About

To date, my research has concentrated primarily on Victorian poetry and critical prose; aestheticism, decadence, and the culture of fin-de-siècle; and the interrelations between literature, religion, and secularism in the long nineteenth century. My first book, A. C. Swinburne and Walter Pater: Victorian Aestheticism, Doubt, and Secularisation (Legenda, 2015) examined the relationship between the emergence of literary aestheticism and arguments over the meaning of religious doubt and secularisation in late Victorian England.

My current project is a study of how late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novelists conceptualised and represented human intelligence, particularly in the context of the bildungsroman and in relation to modern efforts to render intelligence measurable in the interests of a meritocratic ideal. This project will focus on Thomas Hardy, George Gissing, Sarah Grand, Henry James, and H. G. Wells, among other figures.

Staff profile

https://www.kent.ac.uk/english/staff/lyons.html

Last updated 13th October 2020