Anna Vaninskaya
Anna Vaninskaya is a lecturer in English literature at the University of Edinburgh. She is known as a Tolkien scholar and has published on William Morris and other Victorian era and 20th century writers. She has contributed to the Wiley-Blackwell A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien.
She has won the 2011 Choice Outstanding Academic Title award[1] and the 2021 Mythopoeic Society's award for Mythopoeic Scholarship.[2]
Life
Anna Vaninskaya grew up in Russia and America before moving to Britain.[3] She studied English literature at the University of Denver, where she gained her bachelor's and master's degrees. She won a Marshall Scholarship to the University of Oxford, where she earned her PhD.[1]
She began her academic career as a postdoctoral fellow at the Cambridge Victorian Studies Group; she was a junior fellow of King's College, Cambridge.[1]
Vaninskaya is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She has written more than 40 book chapters and journal articles on modern literature, including on William Morris, E. R. Eddison, Lord Dunsany, G. K. Chesterton, George Orwell and J. R. R. Tolkien. She is one of the editors of the Journal of William Morris Studies, the Bloomsbury Academic Perspectives on Fantasy series, and the Victorian literature section of Oxford Bibliographies Online. She created the Scotland-Russia: Cultural Encounters Since 1900 archive.[1] She studies Anglo-Russian literary relations of the same period.[4]
Reception
William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History and Propaganda
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/George_Frederic_Watts_portrait_of_William_Morris_1870.jpg/170px-George_Frederic_Watts_portrait_of_William_Morris_1870.jpg)
Ben Moore, reviewing William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History and Propaganda in Modern Language Review, writes that Vaninskaya's study is well-researched, with the figure of Morris tying together her three threads of romance, history, and propaganda. The purpose of the book is to examine how socialists of the period viewed the idea of community life. Moore recommends the book to people interested in the history of socialism, and students of Morris. He finds the breadth of the study "impressive" but would have liked more "speculative analysis" of the puzzles that Vaninskaya's study reveals.[5]
Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien
Sarah R. Waters, reviewing Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien for Mythlore, writes that Vaninskaya deliberately looks at all three authors in their own right, avoiding the usual Inkling influence approach. She states that Vaninskaya shows that the authors all addressed questions of time and death, and uses Shakespeare's Hamlet and his Sonnet 18 to illuminate their approaches. Waters concludes that the book " does what Lewis argued the best literary criticism ought to do, it 'lead[s] in' rather than taking 'you out of the literature'."[6]
Kris Swank, reviewing the book in Journal of Tolkien Research, writes that it is an academic work that places Tolkien and death in the canon of fantasy, alongside Dunsany, Eddison, and others such as Hope Mirrlees and forerunners like William Morris and George MacDonald. Swank finds the study "erudite" and the chapters on the three authors "admirable", but feels that they do not "hang together as a unified monograph". All the same, she writes, scholars will find much to enjoy, especially in the Tolkien chapter.[7]
London Through Russian Eyes, 1896–1914
Michael Hughes, reviewing London Through Russian Eyes, 1896–1914 for the Slavonic and East European Review, writes that the collection offers "a rich set of readings that show how a number of Russian journalists and writers presented life in London to their readers back home". with an "excellent critical apparatus" and a "valuable" introduction. Hughes comments that a little more context on Russian radical thought would have been helpful, but that the attitudes in the book are "vividly outlined" and the sources are "a fascinating collection" which Vaninskaya has "meticulously edited".[8]
Awards and distinctions
Vaninskaya's book William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History and Propaganda, 1880-1914 won the 2011 Choice Outstanding Academic Title award.[1]
Her book Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien won the Mythopoeic Society's 2021 award for Mythopoeic Scholarship.[2]
Books
- 2010 William Morris and the idea of community: romance, history and propaganda, 1880-1914, Edinburgh University Press.
- 2020 Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien, Palgrave Macmillan.
- 2022 London Through Russian Eyes, 1896-1914: An Anthology of Foreign Correspondence (editor, translator). Boydell and Brewer.
References
- ^ a b c d e "Biography". The University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 24 June 2024.
- ^ a b "The Mythopoeic Society: Mythopoeic Scholarship Award Finalists". Mythopoeic Society. Retrieved 24 June 2024.
