Melissa Bailes

(Residential Fellow, 2020-21)

Melissa Bailes

Regenerating Romanticism: Botany, Sensibility, and Originality in British Literature, 1750-1830

Melissa Bailes is an associate professor of English at Tulane University, specializing in British literature of the long eighteenth century (1660-1830), the history of science, transatlantic and transnational studies, and women’s writing. Her first book, Questioning Nature: British Women’s Scientific Writing and Literary Originality, 1750-1830 (University of Virginia Press), won the British Society for Literature and Science 2017 Book Prize.  During her fellowship at the Linda Hall Library, she consulted archival texts and images informing her second book, Regenerating Romanticism: Botany, Sensibility, and Originality in British Literature, 1750-1830 (University of Virginia Press, 2023).