Vernon Lee and the Future of Intelligence | Springer Nature Link

It is with the greatest pleasure that we announce the publication of Vernon Lee and the Future of Intelligence (2026, Palgrave Macmillan), edited by Sally Blackburn-Daniels and Shafquat Towheed. Like Lee’s shape-shifting Proteus, the collection moves freely across borders and disciplines, uniting scholars from around the world in the very first interdisciplinary study of her thinking on intelligence, a subject she explored most profoundly in her Proteus; Or, The Future of Intelligence (1925). The contributions gathered here grew out of papers delivered at the memorable The Future of Intelligence: A Multidisciplinary Vernon Lee Conference, hosted by the Associazione Culturale Il Palmerino and the British Institute of Florence in 2023. Now, a century after Proteus first appeared, Lee’s reflections return to us with uncanny timeliness in an age when artificial intelligence dominates public and scholarly debate.

Our warmest congratulations to the editors and to contributors Max Saunders, Joseph Bristow, Derek Matravers, Frankie Dytor, Lucinda Janson, Nicole Fluhr, Ingrid Hanson, Mary Clai Waters, Chunlin Men, and Matthew Bradley on this timely and pioneering work!