:Assessing Intelligence: The Bildungsroman and the Politics of Human Potential in England, 1860–1910

Abstract

I am happy to report that I found no serious shortcomings in Assessing Intelligence, as the book skillfully and persuasively intertwines literary and intellectual history and approaches literary texts in a manner that is both incisive and generous: although it notes the many contradictions that pervade the treatment of intelligence in the novels of Eliot, Hardy, James, Wells, and Woolf, Assessing Intelligence has the virtue of not thinking itself cleverer than the texts it analyzes. Among its other virtues are the clarity of writing (which should make it accessible even to those not thoroughly acquainted with Victorian literary and intellectual history) and the quality of close readings: to invoke just one example, Lyons’s treatment of The Mill on the Floss should be thoroughly illuminating even to seasoned scholars of Eliot’s fiction.