Scholarship

Books

Romantic Liars, Palgrave-Macmillan 2006. Lee unfolds the stories of six women with a cast of supporting characters such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Benjamin Franklin, Stamford Raffles and Napoleon against the grand narrative of England’s 18th century empire building. This book is a meticulously researched, spellbinding tale of tragedy, transformation and triumph in the age of reason. See reviews in WSU Magazine, The TLS, RoN, and WSU Today

Literature, Science and Exploration, Cambridge 2004. Paperback 2007. (with Tim Fulford and Peter J. Kitson). In 1768, Captain James Cook made the most important scientific voyage of the eighteenth century. He was not alone: scores of explorers like Cook, travelling in the name of science, brought new worlds and new peoples within the horizon of European knowledge for the first time. Their discoveries changed the course of science. Old scientific disciplines, such as astronomy and botany, were transformed; new ones, like craniology and comparative anatomy, were brought into being. Scientific disciplines, in turn, pushed literature of the period towards new subjects, forms and styles. Works as diverse as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Wordsworth’s Excursion responded to the explorers’ and scientists’ latest discoveries. This wide-ranging and well-illustrated study shows how literary Romanticism arose partly in response to science’s appropriation of explorers’ encounters with foreign people and places and how it, in turn, changed the profile of science and exploration. ‘A wonderfully provocative book.’ CLIO
“This well-written, meticulously researched book should be in every collection supporting the study of Romantic literature. Essential.” Choice
‘A well-researched and fascinating book.’ MLR

Travels, Explorations and Empires, Routledge 2002. Volume 5.

Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation, Routledge 1999. 8 Volumes. Lead General Editor (with Peter J. Kitson, Anne Mellor, and James Walvin) and editor of Volume 3.

Selected Essays, Chapters, & Reviews

Traveling in Wilderness, The Cambridge History of Travel Writing

The Colonial Art of Demonizing Others: A Global Perspective,  New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids

Preverse Romanticism (with Jenna Leeds), Modern Philology

History of the Essay (with Rachel Sanchez), Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Romanticism

Lost Girls, Lost Women, Prisms