[2] Prof. Manning's work on Scottish Enlightenment and transatlantic literature led to international acclaim.

[2] Manning was born in Glasgow to Honora, a graduate of philosophy, and James Valentine, a physicist.

When her family moved to Abingdon, Oxford in 1962 she attended Dunmore Primary where she met Jill Hanna.

It was at Cambridge that she met her future husband, physicist Howard Manning and got married.

Her main mode of inquiry involved discovering similarities between Scottish and American literary style, subjects and preoccupations, distinguishing these from English literature.