Dr Sara Lodge

Director of Research

Senior Lecturer

Researcher profile

Phone

+44 (0)1334 46 2641

Email

sjl15@st-andrews.ac.uk

Office

Room 301

Location

Kennedy Hall

 

Biography

Born and raised in Edinburgh, I gained my BA (Hons) from Cambridge and my D.Phil from Oxford, where I taught before coming to St Andrews. I specialise in 19th-century literature and culture, with a particular interest in popular culture and visual culture; writers who are also artists, musicians, natural scientists; and creative spaces such as 19th-century theatre and periodicals, where different forms of literary and artistic production meet and merge.

My most recent book, published by Yale University Press in September 2024, is The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective, which uncovers for the first time the world of real 19th-century female detectives while comparing their lives and work with the sensational myth of the female detective that flourished on the stage and page from the 1840s to the 1890s.

Previous work includes books about the hugely popular comic author, artist, and political protest writer Thomas Hood (1799-1845), the critical reception of Jane Eyre, and the extraordinary polymath Edward Lear (1812-1888), who was a nonsense poet, travel writer, composer, scientific depicter of new species of animal and bird, and a landscape painter. I am editor of an essay collection Literature in Transition: The 1820s (Cambridge University Press) which explores diverse aspects of the decade, from early science fiction to writing about vagrancy and bodysnatching.

As a journalist, I write for the Times Literary Supplement, Irish Times, Literary Review, and Washington Examiner. I've appeared on BBC Radio 3, Radio 4, and Radio Scotland, among other broadcasters, and enjoy co-producing and anchoring full-length radio documentaries, such as this one on Edward Lear in Ireland for Lyric FM.

I also work as a speechwriter, writing speeches predominantly on women's rights, education, and the pressing environmental issues that define our epoch. I am happy to supervise PhD students in any of my areas of interest.

Research areas

Nineteenth-century literature and culture, rhetoric, the literary essay and eco-criticism

PhD supervision

• Brenden Benjamin
• Alice Remmington
• Maitrayee Roychoudhury
• Bethany Gilbert
• Sam Hickford

Selected publications

• From Augustus’s Soup to Augustus Gloop: Punishing ‘Bad Eaters’ in Children’s Literature and Beyond

  Lodge, S., 1 Nov 2024, In: Victoriographies.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• The mysterious case of the Victorian female detective

  Lodge, S., 24 Sept 2024, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 359 p.

  Research output: Book/Report › Book

• 'Ladies in Lemon', Review of Decadent Women: Yellow Book Lives by Jad Adams

  Lodge, S., 3 Oct 2023, In: The Literary Review.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review

• Review of Francesca Mackenney’s Birdsong, Speech and Poetry: The art of composition in the long nineteenth century

  Lodge, S., 31 Mar 2023, In: TLS, The Times Literary Supplement. p. 23

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review

• Fantastic books and where to find them: libraries in fairytale and fantasy

  Lodge, S., 30 Sept 2022, Libraries in literature. Crawford, A. & Crawford, R. (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 233-244 12 p.

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

• Paul Pry and Elizabeth Fry: inspection and spectatorship in the social theatre of the 1820s

  Lodge, S. J., 1 Nov 2022, Remediating the 1820s. Sangster, M. & Mee, J. (eds.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, p. 118-136 13 p. (Edinburgh critical studies in romanticism).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

• "One of the Dumms": Lear, deafness and the wound of sound

  Lodge, S. J., 1 Aug 2020, In: Victorian Poetry. 58, 2, p. 121-133

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• John Clare's Landforms

  Lodge, S. J., 1 Sept 2020, Palgrave Advances in John Clare Studies. Kovesi, S. & Lafford, E. (eds.). Palgrave Macmillan, p. 87-109

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

• Nonsense: review of Edward Guiliano's Lewis Carroll: The Worlds of his 'Alices'

  Lodge, S., 23 Oct 2020, TLS, The Times Literary Supplement.

  Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Book/Film/Article review

• He and She: the 1880s, camp aesthetics and the literary magazine

  Lodge, S., 15 Oct 2019, Nineteenth-century literature in transition: the 1880s. Fielding, P. & Taylor, A. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 178-199 22 p. (Nineteenth-century literature in transition).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

 

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