Jessica Malay

7 Last updated 9 October 2020.

Professor Jessica Malay is a leading scholar of early modern women's writing and early modern culture more generally.  Much of her work straddles the disciplinary lines of literature, history, and cultural studies.  She interested in manuscript culture of the period and has produced three editions, including the first print edition of the Lady Anne Clifford's Great Books of Record. Much of her work is focused on promoting a greater visibility for writing by women, and also to reshape the narrative of women's participation in the socio/political environment in Early Modern England.  In 2014 she published the autobiography of the previously unknown Mistress Mary Hampson, and included in this edition a detailed biography that detailed the harrowing life of this woman trapped in a cycle of domestic violence. 

Most recently Professor Malay has received a Leverhulme Trust Project grant for the three year project: Autobiographical Acts in Seventeenth-century England, Wales, Scotland and New England which will use civil court records to explore the discourse of the autobiographical in seventeenth-century society.  Professor Malay is research leader for English and Creative writing, and oversees postgraduates in this area.  She is also chair of the University of Huddersfield's Professoriate Network. 

• Seventeenth Century Autobiography
• Women 's writing in the English Renaissance
• Sibylline imagery in the poetry and prose of the English Renaissance
• Representations of social space in the literature of the 16th and 17th centuries
• Manuscript studies
• Gender Studies