Dr Amy Wilcockson
Daiches-Manning Memorial Fellow, January - March, 2026
Home Institution: Queen Mary University of London
Dr Amy Wilcockson is a Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London, assisting with the new edition of the letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley (contracted with Oxford University Press). Prior to this role, she was a Research Assistant at the University of Glasgow, on ‘The Works of Robert Fergusson: Reconstructing Textual and Cultural Legacies’ project. Her edition of the selected letters of the neglected Scottish Romantic poet, Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) is forthcoming with Liverpool University Press. She is also the Communications Officer for the British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS).
Project title: The ‘Edinburgh University Coterie’: Networks of Cultural Influence in the 1790s and 1800s
Through analysing unique material in Edinburgh collections, Amy’s project examines a remarkable circle of University of Edinburgh classmates who achieved precocious cultural influence in the 1790s and 1800s and became leading figures in politics, law and literature. Often working collaboratively in a homosocial environment, these men reconfigured eighteenth-century thought and society, bringing Scottish ideas, ideals and stories to the heart of British culture. The group includes The Edinburgh Review founders Sydney Smith (1771-1845), Francis Horner (1778-1817), Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), and Henry Brougham (1778-1868), author and judge Henry Cockburn (1779-1854), and the poets Walter Scott (1771-1832) and Thomas Campbell (1777-1844). The group went on to share professional and personal highs and lows together, including the commencement and continued success of the Edinburgh Review, the foundation of the London University, Royal divorce trials, and numerous literary endeavours that established Edinburgh as a cultural centre that could contend with London. While some coterie members are recognised for individual achievements, the collaborative underpinnings of their successes have not been properly examined. This project will analyse their writings, periodicals, and little-studied correspondence to reveal the extent to which the group relied on each other for creative and critical support and explore how these relationships informed the members’ later successes.