Antonia Gransden

Antonia Gransden (Template:Née; 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 Bury St Edmunds Abbey. She went on to edit the records of the abbey, resulting in a two-volume History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, which she completed aged 86.

Life

Gransden was born Antonia Morland in Compton Dundon, Somerset. 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, which she went on to earn from the University of London. 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 from bronchopneumonia at a care home in Keinton Mandeville, Somerset, 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

• (ed.)
• (ed. & trans.)
• (ed.) .
• (ed.)