – in particular the first American publication. It also aims to provide full annotation to Woolf's densely allusive prose. In addition to co-directing the project, Sellers is also co-editing Virginia Woolf's "The Waves" (with Michael Herbert). With Sue Roe, Sellers co-edited and contributed to "The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf" (Cambridge University Press, 2000), which included contributions by David Bradshaw, Julia Briggs, Susan Dick, Hermione Lee, Laura Marcus, Andrew McNeillie, Suzanne Raitt and Michael Whitworth. Sellers' novel, 'Vanessa and Virginia", is in part a fictional biography of Virginia Woolf.
Throughout, Sellers has been particularly interested in the creative process of writing, and this is reflected in three collections "Instead of Full Stops" (The Women’s Press, 1996), "Taking Reality by Surprise" (The Women's Press, 1991), and "Delighting the Heart: A Notebook by Women Writers" (The Women's Press, 1988), as well as in the translated selections from
"The Writing Notebooks of Hélène Cixous" ( Continuum, 2004). For this latter project, Sellers was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2001–2002, which she held as a Visiting Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge
.
Sellers now combines her academic research with work as a novelist. In 2002 she won the Canongate Prize for short story writing and in 2007 received a New Writing Partnership Arts Council award for her novel Vanessa and Virginia. She is a member of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge
.
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...
, and co-General Editor of the Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
edition of the writings of Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
. Sellers' novel, Vanessa and Virginia, is a fictionalised account of the life of Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.- Biography and art :...
and of her complex relationship with her sister (Two Ravens, 2008 and Harcourt, New York). It has also been translated into Dutch (Artemis, 2009), Swedish (Ordfront, 2010), Spanish (emece, 2011), French (editions autrement, 2011) and Dutch and was adapted for the stage by Elizabeth Wright in 2009, touring in the UK, France, Germany and Poland (Moving Stories Theatre, see references).
Life
Sellers gained her PhD from the University of LondonUniversity of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
in 1992, having previously received a Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies from the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
(Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
). While in Paris, Sellers became involved with leading French feminist writers, and has written on their work (see, for example, "Language and Sexual Difference" [Macmillan, 1995]). She has worked especially closely with Hélène Cixous
Hélène Cixous
Hélène Cixous is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. She holds honorary degrees from Queen's University and the University of Alberta in Canada; University College Dublin in Ireland; the University of York and University College...
, and has been influential in introducing her work to the English-speaking world, in books such as "The Hélène Cixous Reader" (Routledge, 1994), "Hélène Cixous: Authorship, Autobiography and Love" (Polity and Blackwell, 1996), "Hélène Cixous: Live Theory (with Ian Blyth, Continuum, 2004), and in translations such "Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing" (with Sarah Cornell, Columbia University Press, 1993) and "Coming to Writing and Other Essays" (with Sarah Cornell, Deborah Jenson and Ann Liddle, Harvard University Press, 1991).
Sellers' work has been oriented towards women's writing. Her "Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Fiction" (Palgrave, 2001) is an investigation into the ongoing resonance of myth and fairy tale for contemporary women's fiction, drawing on material by Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
, Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim was an Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer. He gained an international reputation for his work on Freud, psychoanalysis, and emotionally disturbed children.-Background:...
, Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
, Jack Zipes
Jack Zipes
Jack David Zipes is an American retired Professor of German at the University of Minnesota, who has published and lectured on the subject of fairy tales, their evolution, and their social and political role in civilizing processes...
and Marina Warner, as well as French feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray is a Belgian feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One .-Biography:...
and Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...
, to read works by such writers as A. S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner...
, Angela Carter
Angela Carter
Angela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...
, Anne Rice
Anne Rice
Anne Rice is a best-selling Southern American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature and erotica from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history...
, Michèle Roberts
Michèle Roberts
Michèle Brigitte Roberts is a British writer, novelist and poet. Roberts was the daughter of a French Catholic teacher mother and English Protestant father ; she has dual UK-France nationality.-Early life:She was raised in Edgware, Middlesex and educated at a convent, expecting to become a nun,...
, Emma Tennant
Emma Tennant
Emma Christina Tennant FRSL is a British novelist and editor. She is known for a postmodern approach to her fiction, which is often imbued with fantasy or magic. Several of her novels give a feminist or dreamlike twist to classic stories, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr....
and Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon CBE is an English author, essayist and playwright, whose work has been associated with feminism. In her fiction, Weldon typically portrays contemporary women who find themselves trapped in oppressive situations caused by the patriarchal structure of British society.-Biography:Weldon was...
