This volume is the first interdisciplinary collection interrogating the writings of the writer and public intellectual Vernon Lee (1856-1935) on intelligence. It brings together 13 academics from the UK, Europe, Australia, China, and North America and from disciplines including literature, philosophy, history and cultural studies, to examine Lee’s writing (both creative and critical) on intelligence and its implications for the future. Drawing inspiration from Lee’s Proteus, or the Future of Intelligence (1925), chapter authors examine Lee’s harnessing of intelligence as both concept and process in areas as diverse as material culture, the built environment, gender, ethics and values, ecology, non-violent pacifism, and science. In doing so, they showcase the astonishing prescience and relevance of much of Lee’s writing for us in the 21st century.

Sally Blackburn-Daniels is the Impact Acceleration Fellow at Teesside University, UK. They have co-organised several conferences on Lee, including Dedication: Unfurling Vernon Lee’s Kinship Networks (2024), Vernon Lee, Empathy and Aesthetics (2022) and Vernon Lee 2019: An Anniversary Conference (2019) and Order and Chaos: Vernon Lee's Politics of Disruption (2026). They are long-term collaborators with Associazione Culturale il Palmerino (Florence) and worked with them on the first theatrical performance of Lee's The Ballet of the Nations.