In addition to a governing committee, led by its Hon. Officers, MHRA has also in the past had a post of President. This was an honorary position, elected usually for a one-year term, and carried no duties except to deliver a formal Address. It has its origins in a time when public life in the UK revolved around in-person public meetings, and when the Association was less able to reach out to its community, though after 1970 reports of the Addresses would often appear in Modern Language Review.
Our final Presidential Address was delivered on 11 May 2018 by the leading comparatist Dame Marina Warner, and was published as part of the Centenary Lectures website. In our second century, we will continue to honour our distinguished colleagues, and to spread their ideas, but now through ventures such as our Selected Essays book series. (Early authors in this series include Alison Sinclair and Martin McLaughlin, Presidents in 2016 and 2015.)
Past Presidents and their Addresses
| Presidency | President | Text of Address (if available) |
| 2018 | Marina Warner | See The MHRA Centenary Lectures |
| 2017 | Judith Ryan | Time, Space, and Sacred-Secular Configurations in Modern European Poetry (on this site) |
| 2016 | Alison Sinclair | See Putting it About (Legenda, 2021) |
| 2015 | Martin McLaughlin | See Italian Rewritings (Legenda, forthcoming) |
| 2014 | Clive Scott | See Adapting the Canon (Legenda, 2020) |
| 2013 | Nigel Vincent | |
| 2012 | Donald Rayfield | Forgiving Forgery (at JSTOR) |
| 2011 | Gillian Beer | Alice in Time (at JSTOR) |
| 2010 | H. B. Nisbet | On the Rise of Toleration in Europe: Lessing and the German Contribution (at JSTOR) |
| 2009 | Helder Macedo | Languages, Literature, and Power (at JSTOR) |
| 2008 | John Woodhouse | Venice's European Diaspora: The Case of James Leoni (1685-1746) (at JSTOR) |
| 2007 | Marian Hobson | Statues and Normalization (at JSTOR) |
| 2006 | Arnold McMillin | Small is Sometimes Beautiful: Studying 'minor' Languages at University with Particular Reference to Belarus (at JSTOR) |
| 2005 | Patrick Ford | Performance and Literacy in Medieval Welsh Poetry (at JSTOR) |
| 2004 | Derek Pearsall | Medieval Literature and Historical Enquiry (at JSTOR) |
| 2003 | Roy Wisbey | Tristan: On Being the Contemporary of Gottfried von Straßburg (at JSTOR) |
| 2002 | Jean-François Botrel | The Popular Canon (at JSTOR) |
| 2001 | Giulio Lepschy | Mother Tongues and Literary Languages (at JSTOR) |
| 2000 | Gerald Smith | Russian Poetry: The Lives or the Lines? (at JSTOR) |
| 1999 | Haydn Mason | The European Enlightenment: Was It Enlightened? (at JSTOR) |
| 1998 | Frank Kermode | The Discipline of Literature (at JSTOR) |
| 1997 | D. H. Green | From Germania to Europe: The Evidence of Language and History (at JSTOR) |
| 1996 | C. C. Smith | "Ma in Spagna son già mille e tre": On Opera and Literature (on this site) |
| 1995 | Peter Brand | The Renaissance of Comedy: The Achievement of Italian "Commedia Erudita" (at JSTOR) |
| 1994 | Yuri D. Levin | English Literature in Eighteenth-Century Russia (at JSTOR) |
| 1993 | William H. Barber | Voltaire: Art, Thought, and Action (at JSTOR) |
