Meet the author: Jessica A. Volz

Jessica A. Volz is a literary scholar, author, editor and translator (French to English) with international recognition. Over the past 15 years, she has built a diverse career spanning international relations, cultural heritage, journalism, the humanities, law, sustainability, multidisciplinary education and business development. Her book, Visuality in the Novels of Austen, Radcliffe, Edgeworth and Burney, published by Anthem Press in the respected Anthem Nineteenth-Century Series edited by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Oxford), was highlighted in the Times Literary Supplement. Alongside scholarship and writing, Jessica A. Volz also brings extensive expertise in communications strategy and cross-cultural engagement.

• What inspired you to embark on the journey of researching and authoring your latest book, Visuality in the Novels of Austen, Radcliffe, Edgeworth and Burney? Why did you consider this subject/topic and what impact do you hope it will achieve?

My book draws from my doctoral research at the University of St Andrews. As a writer, scholar and visual artist with a keen interest in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, Ireland and France, I have long been fascinated by the role of vision, depiction and ekphrasis in fiction from this period. My extensive reading of novels published in Britain between 1778 and 1815, or between the start of the Anglo-French War and the Battle of Waterloo, opened my eyes to how women authors circumvented the gendered limits of description through their use of what is now referred to as ‘visuality’, a methodology empowering the mind’s eye and the continuum linking verbal and visual communication. I observed that the visual cues, analogues and references to the gaze in the novels of Jane Austen and her female contemporaries were more telling about the status of women than scholars had previously acknowledged – a gap I sought to address in monograph form. I opted to focus my investigation on four culturally representative women novelists who used visuality in different ways to comment on emotions, socio-economic conditions and gender politics while experimenting with and contributing to different approaches to the novel. I hope that my book will shed new light on literary constructs of women’s empowerment and continue to inspire scholars, writers and diplomats across the globe.

• Could you walk us through your writing process for this book? Were there particular challenges or obstacles you had to overcome? How would you characterise your approach to the writing process for this work, from concept to completion?

The writing of this book was done in phases, the first of which was my doctoral thesis. After passing my viva in October 2013, I decided to ‘shelve’ the manuscript for a couple of years, knowing that I was bound to return to it when the time was right. That urge took me by storm one day in 2015, and I revisited my manuscript with fresh gusto, often writing and rewriting passages late into the night.

One of the challenges I had to overcome was no longer being in a university setting. (I was an independent scholar working full-time as an editor for the Colorado and Denver Bar Associations’ publications: The Docket and Colorado Lawyer.) It was also difficult to be based in the United States, without access to the museums and libraries I had frequented while a doctoral student in Scotland. Nonetheless, thanks to technology and persistence, I was able to overcome these obstacles.

Once I had secured a book contract, I finalised my manuscript, addressing the input I had received from the peer reviewers. I also scrupulously obtained all the necessary permissions for the citations I had incorporated and created my own index. I had the great fortune to connect with Caroline Jane Knight, Jane Austen’s fifth-great-niece and founder of the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation, who generously agreed to write the foreword for my book.

One of the most critical steps was choosing an image for the cover. Since my book focussed on four women novelists publishing their fiction between 1778 and 1815, I wanted to feature artwork by an accomplished woman artist from the same period. I narrowed down the candidates to the only two female founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts: Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser. One painting in the Royal Academy’s collection immediately stood out to me: Summer (ca. 1780), by Mary Moser. The Royal Academy was delighted to learn of my book project, and I was able to secure reproduction rights for this artwork so that it could grace the cover of Visuality. Rather significantly, following Mary Moser’s death in 1819, and despite no explicit ban, women were excluded from the Academy for the next 168 years.

In summary, I would describe my writing process for this book as methodical, creative and, most of all, detail-oriented. Working simultaneously on publications scrutinised by thousands of lawyers instilled in me the need to be my own best critic – a status I am proud to maintain in my work as a freelance editor for the United Nations.

• In the course of your research or writing, what findings or insights most surprised you?

My research for this book was abound with discoveries. I was intrigued to learn that some of my ancestors hailed from Granard in County Longford, Ireland. Maria Edgeworth (whose relative the Abbé Edgeworth accompanied Louis XVI to the scaffold) spent most of her life in Edgeworthstown, just 12 km away. The same county in Ireland was also home to the family estate of Tom Lefroy, Carrigglas Manor. (After toying with Jane Austen’s heart, he went on to become Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.) Amazingly, the plaque dedicated to Madame D’Arblay (Frances Burney) at 11 Bolton Street in Mayfair is the earliest surviving official London plaque to a woman. Today, Burney’s former fame has been overshadowed by Jane Austen’s, which has ballooned 250 years after her birth. During a visit to King’s College Library at the University of Cambridge, I had the singular thrill of paging through the autograph manuscript of Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon. It was remarkable to see how steady her hand remained, even when her health was failing. 

•  Which writers, scholars or thinkers have most influenced your work?

The individuals who have most influenced my work are the writers whose novels my book examines – Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth and Frances Burney – and Mary Wollstonecraft, who proclaimed, ‘I do not wish [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.’ My research is also indebted to a long list of scholars, including my external examiner, Joe Bray, Janet Todd, Devoney Looser, Bharat Tandon, Amanda Foreman, Janine Barchas, Kathryn Sutherland, Paula Byrne, Claudia Johnson, John Mullan and Juliet McMaster, among others, who unknowingly motivated me to turn my doctoral thesis into a monograph. 

In his lecture ‘The Hero as Poet’ (1840), Thomas Carlyle coined the noun ‘visuality’ to refer to a succession of vivid pictures appearing in the mind’s eye within a culturally inspired analytical frame, a view I used as a starting point for my research. When I read Joseph Addison’s ‘The Pleasures of the Imagination’, published in The Spectator in 1712, I knew I was on the right track to offering new insights into visuality and the gender politics that shaped eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.

• Looking ahead, what areas of research or writing do you intend to focus on next?

There are many avenues that I would like to explore next, one of which is the evolution of heroine depiction during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I had the pleasure of revising the updated edition of 100,000 Years of Beauty (Éditions Gallimard), which was launched alongside the De toutes beautés ! exhibition at the Louvre Museum in November 2024. The fact that perceptions of ideals evolve and are culturally influenced has prompted me to apply this logic to understanding how and why the image of the heroine changed in literature and art during the Romantic Era. In addition, my present work as an editor for Nez, the Olfactory Magazine (Paris) and companion publications translated from French into English has inspired me to consider scent and fragrance as a literary device in novels of the period – an area that I am keen to pursue further.

• What factors influenced your decision to publish with Anthem Press?

While attending the Pride and Prejudice bicentenary conference at the University of Cambridge in 2013, I met Bharat Tandon, whose excellent book Jane Austen and the Morality of Conversation had been published by Anthem Press. Later, when I was evaluating potential publishers for my book on visuality, I immediately felt that the Anthem Nineteenth-Century Series, under the editorial direction of Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, would be a perfect fit. Its emphasis on spotlighting the most challenging and original work in the field while encouraging an approach that fosters connections between areas immediately held my attention. Moreover, I wanted a top-tier independent publisher that provided excellent support and global reach. Anthem Press is all that and more.