William St Clair, FBA Senior Research Fellow ws214@cam.ac.uk

Present positions

• Senior Research Fellow, Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
• Senior Research Fellow, Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge and Harvard
• Chairman, Open Book Publishers: www.openbookpublishers.com Academic publisher of peer-reviewed monographs in the humanities and social sciences. A Social Enterprise company that aims to make academic publishing fairer, swifter and more accessible, and ensures the widest possible distribution of its publications.
• Member of the Enterprise Management Committee, Re-Enlightenment Project, main partners New York University, New York Public Library, and University of Cambridge: www.reenlightenment.org/reenlightenment-project-new-york-university-and-new-york-public-library

Main Published Works

(a) Relating to the history of books and reading:

The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge University Press, 2004). During the four centuries when printed paper was the only means by which texts could be carried across time and distance, everyone engaged in politics, education, religion, and literature believed that reading helped to shape the minds, opinions, attitudes, and ultimately the actions, of readers. William St Clair investigates how the national culture can be understood through a quantitative study of the books that were actually read. Centred on the Romantic period in the English-speaking world, but ranging across the whole print era, it reaches startling conclusions about the forces that determined how ideas were carried, through print, into wider society. St Clair provides an in-depth investigation of information, made available here for the first time, on prices, print runs, intellectual property, and readerships gathered from over fifty publishing and printing archives. He offers a picture of the past very different from those presented by traditional approaches. Indispensable to students of English literature, book history, and the history of ideas, the study's conclusions and explanatory models are highly relevant to the issues we face in the age of the internet. The TLS considers the work as one of the most influential books since the war. http://tiny.cc/hz41s

The Political Economy of Reading, John Coffin Memorial Lecture in the History of the Book (London: School of Advanced Study, 2005). An edited printed version was published in the Times Literary Supplement, no 5380, 12 May 2006.

‘Publishing, Authorship, and Reading' in The Cambridge Companion to Fiction of the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

‘Following up The Reading Nation' in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume VI, 1830-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

‘Metaphors of Intellectual Property' in Privilege and Property. Essays on the History of Copyright, eds. Lionel Bently, Ronan Deazley & Martin Kretschmer (Open Book 2010). See link: tiny.cc/WVGW9.

Review article of The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland , in TLS (10 April 2009).

'Goethe's Faust and Coleridge. "A Gentleman of Literary Eminence": A Review Essay', with Roger Paulin and Elinor Shaffer (London: Institute of English Studies, 2008).

(b) Relating to the Parthenon and Elgin Marbles:

Lord Elgin and the Marbles (London: Oxford University Press, 1967; 3rd Revised Edition, 1998). Translated into Italian, French and Greek.

'The Elgin Marbles: Questions of Authenticity and Accountability ', International Journal of Cultural Property , 2 (1999).

‘ The Parthenon in 1687: New Sources ' with Robert Picken, in The Parthenon and its Sculpture , ed. Michael Cosmopoulos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

''Imperial Appropriations of the Parthenon', in Imperialism, Art and Restitution , ed. John Henry Merryman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Chinese translation published by Tongji University Press, 2009.

(c) History and biography:

That Greece Might Still Be Free. The Philhellenes in the War of Independence (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1972). Awarded Heinemann prize by Royal Society of Literature. New edition with additional material, extra illustrations, an updated bibliography, and a New Introduction by Roderick Beaton (Open Book, 2008). See link: tinyurl.com/ydwgofu. '...Though it was never the author's aim to write a strictly academic textbook, it has all the features that make for scholarship - systematic use of primary sources, exhaustive knowledge of the wider political context, erudition and an insistence on illuminating details. Yet the final target, the reader whom the author had in mind, was the educated European. And that is where the book's chief virtue lies: though the author has a sound, often impressive grasp of all aspects of his topic, he leaves details aside so as to focus on the overall outline. This leads his readers to comprehend how and why certain cultured Europeans so doggedly sought to become involved in a bloodbath between Christians and Muslims at the western extreme of the Ottoman empire, at what was often great loss of life.' Alexis Politis, The Anglo-Hellenic Review, Spring 2010.