. Sellers has also written on and edited a number of collections concerned with feminist theory and criticism, including "A History of Feminist Literary Criticism" (with Gill Plain, Cambridge University Press, 2007) and "Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice" (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991).
Sellers' interest in the writings of Virginia Woolf has led to her involvement in the Cambridge University Press edition of Woolf's writings, which she co-directs with Jane Goldman. Goldman and Sellers received a major Arts and Humanities Research Council
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Established in April 2005 as successor to the Arts and Humanities Research Board, the Arts and Humanities Research Council is a British Research Council and non-departmental public body that provides approximately £102 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the...
Award in 2005 for this project. The edition aims for transparency in its mapping of the variants between the first British edition of Woolf's texts and those she subsequently oversaw – in particular the first American publication. It also aims to provide full annotation to Woolf's densely allusive prose. In addition to co-directing the project, Sellers is also co-editing Virginia Woolf's "The Waves" (with Michael Herbert). With Sue Roe, Sellers co-edited and contributed to "The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf" (Cambridge University Press, 2000), which included contributions by David Bradshaw, Julia Briggs, Susan Dick, Hermione Lee, Laura Marcus, Andrew McNeillie, Suzanne Raitt and Michael Whitworth. Sellers' novel, 'Vanessa and Virginia", is in part a fictional biography of Virginia Woolf.
Throughout, Sellers has been particularly interested in the creative process of writing, and this is reflected in three collections "Instead of Full Stops" (The Women’s Press, 1996), "Taking Reality by Surprise" (The Women's Press, 1991), and "Delighting the Heart: A Notebook by Women Writers" (The Women's Press, 1988), as well as in the translated selections from
"The Writing Notebooks of Hélène Cixous" ( Continuum, 2004). For this latter project, Sellers was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2001–2002, which she held as a Visiting Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
.
Sellers now combines her academic research with work as a novelist. In 2002 she won the Canongate Prize for short story writing and in 2007 received a New Writing Partnership Arts Council award for her novel Vanessa and Virginia. She is a member of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge
Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge
Lucy Cavendish College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is a women-only college, which admits only postgraduates and undergraduates aged 21 or over....
.
Works
- (ed. with Michael Herbert),Virginia Woolf's The Waves, Cambridge University Press. (2010)
- (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, revised second edition, Cambridge University Press. (2010)
- (ed. and transl.), White Ink: Interviews on Sex, Text and Politics with Hélène Cixous, Acumen and Columbia. (2008)
- Virginia and Vanessa (novel), Two Ravens and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt U.S. (2008)
- (ed. with Gill Plain) A History of Feminist Literary Criticism, Cambridge University Press (2007)
- (transl.) Hélène CixousHélène CixousHélène Cixous is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. She holds honorary degrees from Queen's University and the University of Alberta in Canada; University College Dublin in Ireland; the University of York and University College...
, La Chambre de Vera, Black Dog Publishing (2006) - (with Ian Blyth) Live Theory, Continuum (2004)
- (ed. and transl.) The Writing Notebooks of Hélène Cixous, Continuum (2004)
- Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Fiction, Palgrave (2001)
- (ed. with Sue Roe) The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, Cambridge University Press (2000)
- Hélène Cixous: Authorship, Autobiography and Love, Polity and Blackwell (1996)
- (ed.) Instead of Full Stops, The Women’s Press (1996)
- Language and Sexual Difference, Macmillan (1995)
- (ed. and transl.), The Hélène Cixous Reader, Routledge (1994)
- (with Nicole Ward Jouve and Sue Roe) The Semi-Transparent Envelope: Feminism and Fiction, Marion Boyars (1994)
- (transl. with Sarah Cornell) Héléne Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, Columbia University Press (1993)
- (ed.) Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice, Harvester Wheatsheaf (1991)
- (ed.) Taking Reality by Surprise, The Women's Press (1991)
- (transl. with Sarah Cornell, Deborah Jenson and Ann Liddle) Héléne Cixous, Coming to Writing and Other Essays, Harvard University Press, 1991
- (ed.) Delighting the Heart: A Notebook by Women Writers, The Women's Press (1988)
- (ed.) Writing Differences: Readings from the Seminar of Héléne Cixous, Open University Press and St Martin's Press (1988)