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Mary Watts’s Diaries: from Wellbeing to Women’s Rights (Online) – GI 25 215

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26 January 2026 @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm GMT

Tutor: Dr Lucy Ella Rose

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Details

Date: 26 January 2026
Time:
10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Cost:
£16.25 – £18.50
Reference Code:
GI 25 215
Location:
Ward Street
Guildford, Surrey GU1 4LH

Overview

Explore unpublished passages from Mary Watts’s diaries, documenting her views on art, spirituality, wellbeing and feminism. Little is known about the wife of ‘England’s Michelangelo’ George Frederic Watts, but her diaries offer an exclusive insight into the questions and concerns that preoccupied her behind closed doors. These tiny, almost illegible diaries record the highs and lows of her life with George in Surrey until his death. We will work with transcriptions as well as copies of the original diaries, replicating a visit to the archives.

Tags

Mary Watts, Self Portrait, 1882, Image from Watts Gallery

Tickets

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GI 25 215 - Mary Watts's Diaries: from Wellbeing to Women's Rights - Non-Member (Online)
£ 18.50
25 available

01483 562142

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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