Declaring genius: Literary and scientific claims of artistic genius in late-Victorian Britain

This dissertation studies the struggle between late-Victorian authors and scientists over producing and circulating scientific and cultural ideas of creative genius. Beginning in the 1860s when Francis Galton asserted that genius is a biological fact, scientists began "studying" genius, specifically artistic genius, in an attempt to identify the origins and nature of geniuses. Their conclusions characterized geniuses as anything from superior artists meant to revitalize the health of the race to degenerate beings who were perpetuating a wide-spread devolution through the circulation of their art. Furthermore, these writers---including professional scientists and popular writers hailing from the fields of biology, psychology, education, sociology, drama, journalism, art, and others---examined the personalities, health, temperament, intelligence, and creativity of authors while at the same time made claims about the superiority of their artistic output. This new form of artistic criticism held enormous implications for authors who sought the label of genius to achieve critical and commercial success, specifically because these genius theories circulated within both scientific and cultural spheres.;The changes in genius theories through the final decades of the nineteenth century indicate a preoccupation with genius in order to both preserve "good" genius and eradicate "bad" genius. Artists found themselves amongst these shifting discourses and responded to such characterizations within their work. Therefore, I explore the ways in which authors contended with scientific ideas about their creative genius either through fictional portrayals of artistic geniuses or through representations of real-life literary geniuses. More specifically, I consider how the authors Amy Levy, Sarah Grand, and Oscar Wilde battled for control over their artistic genius in order to establish a place for themselves as geniuses and, in the process, to change the discourse about who could be a genius and who would have the power to decide this.