About
Professional writer with academic background (BA, PhD Rice University) and experience. I have published seven books, six written, one edited, mostly nonfiction, and many articles, scholarly and general-interest. Here is a more formal author's biography:
Margie Burns, Ph.D., is a literary scholar, teacher, and independent researcher with work on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and American cultural history. She earned her doctorate in English literature from Rice University, specializing in Shakespeare and the Renaissance, and has taught at several institutions including the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she is a longtime adjunct faculty member.
Dr. Burns is the author of Jane Austen, Abolitionist: The Loaded History of “Pride and Prejudice” (2024), a groundbreaking study that reexamines Austen’s work through the lens of transatlantic slavery and abolition. Her previous books include Publishing Northanger Abbey: Jane Austen and the Writing Profession (2021) and Common Sense in the Second Amendment (2020), reflecting wide-ranging interests in literature, history, and public discourse. She also edited the scholarly collection Shakespeare and Religion: Global Tapestry, Dramatic Perspectives (2024).
At national and international conferences, Dr. Burns has presented research for organizations including the Jane Austen Society of North America and the Shakespeare Association of America. Her articles have appeared in leading journals such as Persuasions and Shakespeare Studies, and her work has been cited in major bibliographic and scholarly resources.
Outside academia, she has written as journalist and cultural critic, publishing on government, politics, and the media. Her research has drawn on the Library of Congress and the Folger Shakespeare Library as well as university libraries and subscription services.
Combining close literary analysis with historical investigation, Dr. Burns brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of Austen and her world.
Featured Work
Jane Austen, Abolitionist: The Loaded History of the Phrase "Pride and Prejudice"
Jane Austen, Abolitionist, is as much about Jane Austen's most famous title phrase as about Austen's writing. The phrase "pride and prejudice" was used hundreds of times in print before and during Austen's time, moving from religious to secular contexts. From the eighteenth century into the nineteenth, it came to be associated consistently with the antislavery movement. In Austen's lifetime, and continuing after, it was increasingly sign and signal of abolitionism, in both Britain and America.
