Professor Michèle Mendelssohn

About

Michèle Mendelssohn is Professor of English and American Literature and Tutorial Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford. Her research spans the late 19th century to the present day. She has taught American, African American, British and Canadian literature.

Her recent biography of Oscar Wilde was a semi-finalist for the PEN America Biography Prize and a finalist for both the Biographers' Club Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize and the LGBTQ Polari Prize. It was selected as a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times, Times Literary Supplement and The Advocate.

She has written, co-edited and introduced seven books: Making Oscar Wilde, Late Victorian into Modern, 1880-1920; Writing Under the Influence: Essays on Alan Hollinghurst; Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture; Why Friendship Matters; No Place Like Home; Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Tales. 

Her next book, The Ice Breaker, tells the story of one of the first woman-led expeditions to the Arctic. It was inspired by a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship with the Pitt Rivers Museum.