1915, "The Advertising Manager and His House", Printer's Ink, Volume 90, No. 1 (1/7/1915) p3
If there be any Jacob Marleys, who have no bowels, alive in this our day they had best keep out of it.
1988, Nicholas Kenyon, Authenticity and Early Music, A Symposium, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, illustrated, page 156:
It visits us now like the ghost of Jacob Marley weighted down by generations of accrued tradition (some might wish to continue the Marley metaphor and call them accrued misdeeds), made crushingly palpable in Furtwängler’s unforgettably hamfisted continuo chords, banged out at full Bechstein blast with left hand coll’ottava.
1994, Anna Quindlen, "Every Day, Angels", The New York Times, 14 Dec 1994 p A23
Founded by three anti-Marleys, Wall Street traders who cleaned up bigtime in the 80's and decided to invest in empathy, the foundation gives money to groups that shelter, feed and fight for the city's poor.
2002, Dale Mcgowan, Calling Bernadette's Bluff (Xlibris) p. 118
"Connor, she's your mom. She doesn't have a chain." Yeah, right. She's a regular Jacob Marley.
2006 R. T. Smith, "Little Sorrel", in Uke Rivers Delivers (LSU Press) p. 107
Maybe, I thought, it was some joker outside whistling through the canvas, but before I could get on my feet, the noise came back, sharp as a razor. It was a Jacob Marley moment.
2004, Robin Schwarz, Night Swimming, Hachette Digital, →ISBN, unpaged:
“I feel like Jacob Marley in these things.[…] You know, Jacob Marley, the ghost of Christmas past.”
2010, Ezra Ace Caraeff, "Blaze of our Lives", The Portland Mercury (11 Feb 2010) p. 21
Durant is the Jacob Marley of Portland's draft days past, haunting the team that unwisely chose Oden instead of him as the first selection in the 2007 lottery.
2010, Justin Cronin, The Passage, Ballantine Books, Random House, →ISBN, illustrated, page 351:
They followed her with their question, dragging it like a chain, like the one she'd read about in the story of the ghost, Jacob Marley.
2012, Brian Norman, Dead Women Talking: Figures of Injustice in American Literature, →ISBN, page 93:
Nor is she exactly a grand tormentor from beyond, Roy's own Jacob Marley.