Elisabeth Jay

Professor Emerita of English, Oxford Brookes University

Elisabeth Jay’s interests lie predominantly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: she has published widely on fiction, prose and poetry of this period. Her most recent book is British Writers and Paris 1830–1875 (Oxford University Press, 2016). Among the Victorian women writers upon whom she has worked, she has a particular interest in Margaret Oliphant whose biography she has written and whose autobiography she has edited. She is also joint general editor of a 25-volume Pickering & Chatto series devoted to Oliphant’s works. Her other major interest is the interdisciplinary area of literature and theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: she is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology (2007).

Jean-Michel Yvard

Associate Professor of English, University of Angers

Jean-Michel Yvard’s main research interests are in the history of ideas in nineteenth-century Britain. He has published widely on the secularization of religious and ethical conceptions; on agnosticism and atheism; and on the links between religion and science, philosophy and literature. His doctoral thesis, defended in 2011 at the University of Sorbonne-Nouvelle, was entitled ‘William Hale White (“Mark Rutherford”) and the Crisis of Spirituality in Britain during the Victorian Era’. He is the author of many articles and book chapters on William Hale White.