Inaugural Lecture: Suzanne Trill

Virginia Woolf’s fictional figure of “Shakespeare’s Sister” has long symbolised women’s exclusion from literary history. Yet the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were full of women who wrote, and of women whose lives and words were written about, contested, and reshaped by others. Recent scholarship has begun to move beyond models of loss and (re)discovery and urges us instead fully to recognise women’s participation in early modern literary culture.

This lecture takes up that challenge by focusing on three such women: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke; Anne, Lady Halkett; and Alice Thornton. All three were committed Protestants whose works were shaped by — and in turn helped shape — the political and religious upheavals of their day. Their works challenge our assumptions about who belongs to the literary tradition and demonstrate the importance of collaborative literary production, both in the seventeenth-century and beyond.

Suzanne Trill studied English Literature at the University of Southampton, before pursuing her PhD in Renaissance Women’s Writing at University of Liverpool. While a post-graduate, she taught part-time at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moore’s University and (as it was then) Chester College. With her friends and colleagues Kate Chedgzoy and Melanie Hansen/Obsorne, she co-organised Voicing Women (Liverpool, 1993) which was the first conference in the UK to focus specifically on early modern women's writing.

In 1992, she was appointed Lecturer at the Queen’s University of Belfast before moving to the University of Edinburgh in 1997. Since then she has published widely on early modern women’s writing, helped in part by being the recipient of research awards from the AHRC and the Leverhulme Trust. In 2006 she became Senior Lecturer and for the Fall semester of 2007 she was Lynn Wood Neag Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Connecticut (New England, USA).

From 2009-12, Suzanne was Director of Undergraduate Studies for School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC) as well as being Vice-President, then President of the University of Edinburgh’s branch of UCU (University and Colleges Union) from September 2009 until the end of August 2013. From May 2012-2013, Suzanne was an elected representative for Women Members on the UCU National Executive Committee. From 2016-2018, she was branch Secretary and Casework Co-ordinator for UCU Edinburgh.

Her modernised edition of 'Anne, Lady Halkett, A True Account of My Life and Selected Meditations' was published in the Other Voice series (2022). She became of Head of English and Scottish Literature in January 2023 and is now Professor of Seventeenth-Century Literature. With Professor Cordelia Beattie in History, she has recently completed an AHRC-funded project that produced a digital edition of the four volumes of Alice Thornton's autobiographical manuscripts (Alice Thornton's Books).

Browse Suzanne's staff profile on the University website

This lecture is a free, in-person event held on the University of Edinburgh campus. It is open to all.

The event will not be live streamed - tickets (bookable via Eventbrite) are for access to the venue. However, the lecture may be photographed and/or recorded and added to the University website afterwards. If you would prefer not to appear in any recordings, please contact us in advance or speak to us on the day. It's not a problem.

Inaugural Lectures are free public talks by recently-appointed Professors and Chairs at the University of Edinburgh where they share their work with a wide audience, inviting reflection and discussion on its broader implications.

Browse more Inaugural Lectures on the University of Edinburgh website

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