Vernon Lee and the Future of Intelligence (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3032156599 ISBN 13: 9783032156594

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2026

Synopsis

This volume is the first interdisciplinary collection interrogating the writings of the writer and public intellectual Vernon Lee (1856-1935) on intelligence. It brings together 13 academics from the UK, Europe, Australia, China, and North America and from disciplines including literature, philosophy, history and cultural studies, to examine Lee’s writing (both creative and critical) on intelligence and its implications for the future. Drawing inspiration from Lee’s Proteus, or the Future of Intelligence (1925), chapter authors examine Lee’s harnessing of intelligence as both concept and process in areas as diverse as material culture, the built environment, gender, ethics and values, ecology, non-violent pacifism, and science. In doing so, they showcase the astonishing prescience and relevance of much of Lee’s writing for us in the 21st century.

About this title

About the Author

Sally Blackburn-Daniels is the Impact Acceleration Fellow at Teesside University, UK. They have co-organised several conferences on Lee, including Dedication: Unfurling Vernon Lee’s Kinship Networks (2024), Vernon Lee, Empathy and Aesthetics (2022) and Vernon Lee 2019: An Anniversary Conference (2019) and Order and Chaos: Vernon Lee's Politics of Disruption (2026). They are long-term collaborators with Associazione Culturale il Palmerino (Florence) and worked with them on the first theatrical performance of Lee's The Ballet of the Nations. 

Shafquat Towheed is Director of Research in the School of Arts and Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at The Open University, UK, where he also directs the OpenARC Research Centre and the History of Books and Reading research group. He is a Vice-President and founding member of the International Vernon Lee Society (IVLS) and is currently Vice President of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). His most recent publication (with Corinna Norrick-Rühl) is Bookshelves in the Age of the COVID-19 Pandemic (2022).

From the Back Cover

This volume is the first interdisciplinary collection interrogating the writings of the writer and public intellectual Vernon Lee (1856-1935) on intelligence. It brings together 13 academics from the UK, Europe, Australia, China, and North America and from disciplines including literature, philosophy, history and cultural studies, to examine Lee’s writing (both creative and critical) on intelligence and its implications for the future. Drawing inspiration from Lee’s Proteus, or the Future of Intelligence (1925), chapter authors examine Lee’s harnessing of intelligence as both concept and process in areas as diverse as material culture, the built environment, gender, ethics and values, ecology, non-violent pacifism, and science. In doing so, they showcase the astonishing prescience and relevance of much of Lee’s writing for us in the 21st century.

Sally Blackburn-Daniels is the Impact Acceleration Fellow at Teesside University, UK. They have co-organised several conferences on Lee, including Dedication: Unfurling Vernon Lee’s Kinship Networks (2024), Vernon Lee, Empathy and Aesthetics (2022) and Vernon Lee 2019: An Anniversary Conference (2019) and Order and Chaos: Vernon Lee's Politics of Disruption (2026). They are long-term collaborators with Associazione Culturale il Palmerino (Florence) and worked with them on the first theatrical performance of Lee's The Ballet of the Nations. 

Shafquat Towheed is Director of Research in the School of Arts and Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at The Open University, UK, where he also directs the OpenARC Research Centre and the History of Books and Reading research group. He is a Vice-President and founding member of the International Vernon Lee Society (IVLS) and is currently Vice President of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). His most recent publication (with Corinna Norrick-Rühl) is Bookshelves in the Age of the COVID-19 Pandemic (2022).

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3032156599
• ISBN 13: 9783032156594
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Blackburn-Daniels Sally, Towheed Shafquat