Staff Profiles

Elisabeth Jay's interests lie predominantly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: she has published widely on fiction, prose and poetry of this period. Her most recent book is  'British Writers and Paris 1830-1875' (OUP, 2016).  Among the Victorian women writers upon whom she has worked, she has a particular interest in Margaret Oliphant whose biography she has written and whose autobiography she has edited. She is also joint general editor of a 25 volume Pickering & Chatto series devoted to Oliphant’s works. Her other major interest is the interdisciplinary area of literature and theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: she is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology.

In genre terms she is particularly interested in fiction, biography and autobiography and the permeable boundaries between these. Her theoretical interests are mainly located in feminist and gender studies. She has taught in Northern Ireland, France, Belgium and the USA as well as in Oxford.

Books

• Jay E, Ed., Old Mr. Tredgold / by Margaret Oliphant., Routledge (2017)
  ISBN: 9781138763029 eISBN: 9781315542676
  Abstract

  Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) had a prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, fifty or more short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. This is the most ambitious critical edition of her work.

  This volume includes her 1895 novel Old Mr Tredgold with editorial notes by Elisabeth Jay including a new introduction and headnote, proving key information about the book and its publication history.
  

  Website 
• Jay E, British Writers and Paris, 1830-1875, Oxford University Press (2016)
  ISBN: 9780199655243
  Website 
• Jay, E., Ed., The Wizard's Son / by Margaret Oliphant., Pickering & Chatto (2015)
  ISBN: 13: 9781851966004 eISBN: 9781781447840
  
• Jay, E., Ed., Phoebe, Junior / by Margaret Oliphant., Pickering & Chatto (2014)
  ISBN: 9781851966141
  
• Hass, A., Jasper, D. and Jay, E., Ed., The Oxford Handbook to English Literature and Theology, Oxford University Press (2007)
  ISBN: 978-0-19-927197-9
  Website 
• Jay E, Ed., North and South / by Elizabeth Gaskell (The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell, vol.7), Pickering & Chatto (2005)
  ISBN: 185196777X
  
• Jay E, Ed., East Lynne / Ellen Wood., Oxford University Press (2005)
  ISBN: 0192804626
  Abstract

  'Coward! Sneak! May good men shun him, from henceforth! may his Queen refuse to receive him! You, an earl's daughter! Oh, Isabel! How utterly you have lost yourself!'

  When the aristocratic Lady Isabel abandons her husband and children for her wicked seducer, more is at stake than moral retribution. Ellen Wood played upon the anxieties of the Victorian middle classes who feared a breakdown of the social order as divorce became more readily available and promiscuity threatened the sanctity of the family. In her novel the simple act of hiring a governess raises the spectres of murder, disguise, and adultery. Her sensation novel was devoured by readers from the Prince of Wales to Joseph Conrad and continued to fascinate theatre-goers and cinema audiences well into the next century. 

  This edition returns for the first time to the racy, slang-ridden narrative of the first edition, rather than the subsequent stylistically 'improved' versions hitherto reproduced by modern editors. 

• Jay E, Ed., Dreams : three works / by Olive Schreiner., Univeristy of Birmingham University Press (2003)
  ISBN: 1902459318
  Abstract

  Olive (Emilia Albertina) Schreiner, Mrs. Cronwright (also wrote as: Ralph Iron) (1855-1920) was a South African author, pacifist and political activist. In 1867 she moved to Cradock with her older brother. When her brother left Cradock, Olive chose to become a governess. She accepted posts as a governess at a number of farms, most notably the Fouchés who provided inspiration for certain aspects of The Story of an African Farm (1883), published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron, as well as a small collection of stories and allegories called Dream Life and Real Life: A Little African Story (1893).
  

• Jay E, Ed., The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant, Broadview (2002)
  ISBN: 1-55111-276-0
  
• Jay E, Ed., Miss Marjoribanks / by Margaret Oliphant, Penguin (1998)
  ISBN: 9780140436303
  
• Jay E., Ed., Life of Charlotte Brontë / by Elizabeth Gaskell, Penguin (1997)
  ISBN: 9780140434934
  Abstract

  Mrs. Gaskell's classic portrait of the English novelist is presented in the controversial first edition published in March 1857.
  

