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Victorian Empiricism: Self, Knowledge and Reality in Ruskin, Bain, Lewes, Spencer and George Eliot

This monograph contributes to Victorian literature, literary theory, the history of science, and the interdisciplinary study of philosophy and literature. In addition to its extensive engagement with nineteenth-century fiction, poetry, painting, and photography, it analyses a large body of non-fictional prose in multiple editions, much of which is discussed here for the first time. Research necessitated access to primary materials in Glasgow University Library's Special Collections Department, the National Library of Scotland and the British Library. The book's argument draws on a variety of intellectual figures from Spinoza to Derrida in rethinking the British empiricist tradition.