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. They became good friends and intellectual rivals, as Jill described in her tribute to Manning in 2013, "[W]e were rivals from the start, although the rivalry was simply a spur so that we both produced our individual best. Susan did not need a rival as she was always competing with herself". She later attended John Mason High School in Abingdon. She earned a BA degree from
Newnham College, University of Cambridge, graduating in 1976. It was at Cambridge that she met her future husband, physicist Howard Manning and got married. She was equally attracted towards studying Scottish and American literature and the overlap between the two. Her main mode of inquiry involved discovering similarities between Scottish and American literary style, subjects and preoccupations, distinguishing these from English literature. This quest took the shape of defining what provincialism meant and its relation to any 'Centre'. == Professional contribution ==