Professor Bill Gray

Bill Gray (BA, MA, BD, ThM, PhD) is Professor of Literary History and Hermeneutics.

He studied literature, philosophy and theology at the universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Princeton, and has published articles and chapters in all of these areas, as well as books on C.S. Lewis and Robert Louis Stevenson. His third year module 'Other Worlds: Fantasy Literature for Children of All Ages' explores the origins of fantasy literature especially in German Romanticism, and its development into later examples of fantasy writing by George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, as well by contemporary writers such as J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman.

Bill has recently published two books: Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth: Tales of Pullman, Lewis, Tolkien, MacDonald and Hoffmann (for details and reviews see Palgrave Macmillan) and Death and Fantasy: Essays on Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis,George MacDonald and R.L. Stevenson (see Cambridge Scholars Publishing Titles in Print or Amazon books).

For news of Bill's latest book, Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers please visit: www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Fantasy--Art-and-Life--Essays-on-George-Macdonald--Robert-Louis-Stevenson-and-Other-Fantasy-Writers1-4438-2899-8.htm. Bill is currently working on an edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Fables and Fairy Tales for Edinburgh University Press.

Books

C.S. Lewis (Nothcote House/ British Council, 1998)

Robert Louis Stevenson: A Literary Life, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)

'Gray's close reading is meticulous and intelligent so there's a sense that we're engaging with the real texture of Stevenson's life and work.' - The Scotsman

'With admirable economy, Gray delineates Stevenson's engagements with different literary cultures and traditions - he is especially good on the fertilizing effects of French literature on Stevenson's imagination - and then lays out the varied fruits of those engagements: essays, poems, letters, travelogues, plays, and prose fiction' - Stephen Arata, Victorian Studies 48 (Spring 2006)

'A new book mapping the bohemian life of Robert Louis Stevenson looks at the cocaine-fuelled convalescence that produced Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and a whole lot more besides.' - Phil Hewitt - Chichester Observer

Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth: Tales of Pullman, Lewis, Tolkien, MacDonald and Hoffmann (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

'William Gray's book is a truly critical work, in the best sense...Gray has read his texts with scrupulous care, with a sharp, philosophically oriented intelligence. He has read around his authors thoroughly, he writes with conviction and openness, and sets a high bar for critics who would follow.' - Paul Tankard, Times Higher Education

'In this fascinating study, William Gray mines the relationship between German Romanticism and British fantasy literature from the eighteenth century to the present. ... Gray exposes important continuities and discontinuities in a long tradition intent on grappling with the complex relation between fantasy and reality. Carefully researched and lucidly written, Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth is a valuable addition to scholarship on fantasy, fairy tales, and the long reach of Romanticism.' - Donald Haase, Professor of German, Wayne State University, USA; editor of Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies and The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales

'This timely study traces the connection between some outstanding literary fantasies written over the last two hundred years and their roots in the Romantic Movement... Erudite and approachable, it throws new light in particular on the works of C.S.Lewis, J.R.R.Tolkien and Philip Pulllman.' - Nicholas Tucker, formerly Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Community Studies, University of Sussex, UK

'This is a valuable addition to literary studies and the study of children’s literature, demonstrating the wider contribution of fantasy writers to philosophical and literary debates.' - Jean Webb, Professor of International Children’s Literature and Director of the International Centre for Research in Children’s Literature, Literacy and Creativity, University of Worcester, UK

Death and Fantasy: Essays on George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman and R.L. Stevenson (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008)

'Death and Fantasy is a concise and welcome gathering of work by William Gray on notable authors of fantasy.. In nine astute and insightful chapters the volume analyses texts ranging from Macdonald’s Phantastes to Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and from Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Examining the ways in which death is both dealt with and used in these fantasies, Gray reveals fascinating interconnections between their authors.' Dr Adrienne Gavin, Reader in English Literature, Canterbury Christ Church University

'This book makes a scholarly and very readable contribution to matters of current critical debate in the area of children’s fantasy.... Gray’s arguments are well-maintained and display knowledge of a very wide range of psychoanalytic, philosophical and theological sources, all brought to bear in a relevant and convincing manner... The book has much to offer to scholars and students alike.' Dr Pat Pinsent, Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Children’s Literature, Roehampton University.

