Deborah Lutz

Deborah Lutz teaches Victorian literature and culture at the University of Louisville where she holds the Thruston B. Morton Endowed Chair.

She is the author of five books, most recently Victorian Paper Art and Craft: Writers and their Materials, which considers how authors used the materials of writing (and of reading and handcraft) for inspiration, experimentation, and creative composition. In doing so, Lutz recasts the sensory history of working on and with paper.

Her previous book, The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects, uses artifacts that belonged to the Brontës (jewelry, desks, walking sticks, needlework, and more) to tell a history of intimacy. What results is an account of women’s work in the home (including the labor of writing) and of close, collaborative relations between sisters.

The book was shortlisted for the PEN/Weld Award for Biography. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation at the Huntington Library, and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She is currently writing a biography of Emily Brontë.