Robert J. H. Morrison (born 6 January 1961) is a Canadian author, editor, and academic. He isBritish Academy Global Professor atBath Spa University and Queen's National Scholar atQueen's University,Kingston, Ontario. A scholar of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and culture, he is particularly interested in theRegency years (1811–1820),Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine,Jane Austen, andThomas De Quincey.
Morrison was born and raised inLethbridge, Alberta. He was educated at theUniversity of Lethbridge, where he gained a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1983. He later pursued a Master of Philosophy at theUniversity of Oxford, which he completed in 1987. In 1991, Morrison earned his PhD at theUniversity of Edinburgh.[1]
Morrison isBritish Academy Global Professor atBath Spa University[2] and Queen's National Scholar at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.[3] He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2017.[4] He received the University of Lethbridge Distinguished Alumnus of the Year award in 2013. He has been the recipient of a number of teaching awards, including the Frank Knox Award for Excellence in Teaching (2006, 2008, 2014), the W. J. Barnes Award for Excellence in Teaching (2006, 2018), and the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance Teaching Award (2008). Morrison maintains the Thomas De Quincey Homepage, a site devoted to the study of the life and writings of its namesake.[5]
Morrison’s most recent book,The Regency Years, During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern was published in North America by W. W. Norton.[6][7] Under the titleThe Regency Revolution: Jane Austen, Napoleon, Lord Byron, and the Making of the Modern World, it was published in Britain by Atlantic.[8]The Regency Years was longlisted for theRBC Taylor Prize, and named byThe Economist as one of its2019 Books of the Year. AsThe Regency Revolution, it was also longlisted for theElma Dangerfield Prize and shortlisted for theHistorical Writers’ Association Crown Award for the best in historical non-fiction.
Morrison’s 2009 biography of Thomas De Quincey—The English Opium-Eater—was shortlisted for theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize in Biography.[9] He is the co-general editor ofThe Selected Works of Leigh Hunt, and editor ofHunt’s essays, 1822–38 (Pickering and Chatto, 2003). He is the editor of three volumes of theWorks ofThomas De Quincey, and co-editor of a fourth (Pickering and Chatto, 2000–03). With Daniel Sanjiv Roberts, he editedRomanticism and Blackwood's Magazine: "An Unprecedented Phenomenon" (2013) andThomas De Quincey: New Theoretical and Critical Directions (2008). For Oxford University Press, he edited Thomas De Quincey'sConfessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings (2013), and Thomas De Quincey'sOn Murder (Oxford, 2006), and co-edited (withChris Baldick)The Vampyreand Other Tales of the Macabre (1997), andTales of Terror fromBlackwood's Magazine (1995). He producedJane Austen'sPride and Prejudice: A Sourcebook for Routledge (2005), and he editedRichard Woodhouse's Cause Book: The Opium-Eater, the Magazine Wars and the London Literary Scene in 1821[10] as a complete issue of theHarvard Library Bulletin (1998).
Morrison is married to Carole Beaudin. They have two children.[11]
