Jodie Marley
Dr Jodie Marley is an independent scholar working on Romantic literature and art history. She received her PhD on the reception of William Blake from the University of Nottingham in 2023, supported by a scholarship from the University’s Centre for Regional Literature and Culture. Her upcoming monograph, Mystic Blake, expands her PhD’s findings in greater detail, examining Blake’s reception as a mystic and prophet by the Celtic Twilight. Her other publications include upcoming chapters in The Routledge Companion to William Blake (Routledge, ed. Kathryn S. Freeman) and Seán O’Casey in Context (Cambridge University Press, ed. James Moran), plus articles in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, and VALA: The Journal of the Blake Society. She is a regular contributor to Global Blake’s online lecture series and podcast.
Marley’s current research project emerged from a thread of her Mystic Blake research into William Sharp/Fiona Macleod. ‘The Scott Family and Edinburgh Romanticism’ presents the first group study of the highly-regarded but critically-neglected Scott family: engraver Robert Scott, and his sons, the artist-authors David Scott and William Bell Scott. The overarching project hopes to recover the family’s significant contributions to the cultural and intellectual currents of Scottish Romanticism.
Research on the project began when Marley won the British Association for Romantic Studies’ Stephen Copley Award in December 2024 towards London archival work. Thanks to the University of Glasgow’s Visiting Research Fellowship, she is now able to consult crucial archival materials held in Glasgow’s Hunterian and Special Collections. Of particular interest in Special Collections are holdings relating to Romantic-era Glasgow Astronomy Professor J. P. Nichol, who commissioned David Scott to illustrate his popular astronomy book The Architecture of the Heavens (1850). The portion of the project based at Glasgow aims to demonstrate the significance of Romantic-era Glaswegian intellectual culture on the arts of the time.
I’m absolutely thrilled to have received this Fellowship, which will accelerate my Scott family project towards publication in a way that would not otherwise have been possible. I’m very excited to work with the vast collections of art, correspondence, prints, and rare books holdings at the University, and to reconnect with the warm and welcoming community of Romantic scholars at Glasgow. Research behind the paper I presented at the Romanticism conference hosted in Glasgow in 2024 led me towards this project, which in 2025 draws me again towards the city and the University. I hope with my Scott family project to collaborate within and contribute towards the research culture which has inspired my current work so much.