| 1992 | Denis Donoghue | The Use and Abuse of Theory (at JSTOR) |
| 1991 | Nils Erik Enkvist | From Phoneme to Discourse: A Half-Century of Linguistics (at JSTOR) |
| 1990 | Werner Welzig | On Goethe's "Unterhaltungen" (at JSTOR) |
| 1989 | Carlos Fuentes | New Novel, New World (at JSTOR) |
| 1988 | Cecil Grayson | De commodis litterarum atque incommodis (at JSTOR) |
| 1987 | Hans Rothe | Young and Old: Russian Literature in Europe (at JSTOR) |
| 1986 | Ian D. McFarlane | The Renaissance Epitaph (at JSTOR) |
| 1985 | Eugenio Coseriu | Linguistic Competence: What Is It Really? (at JSTOR) |
| 1984 | Maynard Mack | Alexander Pope: Reflections of an Amateur Biographer (at JSTOR) |
| 1983 | Ronald Peacock | Drama and the Moral Connexion (at JSTOR) |
| 1982 | A. A. Parker | "Concept" and "Conceit": An Aspect of Comparative Literary History (at JSTOR) |
| 1981 | Uberto Limentani | Changing Perspectives on the "Seicento": A Study in the Evolution of Taste (at JSTOR) |
| 1980 | Helen Gardner | Literary Biography (at JSTOR) |
| 1979 | Martin de Riquer | L'Actualité historique dans "Don Quichotte" (at JSTOR) |
| 1978 | Leonard Forster | Literary Studies as Flight from Literature? (at JSTOR) |
| 1977 | Harry Levin | The Title as a Literary Genre (at JSTOR) |
| 1976 | K. David Jackson | Fifty Years of Celtic Philology (at JSTOR) |
| 1975 | Jean Starobinski | La vie et les aventures du mot "réaction" (at JSTOR) |
| 1974 | René Wellek | Poetics, Interpretation, and Criticism (at JSTOR) |
| 1973 | B. O. Unbegaun | The Russian Literary Language: A Comparative View (at JSTOR) |
| 1972 | Carlo Dionisotti | A Year's Work in the Seventies (on this site) |
| 1971 | Merritt Y. Hughes | The Miltonic Future (at JSTOR) |
| 1970 | S. C. Aston | The Saint in Medieval Literature (at JSTOR) |
| 1969 | Edna Purdie | |
| 1968 | C. L. Wrenn | |
| 1967 | Marcel Bataillon | |
| 1966 | Eugène Vinaver | |
| 1965 | W. H. Bruford | |
| 1964 | Wolfgang Clemen | |
| 1963 | Helen C. White | |
| 1962 | Jean Pommier | |
| 1961 | F. P. Wilson | |
| 1960 | Dámaso Alonso | |
| 1959 | Alfred Ewert | |
| 1958 | Kemp Malone | |
| 1957 | Walter F. Schirmer | |
| 1956 | Bruno Migliorini | |
| 1955 | Douglas Bush | |
| 1954 | John Orr | |
| 1953 | W. J. Entwistle | |
| 1952 | Sigurður Nordal | |
| 1951 | C. J. Sisson | |
| 1949-50 | Albert C. Baugh | |
| 1948-49 | L. A. Willoughby | |
| 1947-48 | Henry Carrington Lancaster | |
| 1946-47 | Mildred K. Pope | |
| 1938-39 | H. J. Chaytor | |
| 1937-38 | J. D. M. Ford | |
| 1936-37 | Johannes Hoops | |
| 1935-36 | H. G. Fiedler | |
| 1934-35 | Mario Roques | |
| 1933-34 | William Craigie | |
| 1932-33 | Bernard Pares | |
| 1931-32 | E. Allison Peers | |
| 1930-31 | Fernand Baldensperger | |
| 1929-30 | Edmund G. Gardner | |
| 1928-29 | Levin L. Schücking | |
| 1927-28 | Carleton Brown | |
| 1926-27 | R. Menéndez Pidal | |
| 1925-26 | Emile Legouis | |
| 1924-25 | J. G. Robertson | |
| 1923-24 | Benedetto Croce | |
| 1922-23 | J. P. Manly | |
| 1921-22 | W. P. Ker | |
| 1920-21 | Otto Jespersen | |
| 1919-20 | Gustave Lanson | |
| 1918-19 | Sidney Lee |