Dr Jackie Jones retires from Edinburgh University Press

Dr Jackie Jones joined Edinburgh University Press as a Senior Commissioning Editor in 1993, having started her publishing career at The Harvester Press (later Harvester Wheatsheaf which became part of Simon & Schuster). During her time at EUP Jackie has commissioned books across a range of subject areas, including Language & Linguistics, Media Studies, Philosophy and Gender Studies. But Literary Studies has always been Jackie’s passion, and she has developed a list at EUP that is world-leading, particularly in fields such as Modernism (with an especial focus on women writers, from the well-known, such as Virginia Woolf, to the previously marginalised or forgotten, including Elizabeth Bowen and Mina Loy), as well as Critical Theory, Gothic Studies and Postcolonial Studies.

Indeed, Jackie’s deep fascination with modernist women writers led to the successful completion of her PhD thesis Katherine Mansfield and Memory: Bergsonian Readings at the University of Edinburgh in 2017, all while continuing to develop her EUP list.

While there are too many wonderful books to mention among all those that Jackie has commissioned, some particularly stand out as field-defining titles and series. They include works in translation by Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous, Vassiliki Kolocotroni et al’s Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents and Sara Ahmed’s The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Stand-out series and editions commissioned over the years include: The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland and the Edinburgh Companions to the Gothic as well as a 5-volume history of women’s periodicals for which she is the series editor.

Jackie has a particular skill for anticipating future trends, with a keen eye for the cutting-edge research that will develop the fields in which she commissions. This is nowhere better reflected than in the Edinburgh Companions to Literature and the Humanities series, a library reference series which Jackie launched in 2008 with a Companion to Postcolonial Literatures in English, and which will see it’s 46th volume published later in 2025, The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and Transnational Perspectives.

Throughout her stellar career at EUP, including as Deputy Managing Director and Head of Book Publishing and latterly as Publisher for Literary Studies and Reference, Jackie has demonstrated kindness, empathy, and a genuine commitment to nurturing her many authors, volume editors and series editors, and – just as important – her colleagues. There are many who have started their publishing career within the editorial team at EUP who have gone on to flourish – either at EUP or beyond – thanks to Jackie’s care, attention and wish to share her knowledge and experience.

As Jackie heads into a well-deserved retirement, EUP and the wider literary studies world is left with a rich collection of books that will continue to be read and enjoyed for many years to come. And her legacy will continue to flourish, in the hands of Dr Emily Sharp and Dr Ersev Ersoy.

Find out more about Literary Studies at EUP: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/books/subjects/literary-studies