Betty Schellenberg is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of ten books on eighteenth-century literary culture – about women writers, authorship, manuscript culture, literary coteries, Bluestockings, and the novelist Samuel Richardson. At the moment, she is especially interested in manuscript poetry collections in which people created “personal playlists” of their favourite poems, thereby leaving us a record of their tastes and how they saw themselves as active participants in literature.

She has also created or co-edited three digital projects featuring manuscript poetry and Bluestocking correspondence. The recently launched Manuscript Verse Miscellanies, 1700-1820 project, for example, is a searchable database that describes hundred of manuscript poetry books. 

She is a founding member of the English Department’s MA in Print Culture Program, a former Chair of the Department of English, and former President of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. She teaches course at all levels of the undergraduate and graduate program, on subjects such as the creative essay as literary form, the novel and individualism, poetry and privilege in the eighteenth century, and the history of the printed book. When not researching, teaching, or writing about eighteenth-century literature, she especially enjoys cycling, gardening, and walking trips.