- ^ "Anna Vaninskaya". Edinburgh University Press. Retrieved 24 June 2024.
- ^ "Anna Vaninskaya". Anglo-Russian Research Network. Retrieved 24 June 2024.
- ^ Moore, Ben (2012). "William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History and Propaganda, 1880–1914". Modern Language Review. 107 (1): 280–281. doi:10.1353/mlr.2012.0282. ISSN 2222-4319.
- ^ Waters, Sarah R. A. (2021). "[Review:] Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien by Anna Vaninskaya". Mythlore. 39 (2). Article 20.
- ^ Swank, Kris (2020). ""The Sweet and the Bitter": Death and Dying in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (2018) by Amy Amendt-Raduege; and Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien (2020) by Anna Vaninskaya". Journal of Tolkien Research. 9 (1). Article 8.
- ^ Hughes, Michael. Review of London Through Russian Eyes, 1896–1914: An Anthology of Foreign Correspondence ed. by Anna Vaninskaya. Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 101 no. 3, 2023, p. 575-577. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/see.2023.a912483.
External links
- Morris and Tolkien: Fantasy Talk by Anna Vaninskaya
- v
- t
- e
and songs
- Songs for the Philologists (1936)
- The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (1953)
- "A Walking Song" (1954)
- The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962)
- "Errantry"
- "Fastitocalon"
- "The Sea-Bell"
- "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late"
- The Road Goes Ever On (1967)
- Bilbo's Last Song (1974)
- List of Tolkien's alliterative verse
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Tolkien_monogram.svg/50px-Tolkien_monogram.svg.png)
- The Hobbit (1937)
- "Leaf by Niggle" (1947)
- The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (1945)
- Farmer Giles of Ham (1949)
- The Lord of the Rings:
- The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
- The Two Towers (1954)
- The Return of the King (1955)
- Tree and Leaf (1964)
- The Tolkien Reader (1966)
- Smith of Wootton Major (1967)
fiction
- The Father Christmas Letters (1976)
- The Silmarillion (1977)
- Unfinished Tales (1980)
- Mr. Bliss (1982)
- The History of Middle-earth (1983–1996)
- Roverandom (1998)
- The Children of Húrin (2007)
- The History of The Hobbit (2007)
- The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (2009)
- The Fall of Arthur (2013)
- The Story of Kullervo (2015)
- Beren and Lúthien (2017)
- The Fall of Gondolin (2018)
- The Nature of Middle-earth (2021)
- The Fall of Númenor (2022)
works
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Middle English text, 1925)
- "The Devil's Coach Horses" (1925)
- "Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad" (1929)
- "Sigelwara Land" (1932–34)
- "Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale" (1934)
- "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (1936)
- "On Fairy-Stories" (1939)
- "On Translating Beowulf" (1940)
- Sir Orfeo (1944)
- Ancrene Wisse (1962)
- "English and Welsh" (1963)
- Jerusalem Bible (as translator and lexicographer, 1966)
academic
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (translations, 1975)
- Exodus (1981)
- Finn and Hengest (1982)
- The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays (1983)
- Beowulf and the Critics (2002)
- Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary with "Sellic Spell" (2014)
- A Secret Vice (2016)
Writers |
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Christian | |
Literary critics |
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Linguists | |
Medievalists |
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- A Tolkien Compass
- Family
- Influences
- Artwork
- J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator
- Languages constructed by Tolkien
- The Inklings
- The Keys of Middle-earth
- Mythlore
- Mythopoeic Society
- Picturing Tolkien
- Tolkien and the Classical World
- Tolkien's impact on fantasy
- Tolkien and the modernists
- Tolkien Estate
- Tolkien fandom
- The Tolkien Society
- Tolkien Studies
- Memorials
- Reception
- Tolkien research
- Works inspired by Tolkien
- J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977, authorized biography)
- The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide
- J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia
- Master of Middle-Earth
- Perilous Realms
- Tolkien and the Great War
- The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien
- Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth
- Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon
- Tolkien, Race and Cultural History
- Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England'
- Tolkien (biographical film)
- Poems and Songs of Middle Earth (album)
- Language and Human Nature
- The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary
- Understanding The Lord of the Rings