Teresa Michals, Professor of English, delivered this year's Scott Pollard Lecture on October 8 at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA. Her talk, "Writing Lydia: A Real-Life Regency Romance," offered insights into her ongoing research and current writing project: a novelistic biography of Lydia Gordon, an early 19th-century British woman "whose lady-like modesty destroyed evidence of the romance that her less lady-like determination allowed her to live."
"Lydia Ward and Captain James Gordon spent seven years yearning for each other, separated by insufficient property and a powerful sense of duty to family and country," Michals writes in her abstract for the talk. "They married in 1812, soon after James’s right leg was blown off by a French cannon. Their courtship sounds like a novel by Jane Austen—which is unsurprising, given that James and Lydia moved in the same naval circles as did Austen’s admiral brothers—and they enjoyed a decades-long delightfully companionate marriage. James’s love letters to Lydia survive, but Lydia burned nearly all her letters because she feared they revealed improperly ardent feelings. Clearly, she was no rebel against social constraints on women of her class and time; however, within those constraints, she acted with decisiveness and courage. Lydia Gordon found confidence and freedom in married life with the man she chose for her husband—a man who, in the words of their daughters, recognized and valued in her 'a strength of character perhaps unsuspected by those who did not know her well.'"
Before her work on the new book, Michals previously published scholarly work on James Gordon for specialists in disability and naval history. Lydia: A Real-Life Regency Romance builds on archival research, visits to historic locations, and writerly creativity with both a new challenge—"How can we tell the story of a woman who burned her own writing?"—and a new audience in mind.
"I now hope that a novelistic biography that puts Lydia at the center of their story will reach general readers," Michael says, "especially Austen fans who like a polite but determined heroine."
Michals' previous books include Books for Children, Books for Adults:Age and the Novel from Defoe to James and Lame Captains and Left-Handed Admirals: Amputee Officers in Nelson’s Navy.
Newport University
The Scott Pollard Lecture Series was inaugurated in Fall 2022 to honor Pollard, who retired in Spring of that year after 30 years as a professor and mentor to many in Christopher Newport's English Department, teaching and publishing on comparative literature, children’s literature, literary theory, disability studies, and foodways. The lecture series invites nationally recognized scholars, artists, and public intellectuals to campus to speak on these and other topics.
In addition to delivering the lecture, Michals joined students and faculty for lunch and more informal conversation.
October 17, 2025