
What Do Artists Read?: The Private Library of Artists Mary and George Watts – GI 25 214
24 November 2025 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm GMT
Tutor: Dr Lucy Ella Rose
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What did famous Victorian artists read? This workshop offers a rare glimpse into the private library of Mary and George Watts at their Surrey studio-home. Mary’s diaries record the couple’s thoughts on their readings in the ‘niche’ (their reading nook), revealing their interest in influential writers like Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Jane Austen, George Meredith, Alfred Tennyson and Henrik Ibsen – to name just a few! Learn more about the Wattses’ worldviews and broader dialogues between art and literature in the Victorian era.
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Office hours are Monday to Friday 9.30am to 5.00pm

About the Speaker
Dr Lucy Ella Rose
Lucy Ella completed her PhD at the University of Surrey in 2015, before joining the School of Literature and Languages as Teaching Fellow in 2016 and Lecturer in Victorian Literature in 2017. Her doctoral studentship, awarded by the University of Surrey and Watts Gallery (Surrey) in their first collaboration, supported her research on women in nineteenth-century creative partnerships. These included Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mary and George Frederic Watts, and Evelyn and William De Morgan. Lucy Ella has worked extensively on the Mary Watts archive at Watts Gallery and assisted the transcription of her diaries for publication.
Lucy Ella specialises in Victorian literature, art, culture and feminism (their connections and intersections), with an interest in late-Victorian creative partnerships, focusing on neglected female figures. Her publications include a monograph, Suffragist Artists in Partnership: Gender, Word and Image (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), and book chapters and articles on Victorian women's life writing, visual culture, artistic marriages, creative circles and early feminist networks.
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