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Rachel Hewitt

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Rachel Hewitt
Born
Rachel Hewitt
Spouse
(d. 2022)
AwardsRoyal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for non-fiction,
Eccles British Library Writer's Award
Academic background
EducationCorpus Christi College, Oxford (MA),
Queen Mary University, London, (PhD)
ThesisDreaming o'er the Map of Things: The Ordnance Survey and Literature of the British Isles, 1747-1842 (2007)
Academic work
DisciplineEnglish literature
InstitutionsNewcastle University
Notable worksMap of a Nation (2010)
A Revolution of Feeling (2017)
In Her Nature (2023)
Websiterachelhewitt.org

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

Education

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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

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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

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  • Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey (Granta Books, 2010); ISBN 978-1847082541
  • A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind (Granta Books, 2017); ISBN 978-1847085740
  • In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors (Chatto & Windus, 2023); ISBN 978-1784742898

Awards & Fellowships

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Personal life

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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]


References

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