• Jay E, Mrs. Oliphant: "A Fiction to Herself". A Literary Life, Clarendon Press (1995)
  ISBN: 9780198128755
  Abstract
  As an expatriate Scots woman, Mrs Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) started her prolific and accomplished writing career at three removes from the centre of Victorian literary life. Widowed early, and left with not only her own children, but two brothers, a nephew, and two nieces to support, she became keenly aware of the discrepancy between society's assumptions about woman's role and her own position as a female breadwinner in the male-dominated world of nineteenth-century publishing. Out of the contrast between her wryly ironic view of life and the conventions of Victorian fiction came the disconcerting questioning of accepted ideologies of the family, religious orthodoxy, and a woman's place in society that characterizes her writing.
  Mrs. Oliphant: A Fiction to Herself contains an often surprising portrait of the professional Victorian woman writer. By choosing to interweave the life and the work of Mrs Oliphant, Elisabeth Jay's lucid and comprehensive study raises for consideration the way in which a particular woman writer perceived her own life, and the wider question of whether women writers have been well-served by the mythological structures of male biography.
• Jay E, Ed., The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant: the Complete Text, Oxford University Press (1990)
  ISBN: 0-19-818615-0
  
• Jay E, Ed., The Journal of John Wesley: A Selection, Oxford University Press (1987)
  ISBN: 0192122681; 0192818597
  
• Jay, E. and Jay, R., Ed., The Critics of Capitalism: Victorian Reactions to Political Economy, Cambridge University Press (1986)
  ISBN: 0521265886; 521319625
  
• Jay E, Faith and Doubt in Victorian Britain, Macmillan Education (1986)
  ISBN: 0333376587; 0333376595
  
• Jay E, Ed., The Evangelical and the Oxford Movements, Cambridge University Press (1983)
  ISBN: 052124403X, 0521286697
  
• Jay E, The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Clarendon Press (1979)
  ISBN: 0198120923
  

Journal articles

• Jay E, 'Margaret Oliphant’s Fin-de-Siècle Novels'
  Yearbook of English Studies 49 (2019) pp.11-28
  ISSN: 0306-2473 eISSN: 2222-4289
  Abstract

  Writing at the end of the nineteenth century as Modernist values and conventions were gaining sway, Oliphant’s obituarists were inclined to patronize her as an over-prolific literary generalist, whose finest fiction had appeared in the mid-Victorian period. This essay argues that, rather than seeking to repeat earlier triumphs, the distinctive timbre of the fiction Oliphant produced during the 1890s arises from her response to new circumstances. Acutely conscious of ‘the New Journalism’, as she referred to the various cultural shifts taking place in the literary marketplace, she also recognized, without necessarily approving, the fresh turn in subject matter, style and attitudes adopted by a younger generation of novelists. Her final novels offer her acerbic account of a fin-de-siècle society where traditional social and moral hierarchies were visibly disintegrating. Darker in tone than her mid-century tales of provincial society, they offer a critique of such muchdiscussed 1890s phenomena as  decadence and the emergence of the New Woman. 

  Website 
• Jay E, ''A spectre is haunting Europe': Napoleon’s reappearance in British literature of the 1840s.''
  Review of English Studies 67 (280) (2016) pp.523-537
  ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
  Abstract This article considers the resurgence of British interest in their former foe, Napoleon Bonaparte, apparent in literature of the 1840s. The circumstances surrounding his death and interment on St Helena had already given him mythical status. The British government’s formal approval in May 1840 for the repatriation of his mortal remains to Paris prompted a renewed interest in this heroic figure on British shores. Thackeray, who had attended the Parisian ceremony and familiarized himself with ensuing fictional and historical re-appraisals of the Napoleonic wars, had recognized the potential of this material for anti-heroic treatment by the time he began Vanity Fair. However, by the April 1848 serial episode, in which the novel’s narrative chronology closes down for a ten-year break, the contemporary political framework in which the novel was being written had changed. That March Thackeray had dined at the same table as Louis-Napoleon, the Emperor’s heir, who had just returned from a premature attempt to claim his political inheritance. When Becky dons the exiled Emperor’s mantle at the start of chapter LXIV, she serves as a reminder to Thackeray’s initial readers that the Napoleonic legacy was still very much alive as a spectre haunting European politics.Website 
• Jay E, '"A spectre is haunting Europe”: Napoleon’s reappearance in British literature of the 1840s'
  Review of English Studies 67 (280) (2016) pp.523-537
  ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
  Abstract

  This article considers the resurgence of British interest in their former foe, Napoleon Bonaparte, apparent in literature of the 1840s. The circumstances surrounding his death and interment on St Helena had already given him mythical status. The British government’s formal approval in May 1840 for the repatriation of his mortal remains to Paris prompted a renewed interest in this heroic figure on British shores. Thackeray, who had attended the Parisian ceremony and familiarized himself with ensuing fictional and historical re-appraisals of the Napoleonic wars, had recognized the potential of this material for anti-heroic treatment by the time he began Vanity Fair. However, by the April 1848 serial episode, in which the novel’s narrative chronology closes down for a ten-year break, the contemporary political framework in which the novel was being written had changed. That March Thackeray had dined at the same table as Louis-Napoleon, the Emperor’s heir, who had just returned from a premature attempt to claim his political inheritance. When Becky dons the exiled Emperor’s mantle at the start of chapter LXIV, she serves as a reminder to Thackeray’s initial readers that the Napoleonic legacy was still very much alive as a spectre haunting European politics.
  

