Deborah D. Rogers (born 1953) is an American literary scholar. She works at the University of Maine. She has published four scholarly books, one about the eighteenth-century bookseller John Almon and three about eighteenth-century Gothic fiction and the novelist Ann Radcliffe. She also edited two editions for Signet Classics, and co-edited a collection of essays about the University of Maine.

Deborah Dee Rogers was born in Massachusetts in 1953^[1] to Marvin and Marilyn Rogers.^[2] She had two brothers.^[3] The family moved to Wayne, New Jersey, in 1966.^[3] Her father worked in the pharmaceutical industry, eventually becoming a director at American Cyanamid Company.^[4]

Rogers earned a B.A. from Rutgers University, an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.Phil and Ph.D. from Columbia University.^[1] She began her academic career at the University of Maine in Orono in 1982, where she became an associate professor in 1990 and a full professor in 1996.^[1]

In 1988, she married Howard Segal, a professor of history also at the University of Maine. She kept her maiden name,^[4] and they had two children with Segal's last name.^[2] Segal died in 2020, and Rogers assisted in completing his last posthumous publication, Becoming Modern: The University of Maine, 1965–2015 (2023), a collection of essays he was editing with Ann Acheson.^[5]

Rogers's first monograph, Bookseller as Rogue: John Almon and the Politics of Eighteenth-Century Publishing was published in 1986 to mixed reviews.^[6][7][8] This book presents the writer and publisher John Almon as a "rogue" for his opportunistic business decisions, and uses his career as an example of how politics affected booksellers in the period.^[6] Reviewers praised her identification of two new manuscript archives with material related to Almon, and the book's bibliography of his publications.^[6][7] However, they found the book's analysis of these materials lacking, particularly criticizing the omission of Almon's bookselling activities,^[7] and Rogers's casual tone.^[8]

Her next two books focused on the eighteenth-century Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe. Her book The Critical Response to Ann Radcliffe (1994) collected and examined commentary about Radcliffe, including reviews, scholarly articles, and personal letters.^[9][10] It was published while Radcliffe was experiencing a revitalization of scholarly interest, and provides source material demonstrating her mixed and frequently-changing reputation since the eighteenth century.^[10] Rogers' third scholarly book, Ann Radcliffe: A Bio-Bibliography (1996), includes bibliographic information about every work published by or about Radcliffe from 1789 to 1995,^[11][12] including imitations, adaptations, parodies, and works spuriously attributed to Radcliffe.^[13] It also presents the first biography of Radcliffe to include information from her commonplace book, which had previously been ignored.^[11][14] Many previous biographies debated sensationalist rumors that Radcliffe had been driven to madness and death by her Gothic writing, without seeking documentary evidence.^[14][15] Rogers instead uses Radcliffe's commonplace book to describe the details of Radcliffe's treatment for asthma and digestive problems in the last years of her life.^[16]

In 1995, Rogers edited two books for Signet Classics.^[1] The first, an edition of Rob Roy (1817) by Walter Scott,^[1] coincided with the release of the 1995 film adaptation and featured Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange on the cover.^[17] The second, published as Two Gothic Classics by Women, combined Northanger Abbey (1818) by Jane Austen and The Italian (1796) by Ann Radcliffe.^[18] Its cover featured Henry Fuseli's painting "The Nightmare" (1781).^[18] Northanger Abbey was written as a parody of Ann Radcliffe's Gothic novels, especially Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794); Rogers chose to pair Northanger Abbey with The Italian rather than Udolpho because she considered The Italian "the most readable and accomplished of Radcliffe's oeuvre".^[18]

Rogers's fourth monograph, titled The Matrophobic Gothic and Its Legacy: Sacrificing Mothers in the Novel and in Popular Culture, was published in 2007.^[19] It includes chapters on Radcliffe's critical reception and commonplace book, Northanger Abbey, and Rob Roy, which she discussed in her previous works.^[20] It also includes a chapter on Pamela (1740) by Samuel Richardson, a chapter on the medical complications of childbirth described in midwife manuals, and a section on modern television soap operas.^[20] The book defines matrophobia as the "fear of mothers," "fear of becoming a mother," and "fear of identification with and separation from the maternal body", and argues that patriarchal culture causes women's relationships with each other to be driven by a metaphorical matrophobia.^[20] Rogers particularly criticizes anti-maternalism in feminist and psychoanalytic theorists.^[20] The final section on soap operas argues that the fragmented narrative structure of daytime television also reinforces patriarchal values.^[20]

• Bookseller as Rogue: John Almon and the Politics of Eighteenth-Century Publishing. New York: Peter Lang, 1986.
• The Critical Response to Ann Radcliffe. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1994.
• Ann Radcliffe: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1996.
• The Matrophobic Gothic and Its Legacy: Sacrificing Mothers in the Novel and in Popular Culture. New York: Peter Lang, 2007.

• Rob Roy. New York: Signet Classics, 1995.
• Two Gothic Classics by Women. New York: Signet Classics, 1995.
• (with Howard Segal and Ann Acheson) Becoming Modern: The University of Maine, 1965-2015. Orono, Maine: University of Maine Press, 2023.