Serena Trowbridge

Please describe yourself and your areas of interest.

Dr Serena Trowbridge is Reader in Victorian Literature at Birmingham City University, where she teaches modules on literature and nineteenth-century psychology, poetry, Victorian literature, and Gothic. Her research interests include Pre-Raphaelitism in art and literature, Ruskin, Victorian poetry, Gothic, the environment in literature (eco-criticism) and Victorian institutions. Publications include My Ladys Soul: The Poetry of Elizabeth Siddall (Victorian Secrets 2018), Christina Rossetti’s Gothic (Bloomsbury 2013), Co-editor (with Dinah Roe) and contributor to Victoriographies, a special issue in 2020 to mark the 150th anniversary of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Poems, Pre-Raphaelite Masculinities, edited collection with Amelia Yeates (Ashgate 2014).

Why did you become a Companion of the Guild?

Ruskin has always been on the periphery of my research, but he is also central to my understanding of nineteenth-century thought. This is the academic approach, but I also find myself increasingly engaging with his ideas personally, in his defence of the environment and education, and in his approach to art as both critic and artist. The Guild’s continuing support for and promotion of Ruskin’s ideals chimes strongly with my own beliefs.

Web links: cultureandanarchy.org, www.bcu.ac.uk/english/staff/serena-trowbridge, bmi.org.uk, www.pre-raphaelitesociety.org