Dr David Rennie is the author of American Writers and World War I (Oxford UP, 2020) and Sir Alexander Ogston: A life at medical and military frontlines (Edinburgh UP, 2023). He is the editor of Scottish Literature and World War I (Edinburgh UP, 2020) and co-editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography (Minnesota UP, 2024).
F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography (edited with Niklas Salmose) (Forthcoming from Minnesota University Press, 2024)
“There never was a good biography of a novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Combining the readability of a trade biography with the scholarly rigor of academic writing, this will be the first multi-author biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. We have commissioned chapters – each covering a two-year period – by 23 experts including: Scott Donaldson, one of America’s leading biographers; James L. W. West III, General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald; Ronald Berman, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Jackson Bryer, current President of the Fitzgerald Society; Philip McGowan, President of the European Association for American Studies.
A “unique contribution to the telling of the Fitzgerald story - a project in which twenty-three different scholars take on two years of the writer’s short forty-four years of life” - Kirk Curnutt, F. SCOTT FITZGERALD SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
Sir Alexander Ogston: A life at medical and military frontlines (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
Inspired by the work of Joseph Lister and Robert Koch, Ogston established the link between acute suppuration and microorganisms, discovered (and named) staphylococcus, and correctly linked localised microorganism infections with blood poisoning.
Ogston served as a medical volunteer during the 1885 Soudan war and, in 1892, became Surgeon in Ordinary to Queen Victoria. Although Ogston was instrumental in the founding of the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1898, he remained critical of deficiencies within British army medical services. These views were amply confirmed by the events of the Boer War, in which Ogston offered medical services to Lord Methuen’s troops.
“Sir Alexander Ogston’s eventful life has finally been given the attention it deserves in this fascinating study. It forms a basis for new interest in Ogston’s long-understated role in nineteenth-century medical advances and sheds light on the complex personal life of an important Scottish pioneer.” – Jane Coutts, University of Glasgow
American Writers and World War I (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Reviews
"We must thank David A. Rennie for this thoroughly researched work, which keeps eliciting the reader's curiosity chapter after chapter and no doubt constitutes a valuable contribution to the vast literature on American writers' narratives of the Great War. Meticulously detailed, Rennie's book is always very clearly referenced and provides systematic evidence to back up its author's claims." - Lucie Jammes, CERCLES
"Highly Recommended." - K.B. Hannel, Saint Leo University, CHOICE
A “timely and probing account of US writers who went to war” - Trevor Dodman, AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
Scottish Literature and World War I (Edinburgh University Press, 2020)
Reviews
“The 600,000 men who fought in Scottish regiments or in the Navy and Air Force during the Great War fought for Scotland, to them a palpable space of affect and meaning. This important book of essays breaks new ground in capturing the ways that the Great War reconfigured the boundaries between Scottish and British culture.” – Jay Winter, Yale University
“David Rennie's collection of essays redresses a specifically Scottish narrative of war, recovering a story of plurality and variation which has all too commonly been subsumed by British generalisations.” - Fiona Paterson, SCOTTISH LITERARY REVIEW
Walking With Writers
I have written sixteen essay-length guidebooks for the Global Trails Walking With Writers series. These include:
F. Scott Fitzgerald in: Baltimore, Hollywood, Paris, Delaware, St. Paul, North Carolina, Switzerland and Provence
Ernest Hemingway in: Paris, Madrid, Spain, Chicago, Italy, the South of France, Ketchum, and China
About
Rennie gained a Ph.D. in American literature from Aberdeen University – where he worked as a Researcher and Academic Writing Skills Adviser – and is now Teacher of English at St. Machar Academy, which is literally across the road from his alma mater. His essays have appeared in The Hemingway Review, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, and the Cambridge History of American Literature and Culture in the Great War.
He has spoken at academic conferences in Belfast, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Paris, Chicago, and Michigan.
Current projects
Other Publications
Commissioned Essay:
‘World War I’, in The Routledge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald (Routledge, 2025), ed. by Philip McGowan, Ross Tangedal, and Helen Turner
Talks:
‘In the Firing Line: Sir Alexander Ogston’s Major Battles’: Scottish Society of the History of Medicine (Aberdeen 8th June 2024)
Journal Articles and Book Chapters:
‘Beauty, Curiosity, and Fine Navigation: Celestials in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin Series’, Cultural Comets and Other Celestials (Trolltrumma Academia, 2023), ed. by Niklas Salmose, pp.54-72
‘The Midwest: Borne Back Ceaselessly into the Past’, A History of American Literature and Culture of World War I (Cambridge University Press, 2020), ed. by Tim Dayton and Mark Van Wienen, pp.172-282
‘Introduction: ‘A Reflection of the Contrasts’: Scottish Literature and World War I’, Scottish Literature and World War I (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), pp.1-20
‘‘It Takes All Sorts to Make a Type’: Scottish Great War Prose’, Scottish Literature and World War I (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), pp.44-61.
‘The Real British Red Cross and A Farewell to Arms’, The Hemingway Review, vol. 37.2 (2018): 25-41
‘‘Never Such Innocence Again’: Nostalgic Exploitations of World War I’, Once Upon a Time: Nostalgic Narratives in Transition (Trolltrumma Academia, 2018), ed. by Niklas Salmose and Eric Sandberg, pp.82-98
‘‘The World Only Exists through Your Apprehension’: World War I in This Side of Paradise and Tender Is the Night’, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, vol. 14 (2016): 181-197
‘In the Fields of Democracy: the Midwest in World War I’, Midwestern Miscellany XLIV (2016): 23-38
‘‘The Best Combatant Story of the Great War’? Topographical and Descriptive Juxtaposition in Thomas Boyd’s Through the Wheat’, MidAmerica XLI (2014): 95-104
Review Articles:
In The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, American Studies Journal, Studies in American Culture, American Literary Realism, Times Literary Supplement, and War, Literature & the Arts: 30
Email: david.alan.rennie@gmail.com
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