"... this is a valuable book for scholars interested in the relationship of one generation of fantasy writers with the next. ... this study is wonderfully fluent in style, and the comparative theology is magnificent" Stacie L. Hanes, Journal of the Fantastic Arts, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2010

Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011)

In part a sequel to his earlier Death and Fantasy, William Gray’s Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers examines the ways in which “Life” in its various senses is affirmed, explored and enhanced through the work of the creative imagination, especially in fantasy literature. The discussion includes a range of fantasy writers, but focuses chiefly on two writers of the Victorian period, George MacDonald and Robert Louis Stevenson, whose Scottish (and particularly Calvinist) backgrounds deeply affected their engagement with what MacDonald called “The Fantastic Imagination.”

“This impressive book is in part a companion-piece to the author’s earlier Death and Fantasy, after finishing which he felt ‘almost a compulsion to produce a sequel.’ Originally a series of separately-published essays, lectures and book-reviews, the various chapters of the book together consider how far fantasy can draw us back towards life rather than away from it. Gray takes as his main authors the Victorian Scottish writers of fantasy George MacDonald and Robert Louis Stevenson, while referring also to C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman. MacDonald’s belief in the power of fantasy to heal the spirit, his unsentimental ideal of the childlike in life and literature, and his continuing sense of the need to relate the experience of fantasy to the real world, are traced in such works as his Adela Cathcart, ‘The Golden Key’ and Lilith; while Stevenson’s The Wrecker, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and his more macabre short stories serve to explore the mixture of romanticism and realism in his work, and his strong sense of the immediate reality of evil. Throughout Gray’s knowledge of philosophy, theology and literary theory deepen and contextualise his arguments. This is a book to savour and reread, by the author of several noted recent studies of fantasy literature.” Colin Manlove, Formerly Reader at Edinburgh University

Articles and chapters (selection)

• 1996 'George MacDonald, Julia Kristeva and the Black Sun' in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
• 1998 The Angel in the House of Death: Gender and Subjectivity in George MacDonald's Lilith' in Women of Faith in Victorian Culture: reassessing 'The Angel in the House', ed Hogan and Bradstock (Macmillan)
• 1999 'Spirituality and the Pleasure of the Text: C.S. Lewis and the Act of Reading' in English Literature, Theology and the Curriculum, ed. L. Gearon (Cassell)
• '2002 'Stevenson's "Auld Alliance": France, Art Theory and the Breath of Money in The Wrecker', Scottish Studies Review (Autumn 2002)
• 2005 'The Incomplete Fairy Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson' in the Journal of Stevenson Studies
• 2005 'A Source for the Trampling Scene in Jekyll And Hyde' in Notes and Queries
• 2007 'Pullman, Lewis, Macdonald and the anxiety of influence' in Mythlore
• 2007 ‘Pullman and MacDonald: (Great-great-)grandfather George’ in ‘A Noble Unrest': Contemporary Essays on the Work of George MacDonald (ed. Jean Webb) (Cambridge Scholars Publishing)
• 2007 Entries in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folklore and Fairy Tales (ed. Donald Haase)
• 2007 ‘Witches’ Time in Pullman, C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald’ in Time Everlasting: Representations Of Past, Present And Future In Children’s Literature. (ed. Pat Pinsent) (Pied Piper)
• 2008 ‘On the Road: R.L. Stevenson’s Views on Nature’ in special eco-criticism edition of New Formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics
• 2009 '"Out of the everywhere into here”: Romanticism, Ecocriticism and Children’s Literature’ in Deep into Nature: Ecology, Environment and Children's Literature (ed. Liz Thiel and Alison Waller) ( (Pied Piper Press)
• 2009 ‘Crossover fiction and narrative as therapy: George MacDonald's Adela Cathcart ’ in Barnboken (Journal of the Swedish Institute for Children's Books)        

Lectures and Presentations

Bill has given many presentations in various academic contexts, most recently a lecture on George MacDonald in the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture's series of public lectures with distinguished speakers (the theme for Trinity Term 2009 was 'Alternative Worlds'); and a keynote address ('"The Child in the Midst": Childhood and Salvation History from George MacDonald to Philiup Pullman') at the Changing Childhood Conference organised by the Diocese of Chichester, the University of Chichester and the Children's Society.

MPhil/PhD supervision

Bill welcomes enquiries regarding research projects in the areas of Children’s and Fantasy Literature and the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson.