Professor Isabel Rivers, MA (Cambridge), MA PhD (Columbia)
Professor of Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Culture
email: i.rivers@qmul.ac.ukPhone: +44 (0)20 7882 8519
Research interests:
- Intellectual History 1660-1830
- Dissenting, Methodist and Evangelical Literary Culture 1660-1830
- History of the Book 1660-1830
Isabel Rivers's research focuses on religion and philosophy and the history of the book in the long eighteenth century. Her books include Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780, 2 vols (1991–2000); she has also edited Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England (1982) and Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays (2001), and published many articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, religion, and thought, on authors ranging from John Bunyan to David Hume. She was a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow, 2000-2003. She was an Associate Editor of The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), responsible for theologians and freethinkers in the eighteenth century, and of The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 7th edn (2009), responsible for classical and biblical contexts of English literature. Her student text book, Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry, has been in print for over thirty years. She is currently writing Vanity Fair and the Celestial City: Dissenting, Methodist, and Evangelical Literary Culture in England, 1720–1800.
'Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays' edited by Isabel Rivers
With Dr David L. Wykes she is Co-Director of the Dr Williams’s Centre for Dissenting Studies. They have co-edited Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian (2008) and Dissenting Praise: Religious Dissent and the Hymn in England and Wales (2011). They are also co-editing A History of the Dissenting Academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860, with Richard Whatmore of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex as associate editor. Rivers is Principal Investigator for the Research Project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, ‘A History of the Dissenting Academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860’, with Wykes, Haakonssen, and Whatmore as Co-Investigators (2008–11), and Principal Investigator for the Research Project funded by the AHRC Religion and Society Programme, ‘Dissenting Academy Libraries and their Readers, 1720-1860’, with Wykes as Project Partner (2009-11).
Before joining Queen Mary in 2004 she taught at the Universities of Oxford (1985-2004) and Leicester (1973-85). She is an Emeritus Fellow of St Hugh’s College, Oxford.
Publications:
Publications since 2004
‘The Pilgrim's Progress in the Evangelical Revival’, in The Oxford Handbook of John Bunyan, ed. Michael Davies (OUP, forthcoming 2013)
'Scougal's The Life of God in the Soul of Man: the Fortunes of a Book, 1676–1830', in Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain, ed. Ruth Savage (OUP, 2012)
‘Isaac Toms’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edn (2011)
Editor with David L. Wykes, Dissenting Praise: Religious Dissent and the Hymn in England and Wales (OUP, 2011)
'Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660-1780' by Isabel Rivers
‘Philip Doddridge's New Testament: The Family Expositor (1739–56)’, in The King James Bible after Four Hundred Years, ed. Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones (CUP, 2010)
‘Wesley as Editor and Publisher’, in The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley, ed. Randy L. Maddox and Jason E. Vickers (2009)
‘Religious Publishing’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 5, 1695–1830, ed. Michael Suarez and Michael Turner (2009)
Over 200 new and revised short articles for The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 7th edn, ed. Dinah Birch (2009)
‘Writing the History of Early Evangelicalism’, History of European Ideas, 35 (2009), 105-111
‘William Law and Religious Revival: The Reception of A Serious Call’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 71:4 (2008), 633-649
Editor with David L. Wykes, Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian (OUP, 2008)
'The First Evangelical Tract Society', Historical Journal, 50 (2007), 1-22
‘Joseph Williams’; ‘The Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge among the Poor’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edn (2007)
‘Religion and Literature', in The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780, ed John Richetti (2005)
‘Joseph Williams of Kidderminster (1692-1755) and his Journal', Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society, 7 (2005), 358–78
‘John Balguy’, ‘Thomas Balguy’, ‘Philip Doddridge’, ‘John Haime’, ‘James Hervey’, ‘William Law’, ‘Sampson Staniforth’, ‘John Tillotson’, ‘Isaac Watts’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)