  Website 
• Jay, E., '‘The First Decade’'
  Literature and Theology (2012)
  ISSN: 0269-1205
  
• Jay E, 'Literature and Theology: the First Decade'
  Literature and Theology 26 (2012) pp.265-272
  ISSN: 0269-1205
  Abstract This essay offers reflections on the origins and ethos of the early years of the Journal, tracing the transatlantic editorial teams’ navigation of swiftly changing cultural conditions through and beyond the change in title—Literature and Theology: An International Journal of Theory, Criticism and Culture.Website 
• Jay, E., '‘“Be sure and remember the rabbits”: memory as moral force in the Victorian bildungsroman’'
  Literature and Theology (2010)
  ISSN: 0269-1205
  
• Jay E, 'What Kind of Discipline Is Offered in the Study of Theology/religion and Literature?'
  Religion and Literature 41 (2010) pp.113-118
  
• Jay,E., '‘What kind of discipline is offered in the study of Theology/Religion and Literature?’'
  Religion and Literature (2009)
  ISSN: 0888-3769 eISSN: 2328-6911
  
• Jay E, '‘In her father’s steps she trod: Ann Thackeray Ritchie imagining Paris’'
  MHRA Yearbook of English Studies. 36 (2) (2006) pp.197-211
  ISSN: 0306-2473 eISSN: 2222-4289
  Website 
• Jay E, 'Charlotte Mary Yonge and Tractarian Aesthetics'
  Victorian Poetry 44 (2006) pp.43-59
  ISSN: 0042-5206
  
• Jay, E., 'Charlotte Mary Yonge and Tractarian Aesthetics’,'
  Victorian Poetry (2006)
  ISSN: 0042-5206
  
• Jay E, 'The Enemy Within: the Housekeeper in Victorian Fiction'
  Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens 61 (2005) pp.247-260
  ISSN: 0220-5610
  
• Jay,E., ''Who are you gentle reader?' : John Updike - A Month of Sundays (1975)’, Literature and Theology, vol.19. No 4, pp.1-9.'
  Literature and Theology (2005)
  ISSN: 0269-1205
  
• Jay. E., '‘Religion and Culture’'
  Nineteenth-Century Studies (2003)
  ISSN: 0893-7931
  
• Jay E, 'Four Gray Walls and Four Gray Towers: Do These a Prison Make?'
  Cahiers Victoriens and Edouardiens (2002) pp.313-322
  
• Jay,E., '‘Angelic Reading Practices’'
  Bulletin of the International Association of University Professors of English. (1999)
  
• Jay, E., ''“Mrs Brown”, by Windsor’s other Widow’'
  Women's Writing (1999)
  ISSN: 0969-9082
  
• Jay, E., '“The Letter Killeth”: Thomas Hardy’s response to W.K. Clifford’s Theory of the Transference of “Mind-Stuffs”’,'
  Journal for the Critical Study of Religion, Ethics, and Society (1997)
  
• Jay E, '‘Charlotte Yonge’s “Gleanings" from the Rev. John Keble’'
  Charlotte M Yonge Fellowship Journal (1997)
  

Book chapters

• Jay E, 'Fin de Siecle Women in Mid-Century Clothing: William Hale White's Novels of the 1890s' in W.R. Owens and A. Weedon (ed.), Fiction and ‘The Woman Question’ from 1850 to 1930, Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2020)
  ISBN: 9781527550414
  Website 
• Jay E, '‘Constance Maynard's Life-Writing Considered as Spiritual Autobiography’' in Eyre, A., Mackelworth, J., Richardson, E. (ed.), Love, Desire and Melancholy, Inspired by Constance Maynard (1849-1935), Routledge (2017)
  ISBN: 9780415787192
  Website 
• Jay E, '‘The “Ishmael” of sinology’: H. A. Giles's History of Chinese Literature (1901) and late Victorian Perceptions of Chinese Literature and Culture’' in Jasper, D. (ed.), A Poetics of Translation: Between Chinese and English Literature, Baylor University Press (2016)
  ISBN: 13: 9781481304184
  
