Dr Sara Lyons
About
Sara’s 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. Her 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.
Sara’s current project is a study of how late 19th- and early 20th 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.
Sara is currently the PI on the AHRC-funded project, ‘Literary Culture, Meritocracy and the Assessment of Intelligence in Britain and America, 1880-1920’. For more information, please visit the project website.