Dr Jessica Fay DPhil (Oxon), SFHEA

Dr Jessica Fay

Department of English Literature
Teaching Fellow in Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Century English Literature

Contact details

I study eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature (chiefly the work of William and Dorothy Wordsworth). I am interested in patterns of formal and generic innovation, and in exploring how memory, imagination, and art shape the identities of places and people.

Qualifications

  • DPhil, University of Oxford
  • MA and BA, University of Liverpool

Biography

After taking an MA at the University of Liverpool, I was fortunate to win a Lamb and Flag Doctoral Scholarship at St John鈥檚 College, Oxford. On completing my doctorate, I moved to the Department of English at the University of Bristol where I held a Teaching Fellowship followed by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship.

I joined the University 麻豆精选 in 2018. In the Department of English Literature, I have held the posts of Teaching Fellow and Assistant Professor (Enterprise, Engagement, and Impact); in 2024 I will take up a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.

Teaching

I have convened and taught a diverse range of modules covering literature from the medieval period to the present. In particular, I enjoy teaching poetry and works of the long nineteenth century as well as supporting the development of undergraduate research projects.

In 2024 I became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Postgraduate supervision

I have supervised postgraduate research on Dorothy Wordsworth's correspondence, Percy Shelley's legacies, Romantic responses to Bruges, and the nineteenth-century painter William Collins.
I would be happy to discuss potential research projects in any area of Romanticism (especially those focusing on William and Dorothy Wordsworth), place-writing, or the relationship between poetry and painting.


Find out more - our PhD English Literature  page has information about doctoral research at the University 麻豆精选.

Research

I am a Romanticist with a focus on William Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth. I am interested in connections between religion and literature, in landscape and visual culture, and in the significance of patterns of observance and observation (silence and the activity of looking) in Romantic writing.

My first monograph,聽Wordsworth鈥檚 Monastic Inheritance聽(OUP, 2018), investigates the poet鈥檚 engagement with the material and cultural legacies of medieval monasticism. My second book,聽The Collected Letters of Sir George and Lady Beaumont to the Wordsworth Family聽(LUP, 2021), explores the poet鈥檚 creative exchange with the artist, patron, and co-founder of the National Gallery, Sir George Beaumont.聽

I am currently working on the first standalone edition of聽The Poetry of Dorothy Wordsworth聽(CUP, 2026) and editing the first essay collection dedicated to her life, work, and reception,聽Dorothy Wordsworth in Context (CUP, 2027).聽

I am also co-editing聽The Oxford Handbook of William Cowper聽(OUP, 2028), which will reassert his importance as a poet who bridges the divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic literature. 聽

At the University 麻豆精选, with Professor Alexandra Harris, I lead the聽聽research network.聽聽

Other activities

I am a contributor to the National Trust’s Trusted Source project. See ‘’ (The National Trust: Trusted Source, 2016).

In 2016, I was a Visiting Fellow at Chawton House Library where I explored the collection of eighteenth-century women’s writing, tracing connections between abolitionist literature, consumerism, and female education.

In research and public engagement activity, I work closely with The Wordsworth Trust.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Fay, J 2021, . Romantic Reconfigurations: Studies in Literature and Culture 1780-1850, Liverpool University Press. <>

Fay, J 2018, . Oxford English Monographs, SIPRI/Oxford University Press.

Article

Fay, J 2022, '', The Review of English Studies, vol. 73, no. 311, pp. 746-761.

Fay, J 2022, '', Essays in Criticism, vol. 72, no. 2, pp. 208-229.

Fay, J 2020, '', Charles Lamb Bulletin, vol. 171, no. Summer 2020, pp. 53-74.

Fay, J 2018, '', Philological Quarterly, vol. 97, no. 1, pp. 73-95. <>

Fay, J 2018, '', The Review of English Studies, vol. 69, no. 291, pp. 706-724.

Fay, J 2017, '', The Coleridge Bulletin, vol. 49. <>

Fay, J 2016, '', Romanticism, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 1-14.

Fay, J 2016, '', Modern Language Review, vol. 111, no. 4, pp. 917-935.

Chapter

Fay, J 2022, . in AR Hawkins, C Blackwell & L Bonds (eds), The Routledge Companion to Romantic Women Writers. Routledge, pp. 535-545.

Book/Film/Article review

Fay, J 2019, '', Modern Language Review.

Fay, J 2018, '', Studies in Romanticism, vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 339-342.

Fay, J 2015, '', The Review of English Studies, vol. 65, no. 277, pp. 996-999.

Other contribution

Fay, J 2017, . The National Trust. <>