Belinda Jack

Belinda Jack is Fellow and Tutor in French literature and Language at Christ Church, Oxford at the University of Oxford, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College and the author of books such as The Woman Reader and George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large.

Education and career After a period living in Paris and studying at the Sorbonne, Belinda Jack was awarded a bachelor's degree in French with African and Caribbean Studies from the University of Kent. She then obtained her Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil) in Négritude and Literary Criticism at St John's College, Oxford at the University of Oxford in 1989. and this was followed by The Mysteries of Writing Novels and Poems.

In September 2023 Jack was awarded a Title of Distinction of Professor of French and Literary Studies by the University of Oxford.

Other research work and publications

Her books include:

Negritude and Literary Criticism: The History and Theory of 'Negro-African' Literature in French (Greenwood Press, 1996) Francophone Literatures: An Introductory Survey (Oxford: OUP, 1996). George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large (Chatto and Windus, 1999) Beatrice's Spell: The Enduring Legend of Beatrice Cenci (Chatto and Windus, 2003) The Woman Reader (Yale, 2012) Reading: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2019), translations in Japanese, Chinese and Turkish

Jack co-authored Epreuve avant la lettre: George Sand et l'autobiographie renversee (Literature, 134 (2004), 121–130) which is written in French.

As well as books and academic publications, Jack has published articles, essays, chapters and reviews. These have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, Times Higher Education and BBC History. She has appeared on BBC Radio and television, as well as at literary festivals across the UK. Lesley McDowell for The Independent wrote "Jack's excellent history begins from a position of anxiety, which she argues is caused by women's access to the written word. What do women read and that happens to them, and the world, when they do?" Hermione Lee, in The Guardian, said that the book "repeatedly tells [a story of] of the way that the woman reader has persisted and thrived under all kinds of conditions", and described it as a "thorough and informative book".