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Ada Nisbet
Born(1907-05-07)May 7, 1907
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
DiedSeptember 16, 1994(1994-09-16) (aged 87)
California, U.S.
OccupationLiterary scholar
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship (1948, 1954)
Academic background
Alma mater
ThesisSome letters of Thomas Hughes to James Russell Lowell: a chapter in Anglo-Americana (1947)
Academic work
Sub-disciplineDickens studies
Institutions

Ada Blanche Nisbet (May 7, 1907 – September 16, 1994) was an American literary scholar. A scholar of Dickens studies, she was author of Dickens and Ellen Ternan (1952) and co-editor of Dickens Centennial Essays (1972), as well as a two-time Guggenheim Fellow. She was a professor at University of California, Los Angeles, working at their English department for almost three decades.

Biography

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Ada Blanche Nisbet was born on May 7, 1907, in Chicago.[1] Her parents were Bessie (née Kelley) and James Robert Nisbet, the latter of whom was a pharmacist.[2] She obtained her BA from the Dominican University of California in 1929.[1]

After working as an English instructor at Mount Saint Mary's University, Los Angeles from 1937 to 1939, Nisbet went to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she got her MA in 1939 and her PhD in 1946[2][3] or 1947;[1] her doctoral dissertation was titled Some letters of Thomas Hughes to James Russell Lowell: a chapter in Anglo-Americana.[4] She was a 1945-1946 American Association of University Women May Treat Morrison Fellow.[1] She also worked at the College of the Holy Names as an English instructor (1939-1941).[1]

Remaining at UCLA, Nisbet started working as an instructor in 1946.[2] She was promoted to assistant professor in 1948, associate professor in 1954, and full professor of English in 1961.[2] She became professor emeritus in 1970[2] and retired from UCLA in 1974.[3] A member of the English department during her time at UCLA, she served as that department's vice-chair of graduate studies, as well as president of UCLA's Phi Beta Kappa chapter and Faculty Women's Association.[3] She also worked for University of California Press as an editorial board member.[3]

As an academic, Nisbet was interested in Dickens studies.[3] In 1952,[2] she published her first book Dickens and Ellen Ternan, focusing on Charles Dickens' relationship with actress Ellen Ternan.[3] She later published Newman the Man (1960) and co-edited Dickens Centennial Essays (1972) with Blake Nevius.[2] She also spent more than two decades working on British Comment on the United States: A Chronological Bibliography, 1832-1899; it was posthumously published in 2001, edited by Elliot J. Kanter.[2] She was an associate editor for the journal Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1960-1974).[3]

In 1948,[5] Nisbet was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship "for a study of the basic trends in the social and intellectual relations between England and America in the early Victorian period".[1] She was awarded another Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954.[5] She received a 1963 American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for her work in Dickensian studies.[6]

Nisbet was a Democrat.[2] Blake Nevius, a close friend, recalled that she would drive an MG car down the Southern California freeways, and that "Dickens would have loved Ada".[3]

Nisbet died on September 16, 1994 in California,[a] aged 87.[2][7] The University of California, Santa Cruz acquired her private collection of works and memorabilia related to Dickens and Victorian literature, calling it the Ada Nisbet Archive.[8][3][7]

Bibliography

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Notes

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  1. ^ Sources conflict on the exact city, namely whether it is Berkeley[2] or Oakland.[7]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Reports of the Secretary and Treasurer. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 1947. p. 82.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "Ada Blanche Nisbet". Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors. July 18, 2025 – via Gale In Context: Biography.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Phillips, Geneva; Ridley, Florence; Tennyson, G.B. "Ada Blanche Nisbet, English: Los Angeles". texts.cdlib.org. Retrieved July 18, 2025.
  4. ^ Nisbet, Ada B. (1947). Some letters of Thomas Hughes to James Russell Lowell: a chapter in Anglo-Americana (Thesis). University of California, Los Angeles. OCLC 320136412.
  5. ^ a b "Ada Blanche Nisbet". Guggenheim Fellowships. Retrieved July 18, 2025.
  6. ^ "Ada B. Nisbet". ACLS. Retrieved July 18, 2025.
  7. ^ a b c "Ada B. Nisbet, 1907-1994". Nineteenth-Century Literature. 49 (4): 565–565. 1995. doi:10.2307/2933741. ISSN 0891-9356. JSTOR 2933741.
  8. ^ "Dickens Project Library". dickens.ucsc.edu. Retrieved July 18, 2025.
  9. ^ Fielding, K. J. (1954). "Review of Dickens and Ellen Ternan". The Review of English Studies. 5 (19): 322–325. ISSN 0034-6551. JSTOR 511093.
  10. ^ Johnson, Edgar (1953). "Ada Nisbet's "Dickens and Ellen Ternan"". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 7 (4): 296–298. doi:10.2307/3044237. ISSN 0029-0564. JSTOR 3044237.
  11. ^ Ray, Gordon N. (1953). "Seeing Dickens Plain". The Virginia Quarterly Review. 29 (2): 297–302. ISSN 0042-675X. JSTOR 26439950.
  12. ^ Bennett, Rachel (1973). "Review of Dickens Centennial Essays". The Review of English Studies. 24 (96): 508–510. ISSN 0034-6551. JSTOR 513776.
  13. ^ Gilmour, Robin (1973). "Review of Dickens Centennial Essays". Dickens Studies Newsletter. 4 (3): 76–79. ISSN 0012-2432. JSTOR 45290382.
  14. ^ Pickering, Samuel F.; Partlow, Robert B. (1973). "Review of Charles Dickens: Radical Moralist; Carlyle and Dickens; Dickens Centennial Essays; Dickens Studies Annual, Robert B. Partlow, Jr". The Georgia Review. 27 (3): 455–463. ISSN 0016-8386. JSTOR 41398254.
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