Lydia Brown headshot

Lydia Brown

Research Associate and Lecturer

My research centers the theory and history of the nineteenth-century British novel: most recently, the ways midcentury novels change at the hands of earlier-century lyric forms. I’m increasingly drawn to the interstices of realism, the everyday, and address, but at the heart of my work is a sustained preoccupation with aesthetic forms and their collisions over time. I am currently completing my Ph.D. in English Language & Literature at the University of Virginia (expected graduation 2023), and I received my B.A. in English Literature, summa cum laude and with highest departmental honors, from The College of William & Mary in 2017. My current dissertation project, “Being Other: The Novelized Lyric in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel,” articulates a form and theory of novelistic prose’s hybridization with lyric. I approach this central concern from several different vantage points, including realism and obscure metaphor, queerness and address, and lyric and impossibility. One of this project’s broadest arguments is that the novel and the lyric co-constitute one another, both in form and history. Previously, I’ve written on pronouns, marginalia, poetics, and Emily Brontë for various peer-reviewed publications, including Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, as well as contemporary Irish fiction for The Millions.
Education
The College of William & Mary 2017
B.A. in English/minor in music
Summa cum laude
           
Academic Publications
"Absent Emily: Ecstasy, Transgression, and Negative Space in Three Emily Bronte Poems." Victorians: A Journal of Literature and Culture Emily Bronte Bicentenary Issue, Winter 2018.
Poetry Publications
“Hunger” in Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Winter 2018.
“Broken Heater” in Reservoir. May 2018.
Nonfiction Publications
"Myths and Fables: on Sexual Violence in Fiona Mozley's Elmet ." The Millions February 2018.
Conferences
 
"Absent Emily: Ecstasy, Transgression, and Negative Space in Three Emily Bronte Poems." Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies. San Francisco, CA. March 2018.