Antonia Gransden

Antonia Gransden (née Morland; 7 October 1928 – 18 January 2020), English historian and medievalist, was Reader in Medieval History at the University of Nottingham. She was author of works in medieval historiography, including the massive two-volume study Historical Writing in England, covering a thousand years of historical writing from the 6th to the 16th century.

Work at the British Museum fuelled her fascination with the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. She then went on to edit the records of the abbey, resulting in a two-volume History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmonds, which she completed aged 86.

Life

Gransden was born Antonia Morland. Her father was a director of Morlands clothing company in Glastonbury, Somerset. Educated at Dartington Hall and Somerville College, Oxford, she gained a first class degree and studied for a PhD. She spent a decade as assistant keeper in the British Museum reading room from 1952, before joining Nottingham University as an assistant lecturer in 1964. She married Ken Gransden in 1957 and the couple had two daughters. However, the marriage was dissolved in 1977. She retired from Nottingham University in 1989.

Antonia Gransden was a long-standing member of the Labour Party, and an advocate for women's rights to education, equal pay and opportunities. She died on 18 January 2020 at the age of 91. At the time of her death her "magisterial" two volumes on Historical Writing in England remained unsurpassed.

Select bibliography

• A Critical Edition of the Bury St. Edmunds Chronicle in Arundel MS 30 (College of Arms), London: University of London, 1956.
• (ed.) The Letter-Book of William of Hoo, Sacrist of Bury St. Edmunds, 1280–1294, Publications, Vol. 5, Ipswich: Suffolk Records Society, 1963.
• (ed. & trans.) The Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds 1212–1301, Nelson's Medieval Texts, London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1964.
• (ed.) Customary of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, Vol. 99, London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1970.
• Historical Writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.
• Historical Writing in England ii c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
• Legends, Traditions, and History in Medieval England, London: Hambledon Press, 1992.
• A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 1257–1301: Simon of Luton and John of Northwold, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, Vol. 42, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2015.