• Jay E, '‘Spirituality’' in Flint, K. (ed.), Cambridge History of Victorian Literature, Cambridge University Press (2012)
  ISBN: 9780521846257 eISBN: 9781139029155
  Website 
• Jay E, 'British Women Writers and the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Parisian Salon, 1700-1900' in Brown. H., Dow, G. (ed.), Readers, Writers, Salonnières: Female Networks in Europe, Peter Langland (2011)
  ISBN: 9783039119721
  
• Jay E, '‘”The Same Yesterday, and today, and for ever”?: Biblical Quotation in the Nineteenth Century Novel’' in Cottenet, C., Murat, J-C., Vanfasse, N. (ed.), Cultural Transformations in the English-Speaking World, Cambridge Scholars (2010)
  ISBN: 9781443816427
  
• Jay E, '‘Introduction to the Victorian period’' in Lemon, R., Mason, E., Roberts, J. Rowland, C. (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature, Wiley-Blackwell (2009)
  ISBN: 9780470674994
  
• Jay E, '"A Bed of One’s Own: Margaret Oliphant"' in Sullivan, C. (ed.), Authors at work : the creative environment, D.S. Brewer (2009)
  ISBN: 9781843841951
  
• Jay E, '‘Jane Eyre and Biblical Interpretation’' in Regard, F., Trapenard, A. (ed.), Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë à Franco Zeffirelli, Sedes (2008)
  ISBN: 2301000400; 2301001164
  
• Jay E, '‘Why “Remember Lot’s wife”? : religious identity and the literary canon'' in Philipsen,B., Verstricht, L., Borgman, E. (ed.), Literary Canons and Religious Identity, Ashgate (2004)
  ISBN: 9780754635123
  
• Jay E, '‘The cultural politics of eighteenth century representation in Victorian Literary Histories’' in O’Gorman, F., Turner, K. (ed.), The Victorians and the Eighteenth Century, Ashgate (2004)
  ISBN: 9780754607182
  
• Jay E, '‘Newman through the looking-glass’' in Ker, I., Merrigan, T. (ed.), Newman and Faith, Peeters Press (2004)
  ISBN: 9042914610; 0802828388
  
• Jay E, '‘Women Writers and Religion’' in Shattock, J. (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain 1800-1900, Cambridge University Press (2001)
  ISBN: 9780521659574
  
• Jay E, ''George Eliot: Middlemarch'' in Rylance, R., Simons, J. (ed.), Contexts of Literature, Palgrave Macmillan (2001)
  ISBN: 9780333803905
  
• Jay E, '‘”Ye Careless, thoughtless, worldly parents, tremble while you read this history!”: the use and abuse of the dying child in the Evangelical tradition’' in Avery, G., Reynolds, K. (ed.), Representations of Childhood Death, Macmillan (1999)
  ISBN: 9780312224080
  
• Jay E, '‘The liberal in crisis, or, Teaching queer theory in a Methodist foundation’' in Gearon, L (ed.), Engaging the Curriculum: English Literature, Theology and the Curriculum, Cassell (1999)
  ISBN: 0304704865
  
• Jay.E., '‘"When Egypt’s Slain, I say, let Miriam sing!": Women, Dissent and Marginality’' in Tsuchiya,K. (ed.), Dissent and Marginality: Essays on the Borders of Literature and Religion, Macmillan (1997)
  ISBN: 13: 9780333698280
  
• Jay E, '‘Freed by Necessity, Trapped by the Market’' in Trela, D. (ed.), Margaret Oliphant : critical essays on a gentle subversive, Susquehanna University Press (1995)
  ISBN: 9780945636724; 094563672
  
• Jay E, ''The Woman’s Place’' in Barratt,D., Ryken, L., and Pooley, R. (ed.), The Discerning Reader: Christian Perspectives on Literature and Theory, Apollos (1995)
  ISBN: 9780801020858
  
• Jay E, '‘Newman’s Mid-Victorian Dream’' in Nicholls, D. & Kerr, F. (ed.), John Henry Newman: Reason, Rhetoric and Romanticism, Bristol Press (1991)
  ISBN: 1-85399-147-3
  
• Jay E, '‘Doubt and the Victorian Woman’' in Jasper, D., Wright, T. R. (ed.), The Critical Spirit and the Will to Believe, Macmillan (1989)
  ISBN: 9780312024413
  

Conference papers

• Jay, E., '‘Outline for a research project: British Writers in mid-nineteenth-century Paris’'
  (2008)
  ISSN: 0076-1451 ISBN: 978-91-976935-0-9
  
• Jay, E., ''The Enemy Within: the Housekeeper in Victorian Fiction''
  (2005)
  ISSN: 0220-5610
  
