This talk will examine what the Jon A. Lindseth Lewis Carroll Collection can tell us about the lives of the girls and women Lewis Carroll befriended during a time of change in Victorian Oxford, with an emphasis on Edith Rix, Xie Kitchin, and Julia Arnold.  In the 1860s and 1870s, as the rules against college fellows marrying loosened, middle class girls and women came to Oxford in greater numbers than ever before. The girls that Lewis Carroll befriended and photographed during these years were the daughters of a new breed of liberal academics; they were born into what Adam Kuper has called the intellectual bourgeoisie, and came of age just as greater educational, artistic, and employment opportunities opened up for girls and women. 

Karen Bourrier is Professor of English at the University of Calgary, Canada, where she specialises in women's writing and Victorian literature and culture. Her work has appeared in journals including Victorian Studies and English Literary History. Most recently, she is the author of Victorian Bestseller: The Life of Dinah Craik (University of Michigan Press, 2019).

Date: Thursday 22 May 2025

Time:  5.30pm

Venue: Sir Michael Dummett Lecture Theatre, Christ Church, St Aldates, Oxford OX1 1DP

Entry: Free of charge (booking is essential)

Access: Enter via Tom Gate on St Aldates

Please book here.