Nora Crook

Reader in English, Anglia Polytechnic University at Cambridge, UK.

Publications

"The Faust Draft" Notebook (Bodleian Shelley MS adds. e. 18), London and New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1997.

Edited with Professor Timothy Webb, who is Head of English at Bristol University. Both this notebook and the "Charles the First" Notebook (see below) are part of the collection of P.B. Shelley's working notebooks in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. This is volume XIX in a series, reproduced photographically with the editor's diplomatic transcript and full textual apparatus. It was begun in 1986 and is now complete, except for a volume updating the whole series. The General Editor is Donald H. Reiman.

The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley, 8 vols, London: Pickering and Chatto, 1996.

Nora is the General Editor for the series and also volume editor of Frankenstein (vol 1) and Valperga (vol 3). Consulting Editor: Betty T. Bennett. Volume editors in the team are Pamela Clemit (University of Durham), Jane Blumberg, Doucet Devin Fischer (Editor Shelley and his Circle), Fiona Stafford (Somerville College, Oxford), Jean Moskal (University of North Carolina).
The "Charles the First" Notebook (Bodleian Shelley MS adds. e. 17), Garland, 1991.
Kipling's Myths of Love and Death, Macmillan, 1990.
A close examination of many of Kipling's tales, including the celebrated "Mrs Bathurst", exploring the hidden subtext and treating them as manifestations of Late Romanticism.
Shelley's Venomed Melody, Cambridge University Press, 1986, with Derek Guiton.
An exploration with Derek Guiton of the possibility that P.B. Shelley contracted syphilis and the use he made of medical knowledge in the creative process.

Articles/ chapters

Nora has published "Peter Wilkins: A Romantic Cult Book" in the collection Reviewing Romanticism, ed. Philip Martin, Macmillan, 1992. She has contributed substantial review articles to the Keats-Shelley Review of "The Journals of Mary Shelley" and "The Letters of Mary W. Shelley". Her most recent essay was a chapter in Evaluating Shelley, ed. Timothy Clark and Jerrold E. Hogle, Edinburgh University, 1996 entitled "The Enigma of 'A Vision of the Sea', or 'Who Sees the Waterspouts?'".

Conference: Mary Shelley, Parents, Peers and Progeny.

A report of this conference co-organised by Nora, September 1997, may be reached by clicking on this link:

Go to MWS: PPP

Jamaican-born and schooled, Nora won the premier all-island women's award (the Jamaica Scholarship) in 1958 and read English at Newnham College, Cambridge University (1959-62). For Newnham, after graduating, she set the entrance examination for English and part-time supervised in English there. She also acted as an advisor in educational opportunities for the Advisory Centre for Education, Cambridge.

She took a Certificate in Education at Homerton College, Cambridge, specialising in reading difficulties. From 1969 - 1979 she was employed as specialist teacher of reading in a junior school and also was an Adult Literacy co-ordinator and tutor in Cambridge. She had a particular interest in the problems of dyslexics.

For the last 17 years she has been teaching English undergraduate and masters programs in what is now the School of Arts and Letters at Anglia Polytechnic University. It is situated in Cambridge and has other campuses spread across the counties of East Anglia and Essex. ("Anglia" is similar to a civic university in the States and has been awarding degrees since 1951.)

Contact Nora at keith@valperga.demon.co.uk

Nora Crook

Publications

"The Faust Draft" Notebook (Bodleian Shelley MS adds. e. 18), London and New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1997.

The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley, 8 vols, London: Pickering and Chatto, 1996.

The "Charles the First" Notebook (Bodleian Shelley MS adds. e. 17), Garland, 1991.

Kipling's Myths of Love and Death, Macmillan, 1990.

Shelley's Venomed Melody, Cambridge University Press, 1986, with Derek Guiton.

Articles/ chapters

Conference: Mary Shelley, Parents, Peers and Progeny.