Betty T. Bennett (1935–2006) was Distinguished Professor of Literature and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (1985–1997) at American University.
She won the Keats-Shelley Association of America - Distinguished Scholar Award in 1992 and was Founding President, Phi Beta Kappa, Zeta Chapter at American University.
Bennett was an internationally known scholar on the life of Frankenstein author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her circle of friends.
In a 1988 review of Dr. Bennett's final volume of the letters, author Brian Aldiss declared her work "a great contribution to scholarship, and one that never need be done again.
For several years before her death, Bennett worked on a much anticipated literary biography of Shelley, which is scheduled to be released by Harvard University Press.