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Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina (born 1950) is an American author and academic who has written mostly historically-grounded biographical studies. She has written about Black British history. Her academic posts have included being the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of Biography at Dartmouth College, working as a professor at Vassar College, being a professor and a director of Africana Studies at Barnard College, and as of April 2019 being the Dean of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Commonwealth Honors College. Gerzina was the host of WAMC's nationally-syndicated radio program The Book Show for fourteen years, where she interviewed authors.

In the UK, she presented a 10-part documentary for BBC Radio 4 called Britain's Black Past, which she subsequently adapted into a book.

Personal life

She was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, just before she was five years old. She is married to Anthony Gerzina and they have two sons.

Selected publications

• 1989: Carrington: A Life
• 1995: Black England: Life Before Emancipation. (Also known as Black London: Life Before Emancipation)
• 2004: Frances Hodgson Burnett: The unexpected life of the author of The Secret Garden
• 2008: Mr. and Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary 18th-Century Family Moved out of Slavery and into Legend

References

1. Sudan, R. (2013). Fair Exotics: Xenophobic Subjects in English Literature, 172-185. New Cultural Studies. University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-8122-0376-9. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
2. "Private Passions: Gretchen Gerzina". BBC Media Centre. 4 October 2020. Retrieved 21 June 2024.
3. "About Us | Dean Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina". Commonwealth Honors College. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Archived from the original on March 28, 2019.
4. ^ "About Gretchen Gerzina". gretchengerzina.com. Retrieved June 12, 2023.
5. "Britain's Black Britain". BBC Radio 4. October 2016. Retrieved June 12, 2023.
6. Gerzina, Gretchen (March 11, 2020). Britain's Black Past. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1789621600.
7. Adi, Hakim (2022). "Reviewed Work: Britain's Black Past by Gretchen H. Gerzina". New West Indian Guide. 96 (1/2): 183–184. doi:10.1163/22134360-09601002. JSTOR 27130500. Retrieved 21 June 2024.
8. Rogers, P. (1996). "Black England - Life before emancipation". The Times Literary Supplement: 8.
9. Barthelemy, A. G. (1997). "Black London: Life before Emancipation". African American Review (31 ed.): 508. doi:10.2307/3042578. JSTOR 3042578.
10. Porter, R. (1995). "Black London: Life Before Emancipation". The New York Times Book Review (30 ed.).
11. Walter, Natasha (May 8, 2004). "Review | Sugar and spice". The Guardian. Retrieved June 12, 2023.
12. Mills, C. (2004). "Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden (review)". Children's Literature Association Quarterly (29 ed.): 270–272.

External links

• Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina website
• "Zadie Smith on discovering the secret history of Black England: 'Into my ignorance poured these remarkable facts', The Guardian, September 24, 2022

• 21st-century American women
• 1950 births
• American women historians
• Living people