Author and English professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will visit Mississippi State University on Wednesday for the Humanities’ Distinguished Lecture Series.

Students can attend Nancy Henry’s presentation, “Women and the Victorian Culture of Investment,” in McCool Hall’s Rogers Auditorium at 4 p.m.

Henry is the author of “George Eliot and the British Empire,” “Victorian Investments: New Perspectives on Finance and Culture” and “The Life of George Eliot.”

Her work focuses on Victorian literature and culture, 19th-century finance, imperialism and colonialism. According to a news release, Henry will discuss women’s use of investments to find independence.

Henry said in a news release the importance of looking at investments of women in the past, as it directly relates to modern women in the 21st-century global society.

“So women have been investing for a long time, and yet even today women are not as knowledgeable about managing their money as men,” she said.

Students will participate in a discussion of the relevance of 19th-century finance.

“By studying the past, we can see that the subject of women’s financial independence has an interesting history, and that the history continues today,” Henry said.