About Janet Todd

Janet Todd is an internationally renowned novelist and academic, best known for her non-fiction feminist works on women writers including Jane Austen, Aphra Behn and Mary Wollenstonecraft. In recent years, she has turned her hand to writing novels, publishing Lady Susan Plays the Game in 2013, A Man of Genius in 2016 and Don’t You Know There’s a War On? in 2020. Her latest book is Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden: A Novel with Pictures and was recently reviewed  and recommended in Washington Post.

Janet has published and edited more than 40  books including the complete works of Mary Wollstonecraft (with Marilyn Butler), of Aphra Behn, and, as General Editor, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen. She has compiled encyclopedias of women writers and written individual biographies:  Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary LifeRebel Daughters/ Daughters of Ireland; Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle ; Jane Austen: Her Life, Her Times, Her Novels; Aphra Behn A Secret Life  (2017) and Jane Austen’s Sanditon (2019).

Janet has worked in universities around the world including Ghana, Puerto Rico, North America and India. She was a professor of English Literature at UEA, Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities, before becoming president of Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge (2008-2015), Cambridge where she established the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. She is now an Honorary Fellow of Newnham and Lucy Cavendish Colleges. In 2013, Janet was given an OBE for her services to higher education and literary scholarship.

Interviews with Janet