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Susan Manning (Professor) (24 December 1953-15 January 2013) was a Scottish academic born in Glasgow, Scotland. She specialized in Scottish studies and English literature. Before her untimely death in 2013 at the age of 59 years, she was the Grierson Professor in English literature in the University of Edinburgh and the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities (IASH) an institute under the University of Edinburgh. Prof. Manning's work on Scottish enlightenment and transatlantic literature got her international acclaim. Due to her intellectual and academic expertise, Susan was a fellow in the prestigious Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce, Edinburgh. Susan Manning after completing her Bachelors of Arts from Newnham College, University of Cambridge in 1976 went to do her doctorate under Prof. David Levin, a literary scholar and the Commonwealth Professor of English in the University of Viriginia, USA.

Education
Susan was born in Glasgow to James Valentine (physicist) and Honora who was a gradate in Philosophy. She joined the John Mason High School in Abingdon, Oxford when her family moved there in 1962. She was moved to Dunmore Primary where she met Jill Hanna and became good friends and intellectual rivals, as Jill described in her tribute to Susan in 2013 that, "we were rivals from the start, although the rivalry was simply a spur so that we both produced our individual best. Susan did not need a rival as she was always competing with herself".

She went to do her Bachelor's degree in Newnham College, University of Cambridge and graduated in 1976. It was here that she met her future husband, physicist Howard Manning and got married.

Susan went on to do her doctoral studies in University of Virginia under Prof. David Levin. She was equally attracted towards studying Scottish and American literature and the overlaps between the two. her inquiry was into the question of similarities between Scottish and American literary style, subject and preoccupation distinguishing them from English literature. This quest took the shape of defining what provincialism meant and its relation to any 'Centre'.

Professional Contribution
While completing her PhD, which took around ten years. Susan often joked that it had taken three children Laura, Lindsay and Sophie. She took up a research fellowship in the Newnham College in 1981 where she went on to become a lecturer in 1984.

Her interest in Scottish literature resulted in her first major publication The Puritan-Provincial Vision: Scottish and American Literature in the nineteenth century in 1990 from Cambridge University Press. In Cambridge, she started the American literature course and taught it which became very popular among students.