Rachel Hewitt Explained

Honorific Prefix:Dr
Rachel Hewitt
Birth Name:Rachel Hewitt
Awards:Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for non-fiction,
Eccles British Library Writer's Award
Education:Corpus Christi College, Oxford (MA),
Queen Mary University, London, (PhD)
Thesis Title:Dreaming o'er the Map of Things: The Ordnance Survey and Literature of the British Isles, 1747-1842
Thesis Year:2007
Discipline:English literature
Notable Works:Map of a Nation (2010)
A Revolution of Feeling (2017)
In Her Nature (2023)

Rachel Hewitt is a writer of creative non-fiction, and lecturer in creative writing at Newcastle University.[1]

Education

Hewitt attended the University of Oxford, where she studied English Literature at Corpus Christi College for a BA and M.St. She completed a PhD in 2007 in English literature at Queen Mary University, London, with a thesis on romanticism and mapping titled Dreaming o'er the Map of Things: The Ordnance Survey and Literature of the British Isles, 1747-1842.[2] [3] In 2009, she was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, to the Department of English and Drama at Queen Mary.[4]

Writing career

Hewitt's first book Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey was published in 2010 by Granta,[5] and built on her PhD thesis work. Hewitt was awarded a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for non-fiction for this project. [6] In 2011, Hewitt was announced as one of ten BBC Radio 3 AHRC New Generation Thinkers.[7] [8]

Her second book A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind was published by Granta in 2017,[9] and explores the decade of the 1790s through the biographies of five people: poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, medic Thomas Beddoes, and photographer Thomas Wedgwood.[10] She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.[11] [12]

In April 2023, she published In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors, a book which explores the histories of women's participation in sport and the 'great outdoors', interwoven with a personal memoir about loss.[13] [14] Hewitt was awarded an Eccles British Library Writer's Award in 2018 for this project.[15]

Books

Awards & Fellowships

Personal life

Hewitt has three daughters, and lives in Yorkshire.[20] She was married to Pete Newbon, a lecturer in Romantic and Victorian Literature at Northumbria University in Newcastle, who died in January 2022.[21] She is a keen runner and has been running since her mid-20s.[22]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Staff Profile - English Literature, Language and Linguistics - Newcastle University. www.ncl.ac.uk. 2020-02-05.
  2. Web site: About. 22 March 2023.
  3. https://www.literatureandscience.org/issues/JLS_1_1/JLS_vol_1_no_1_hewitt.pdf
  4. Web site: Early Career Fellowships 2009 The Leverhulme Trust. www.leverhulme.ac.uk.
  5. Web site: Map Of A Nation.
  6. Web site: RSL Jerwood Awards. 30 November 2016 .
  7. Web site: Queen Mary has double success in BBC academic talent contest. Queen Mary University of London. 28 June 2011 .
  8. News: X Factor-style search for 10 academics from generation think. Mark. Brown. 27 June 2011. The Guardian.
  9. Web site: A Revolution of Feeling.
  10. Web site: Rachel Hewitt: A Revolution of Feeling review - from passions to emotions. 10 December 2017. theartsdesk.com.
  11. Web site: Royal Society of Literature » Rachel Hewitt. rsliterature.org. 2020-02-05.
  12. Web site: Rachel Hewitt. Edinburgh Festival. en-GB. 2020-02-05.
  13. News: In Her Nature by Rachel Hewitt review – reclaiming the great outdoors. Alex. Clark. 20 April 2023. The Guardian.
  14. Web site: Norma Clarke - Running Free. Literary Review. 17 October 2023 .
  15. Web site: Taylor and Hewitt win Eccles British Library Writer's Award. The Bookseller.
  16. Web site: Early Career Fellowships 2009 The Leverhulme Trust. www.leverhulme.ac.uk.
  17. Web site: RSL Jerwood Awards. 30 November 2016 .
  18. Web site: Taylor and Hewitt win Eccles British Library Writer's Award. The Bookseller.
  19. Web site: Royal Society of Literature » Rachel Hewitt. rsliterature.org. 2020-02-05.
  20. News: Writer Rachel Hewitt: 'Running is fundamentally important to me, physically and emotionally'. Lisa. O'Kelly. The Observer . 2 April 2023. The Guardian.
  21. News: Frazer. Jenni. Tributes paid to academic and activist against antisemitism Pete Newbon. Jewish News. 19 January 2022. 19 January 2022.
  22. News: Who runs the world?. 2019-04-29. The Economist. 2020-02-05.