Degrees:
D.Phil., Somerville College, Oxford
M.St., Somerville College, Oxford
M.A., Univ. College, Univ. of London
B.A., Univ. College, Univ. of London
Professor Bilston's research focuses on literature of the British Victorian period.
Her first academic book, The Awkward Age in Women’s Popular Fiction, 1850-1900: Girls and the Transition to Womanhood, was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press. Her second, The Promise of the Suburbs: A Victorian History in Literature and Culture was published by Yale University Press in 2019 and was a "Choice" Outstanding Academic Title.
Her new book, The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder & Obsession, will be published by Harvard University Press on May 6, 2025, and earned a Kirkus Starred Review. Professor Bilston has also published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, such as Victorian Literature and Culture, Victorian Review, Cusp, and ELT, and two novels, Bed Rest (published in 2006 in nine languages) and Sleepless Nights (2009) with HarperCollins. Professor Bilston teaches a wide range of courses in Victorian literature, from 100 level introductory courses, to 200 level topic-based seminars (eg “Victorian Short Fiction”) and upper-level seminars (eg “British Literature of the 1890s"). She was a Digital Humanities Fellow in AY 2021-22. Bilston was very happy to receive the Thomas Church Brownell Prize for Teaching Excellence in 2017. Her website is at www.sarahbilston.org. |
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Victorian literature
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Literature of the home and suburbs
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Children's literature
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ENGL-160
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Introduction to Literary Studies
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ENGL-260
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Introduction to Literary Studies
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ENGL-358
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Victorian Literature and Social Crisis
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FYSM-109
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Fairy Tales and Children's Literature
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Victorian fiction
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Nineteenth-century prose
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Representations of adolescence; children's literature
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Victorian literature of the home and the suburbs
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Victorian gardens and plant-hunting
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Books:
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The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder & Obsession. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2025.
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The Promise of the Suburbs: A Victorian History in Literature and Culture. Yale University Press, 2019.
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Sleepless Nights. HarperCollins, 2009.
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Bed Rest. HarperCollins, 2006.
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The Awkward Age in Women's Popular Fiction, 1850-1900: Girls and the Transition to Womanhood (1850-1900). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Selected Articles:
- "Competing for Celebrity: Sarah Grand, Matilda Betham-Edwards, and Mid-Victorian Memories." Cusp: Late Nineteenth-Century and Twentieth-Century Cultures 3 (2025): 28-58.
- "The Intrastructures of Plant-Hunting." Victorian Literature and Culture 52 (2024): 375-80.
- ‘“Pictures, Plants and Ornaments”: Jane Ellen Panton and Creative Practice in the British Victorian Suburbs.’ Ilja Van Damme, Ruth McManus & Michiel Dehaene, eds. Suburban Creativity. Toronto: U of Toronto Press; forthcoming. [Global Suburbanisms Series]
- “‘The Most Extraordinary Novel of Modern Times’: Collaborative Fiction in The Gentlewoman.” Victorian Literature and Culture 50 (2022): 669-92.
- “‘Your Vile Suburbs Can Offer Nothing But The Deadness Of The Grave’: The Stereotyping of Early Victorian Suburbia.” Victorian Literature and Culture 41 (2013): 621-42.
- “They Congregate in Towns and Suburbs”: The Shape of Middle-Class Life in John Claudius Loudon’s The Suburban Gardener.” Victorian Review 37 (2011): 144-59.
- “Queens of the Garden: Victorian Women Gardeners and the Rise of the Gardening Advice Text.” Victorian Literature and Culture 36 (2008): 1-19.
- “It is Not What We Read, But How We Read”: Maternal Counsel on Girls’ Reading Practices in Mid-Victorian Literature.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 30 (2008): 1-20.
- “Authentic Performance in Theatrical Women’s Fictions of the 1870s.” Women’s Writing 11 (2004): 39-53.
- “Conflict and Ambiguity in Victorian Women’s Writing: Eliza Lynn Linton and the Possibilities of Agnosticism.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Writing 23 (Fall 2004).
- “A New Reading of the Anglo-Indian Women’s Novel (1880-1894): Passages to India, Passages to Womanhood.” English Literature in Transition 44 (2001): 320-341.
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- Kirkus Starred Review, 2025, for The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder & Obsession (Harvard University Press, 2025)
- Fellow, Linnean Society of London (elected Spring 2023)
- NEH Fellowship, Jan-June 2023
- NEW Summer Stipend Recipient, June-August 2022
- Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2019 for The Promise of the Suburbs: A Victorian History in Literature and Culture (Yale University Press, 2019)
- Thomas Church Brownell Prize for Teaching Excellence, 2017
- Junior Research Fellowship, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, England 2000-2001
- British Academy Studentship, 1996-9
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