• Jay, E., ''"Four Gray Walls and Four Gray Towers": Do these a prison make?"'
  (2002)
  ISSN: 0220-5610
  
• Jay, E., ''What does a Victorian woman writer have to do to "get a life"?''
  (1999)
  ISBN: 0952563665
  
• Jay E, 'When Egypts Slain, I Say, Let Miriam Sing!: Women, Dissent and Marginality'
  Dissent and Marginality (1998) pp.80-101
  
• Jay, E., ''Mrs. Oliphant: The Hero as Woman of Letters, or Autobiography, a Gendered Genre’'
  (1994)
  ISSN: 0575-2124
  

Reviews

• Jay E, review of Victorian Religious Revivals: Culture and Piety in Local and Global Contexts, in Literature and Theology 27 (2013) pp.381-382ISSN: 0269-1205
  Website 
• Jay E, review of Tending the Interdisciplinary Flame: Alison Jack, The Bible and Literature, in Expository Times 124 (2013) pp.609-611ISSN: 0014-5246 eISSN: 1745-5308
  Website 
• Jay E, review of Literary Theology By Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century, in Literature and Theology 26 (2012) pp.347-348ISSN: 0269-1205
  Website 
• Jay E, review of Identifying the Remains: George Eliots Death in the London Religious Press, in Literature and Theology 22 (2009) pp.127-127ISSN: 0269-1205
  Website 
• Jay E, review of Passion and Pathology in Victorian Fiction, in Review of English Studies 53 (2003) pp.572-573ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
  
• Jay E, review of Virginia Woolfs Essays: Sketching the Past, in Review of English Studies 53 (2002) pp.289-290ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
  
• Jay E, review of The Brontes and Religion, in Modern Language Review 95 (2001) pp.1073-1074
• Jay E, review of May Sinclair: a Modern Victorian, in Review of English Studies 52 (2001) pp.299-300ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
  
• Jay E, review of Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100 (2001) pp.597-602ISSN: 0363-6941 eISSN: 1945-662X
  
• Jay E, review of Ruskins God, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100 (2001) pp.597-602ISSN: 0363-6941 eISSN: 1945-662X
  
• Jay E, review of Womens Fiction Between the Wars: Mothers, Daughters, and Writing, in Review of English Studies 50 (1999) pp.408-409ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
  
• Jay E, review of Engendering Fictions: the English Novel in the Early Twentieth Century - Pykett,l, in Review of English Studies 48 (1997) pp.417-418ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
  
• JAY E, review of Drabble,margaret - a Readers Guide - Myer,vg, in Notes and Queries 40 (1994) pp.570-571ISSN: 0029-3970
  
• JAY E, review of Lehmann,rosamond - Simons,j, in Notes and Queries 40 (1993) pp.398-399ISSN: 0029-3970
  
• JAY E, review of Clarissa-dalloway - Bloom,h, in Review of English Studies 44 (1993) pp.124-125ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
  
• JAY E, review of Woolf,virginia and the Madness of Language - Ferrer,d, in Review of English Studies 44 (1993) pp.124-125ISSN: 0034-6551 eISSN: 1471-6968
  
• JAY E, review of Prophets of Past Time - 7 British Autobiographers, 1880-1914 - Dawson,c, in Notes and Queries 37 (1991) pp.379-381ISSN: 0029-3970
  
• JAY E, review of Woolf,virginia and the Poetry of Fiction - Mcnichol,s, in Notes and Queries 37 (1991) pp.361-362ISSN: 0029-3970
  
• JAY E, review of Farrell,j.g. - Binns,r, in Notes and Queries 34 (1988) pp.572-572ISSN: 0029-3970
  
• JAY E, review of The Diary Novel - Martens,l, in Notes and Queries 34 (1987) pp.122-123ISSN: 0029-3970
  

Other publications

• Jay E, 'Vol. 19: Phoebe Junior ; Vol. 21: The Wizard’s Son ; Vol. 25: Old Mr Tredgold'
  (2017) ISBN: 9781848934801
  Abstract

  Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) had a prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, fifty or more short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. This is the most ambitious critical edition of her work.
  

  Website 

Membership of professional bodies

• Former Chair of the Council for College and University English
• Fellow of the English Association
• Fellow of the American Society for the Arts, Religion and Contemporary Culture
• Executive committee member for the  International Association of University Professors of English and the British Association of Victorian Studies.

Press, publicity and reviews

Editorships

On the Advisory Boards of Literature Theology (OUP); English (OUP); Studies in Browning and His Circle; E-Rea Review (University of Aix en Provence, research laboratory journal) and Miranda (University of Toulouse Le Mirail, research laboratory journal).