Christopher Lane, a British-American literary critic and intellectual historian, is the Pearce Miller Research Professor of Literature at Northwestern University. He is known for his work on 19th- and 20th-century literature and psychology, particularly its emphasis on emotion and desire.

Born and educated in London, Lane received his Ph.D. from the University of London and is the author of four books: The Ruling Passion (Duke, 1995), The Burdens of Intimacy (Chicago, 1999), Hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England (Columbia, 2004, 2006), and Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness (Yale, 2007; French, Japanese, and Korean translations forthcoming with Editions Flammarion, Kawade Shobo, and Hankyoreh Publishing, respectively).

He has also edited two books: The Psychoanalysis of Race (Columbia, 1998) and Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis (Chicago, 2001). And he has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal Online, New York Sun, International Herald Tribune, and New Statesman and Society, as well as published more than fifty peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Raritan, Novel, Victorian Studies, Common Knowledge, and the Oxford Literary Review.

Lane's work has been supported by fellowships from the British Academy, the Mellon Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is completing a book on Victorian agnosticism entitled Failing Gods: A Century of Doubt (under contract with Yale University Press).