Dr Anna Mercer

Publication

• Date
• Type

Research

My current research projects include:

• Editing the selected works of Mary Shelley for Oxford University Press (Series Editor: Professor Seamus Perry).
• Writing three articles, ‘The Shelleys, Beatrice, and the pernicious mistakes of women’ for Romanticism on the Net; ‘Collaboration, the first Frankenstein of 1818, and the Shelleys’ creative processes behind History of a Six Weeks’ Tour' for Nineteenth Century Literature in Transition: the 1810s ed. Emma Mason (Cambridge University Press); ‘Mary Shelley’ in Percy Shelley in Context ed. Ross Wilson (Cambridge University Press).
• Writing a piece for Romanticism on a new discovery relating to Sara Coleridge in the Keats House Archives. 
• Co-editing with Professor Cian Duffy the Shelleys' History of a Six Weeks' Tour for Oxford University Press.
• A collaborative project with Professor Nora Crook and Dr Bysshe Coffey to edit and publish the only notebook containing Percy Bysshe Shelley's hand that has not appeared in facsimile print edition: MSS 13,290 in the Library of Congress.
• Co-editing a special issue of Romanticism with Dr Amanda Blake Davis with papers from The Shelley Conference 2022.

Teaching

I have taught on the following modules

Undergraduate teaching:

• 'Bluestockings, Britannia and Unsex'd Females: Women in Public Life 1770-1800'
• 'Fictive Histories/Historical Fictions'
• 'Jane Austen in Context'
• 'Romanticism, Politics, Aesthetics'
• 'Second-generation Romantic Poets'
• 'Introduction to Romantic Poetry'
• 'Romantic Circles: Collaboration, Radicalism and Creativity 1770–1830'
• Dissertation

Postgraduate teaching:

• 'Narrative and Nation: Politics, Gender, History, 1780-1830'
• Research Methods
• Dissertation

Biography

I joined ENCAP in October 2018. I have previously taught in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York.

I completed my AHRC-funded PhD at the University of York in 2017. I have also studied at Jesus College, University of Cambridge and the University of Liverpool. 

Honours and awards

• Innovation for All Project Grant 2022, working with Keats House Museum.
• Keats-Shelley Essay Prize (Runner-up) 2015 for the essay ‘Beyond Frankenstein’. 
• Awarded AHRC Travel Award Scheme grant to travel to the USA to study manuscripts in Washington D.C. and New York City, October/November 2015.
• Recipient of BARS Stephen Copley Postgraduate Research Award 2015 for the same research trip as above.
• Recipient of a full AHRC Doctoral Award.
• Essay entitled ‘Shelley and Mary in 1816’ shortlisted for the Keats-Shelley Prize 2012.
• Awarded Jesus College University of Cambridge Graduate Scholarship 2012.

Speaking engagements

Recent and forthcoming 

• “Women and Inconstancy in Shelley’s ‘The Bride of Modern Italy’ and Valperga”, The Year of Gothic Women Conference, University of Dundee, 29-31 August 2023. 
• ‘Young Romantics: Romantic Localities’, public lecture at Keats House with Professor Nicholas Roe,18 May 2023.
• ‘The Keats House Collections’, invited speaker at the Keats-Shelley House, Rome, 2 February 2023. 
• ‘Shelley’s Beatrice Cenci as Romantic Heroine – Then and Now’, invited speaker at the P. B. Shelley’s Contemporaneity/ies conference, Bologna and Ravenna, 20-22 October 2022.
•  ‘Teaching Gothic Women’, Roundtable at BARS/NASSR Conference ‘New Romanticisms’, Edge Hill University, 2-5 August 2022.
• ‘Mary Shelley and a new History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817 in 2022)’, BARS/NASSR Conference ‘New Romanticisms’, Edge Hill University, 2-5 August 2022.
• ‘The Shelleys in Lerici’, invited speaker at the Shelley200 public festival in Lerici, Italy, June 2022.
•  ‘The Shelleys’, invited speaker at Research Seminar, Lancaster Words (online) 25 February, 2022.
• ‘Mary Shelley, John Keats and Romantic Circles’, Keynote Address, The Keats Bicentenary Conference 2022, London, 20-22 May 2022.
•  ‘Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley as collaborators’, invited research talk at the Romanticism Research Seminar, Balliol College, University of Oxford, 9 November 2021.
• ‘Romantic interaction in London: Hazlitt, Keats and the Shelleys’, invited speaker at The Hazlitt Day School, London, September 2021.

Committees and reviewing

• Reviewer of articles submitted for publication in The ESSE Messenger (2023). 
• Reviewer of articles submitted for publication in The Keats-Shelley Review (2020).
• Reviewer of articles submitted for publication in the European Romantic Review (2020).
• Reviewer of papers submitted for publication in the American Journal of Political Science (2017).
• Blog Editor/Communications Officer, British Association for Romantic Studies Executive Committee (2016-present).
• Editor of the University of York poetry journal Eborakon (2015-2017). Assistant Editor and founding team member (2013-2015).

Supervisions

Romantic literature, in particular the writings of Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley.