Marilyn Butler


Marilyn Speers Butler, Lady Butler, FRSA, FRSL, FBA was a British literary critic. She was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge from 1986 to 1993, and Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, from 1993 to 2004. She was the first female head of a formerly all male Oxford or Cambridge college.

Biography

Marilyn Speers Evans was born in Coombe, Kingston upon Thames on 11 February 1937. Her father, Sir Trevor Maldwyn Evans was a journalist and her mother was Margaret Speers, née Gribbin. At the age of two, she was evacuated with her mother and elder brother tto New Quay in Wales, where she remained until the end of World War II. She was educated at Wimbledon High School and St Hilda's College, Oxford, graduating with a first class degree in English in 1958. She found a role as a school teacher, but in 1960 she took on a role with the BBC as a journalist. On 3 March 1962, she was married to David Butler; the couple had three sons.
After being diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2004, Butler's health declined and she died at Headington Care Home, Oxford on 11 March 2014 as a result of a respiratory tract infection.

Career

In the early 1960s, Butler left journalism, and returned to academia, completing her doctorate thesis in 1966 in Oxford. She received a research fellowship at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Her published works include Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries and Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Much of her work was devoted to the career of the Anglo-Irish Romantic novelist Maria Edgeworth, a relative of her husband, including a classic literary biography and an important edition of her collected works for Pickering & Chatto.
In June 2003 she was awarded an honorary degree from the Open University as Doctor of the University. Butler was a Fellow of the British Academy.

Works

Books