Dr. Carly Watson

Biography

Carly Watson is a departmental lecturer in bibliographic and textual criticism at the Faculty of English, University of Oxford, where she has been working since 2017. She earned her PhD from the University of Birmingham in 2014 with a focus on an important under-researched collection of books donated to Winchester College in the eighteenth century. Her research spans late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poetry, print culture, the history of books and manuscripts, and digital humanities. Watson’s work includes overseeing the Digital Miscellanies Index, which documents the contents of 1,750 verse collections from 1557 to 1800, and she is currently completing a monograph titled 'Miscellanies, Poetry, Authorship, 1680-1800', set to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book explores the impact of miscellany forms on writing, publishing, and reading poetry during this era. Watson also teaches graduate courses on bibliography and book history and has given undergraduate lectures on authors like Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. Additionally, she is actively involved in community engagement through workshops that connect the eighteenth-century culture with modern audiences, supported by the Novel Impressions network.

Research Interests