Adventures of a Younger Son by Edward John Trelawny, with an Introduction by William St. Clair (London: Oxford University Press,1974).

Trelawny, the Incurable Romancer (London: J. Murray, 1977).

The Godwins and the Shelleys, The Biography of a Family (London: Faber and Faber and New York: Norton, 1989). Awarded Time-Life prize and Macmillan Silver Pen for an outstanding work of British non-fiction.

Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography , eds. Peter France & William St Clair (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy 2002). Essays on the nature of biography commissioned as part of the centenary celebrations of the British Academy. William St. Clair's essay is ‘The Biographer as Archaeologist.'

The Grand Slave Emporium: Cape Coast Castle and the British Slave Trade (London: Profile, 2006). Published in the U.S. as The Door of No Return, The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, N.Y.: Bluebridge, 2007). Based on a huge archive of original documents previously scarcely explored.

(d) Conduct literature:

Conduct Literature for Women, 1500-1640 , eds. William St Clair & Irmgard Maassen (6 Volumes) (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000).

Conduct Literature for Women, 1640-1710 , eds. William St Clair & Irmgard Maassen (6 Volumes) (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2002).

(e) Evaluation:

As part of work in the Treasury, William St Clair authored:

Policy Evaluation: A Guide for Managers (HMSO, 1988). Translated, with adaptations, into several languages including, French, Arabic and Turkish.

Executive Agencies: A Guide to Setting Targets and Judging Performance (HMSO, 1992).

(f) Family letters:

The Road to St. Julien The Letters of a Stretcher-Bearer from The Great War by William St. Clair, ed. John St Clair (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books, 2004). William St Clair was William St Clair's uncle.

Previous Literary and Academic Appointments

• Fellow of Royal Society of Literature, 1973
• Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford, 1981-82
• Fellow of Huntington Library, California, 1985
• Fellow of British Academy, 1992, Member of Council 1996-2000
• Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University, 1992-1996
• Visiting Fellow Commoner, Trinity College, Cambridge University, 1998-99
• Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University, 1999 -2006

Education

• Kilsyth Academy
• Comely Park School, Falkirk
• Edinburgh Academy
• St John's College, Oxford University

Appendix: Career in British Civil Service

1960 . Joined Admiralty. Spent time at sea in many types of vessel. Private Secretary to successive Civil Lords of the Admiralty in Conservative and the Labour Governments.

1966 . Transferred to Ministry of Defence. Secretary to the review of British defence arrangements at the end of empire. Visited military operations in Aden, South Arabia, Malaya, Borneo, and at sea. Visited virtually all British defence establishments at home and abroad.

1966-1969 . First Secretary, Foreign Office, later Foreign and Commonwealth Office, onloan from Ministry of Defence. Desk officer for the Gibraltar dispute, later for East West trade and the strategic embargo. Served for a time in HM Embassy, Paris.

1969 . Transferred to H.M Treasury. Appointments concerned with public expenditure and international finance. Short appointment in Brussels as part of the team preparing for British entry to EEC.

1974 . Promoted Assistant Secretary. Appointed Head of Prices Division at the time of the inflationary surge, with responsibility for devising and operating the price and dividend controls associated with prices and incomes policy.

1978 . Head of Industrial Policy Division. Helped to devise and operate the Callaghan/Healey industrial policy aimed at reviving British competitiveness in manufacturing. Treasury member of Monopolies and Mergers Panel, and of several industrial National Economic Development Committees.

1979 . Change of Government. Head of Overseas Aid Division.

1982 . Head of Superannuation Division. Responsible for the Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme and for Treasury supervision of the other public service pension schemes.

1985 . Deputy Head of Cabinet Office/Treasury Joint Management Unit, charged with improving policy analysis and evaluation across government.

1985 . Attended Top Management Programme for those entering the highest grades.

1988 . Grade 4. In charge of the Treasury's consultancy forces, including inspectors, accountants, and operational researchers, and for deploying them across government

1990 . Grade 3 (under-secretary) with responsibility for Treasury control of the Civil Service.

1991-1998 . Consultant to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and European Union (EU). Assignments with British public bodies and overseas governments, advising mainly on strategic planning, resource allocation and budgeting, performance measurement, and evaluation.