Lissa Paul

Lissa Paul (born 1953) is a Canadian literary scholar whose work connects children’s literature, poetry, cultural studies, and eighteenth-century and Caribbean literary history. She is Professor of English Language and Literature at Brock University and has also directed its PhD Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities.

Paul taught at the University of New Brunswick before joining Brock, where her research and teaching have addressed literary theory, gender, postcolonial discourse, and the history of children’s writing. Her books and editorial projects include The Children’s Book Business: Lessons from the Long Eighteenth Century, Keywords for Children’s Literature, and Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War. She also served as an editor of The Lion and the Unicorn, a scholarly journal of children’s literature.

Her 2019 biography Eliza Fenwick draws on Fenwick’s surviving correspondence to examine the writer, educator, and school proprietor’s life across Britain, Barbados, the United States, and Upper Canada. Paul’s related archival work has included a British Library Endangered Archives Programme project to digitize issues of the Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette. Her professional distinctions include a Visiting Fellowship at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, and recognition for earlier criticism from the Children’s Literature Association and the F. J. Harvey Darton Award shortlist.