Sara Lodge

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.

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

History and practice of speechwriting.