Spurgeon, Caroline, F. E. (Caroline Frances Eleanor), 1869-1942

Caroline Spurgeon was born in India on 24 October 1869, the daughter of Christopher Spurgeon, a Captain in the 36th Foot, and Caroline Dunsmuir (according to the record of her baptism in the India Office births, marriages and deaths records, Vol. 130 folio 65). Her mother died giving birth to her (see letter of 1 May 1910 in PP7/1/2), and her father appears to have married again, but himself died in 1874. She was educated at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire; Dresden, Germany; and King's College and University College, London; Quain Essayist and Morley Medallist, University College London, 1898; First Class Final Honours in English, Oxford University, 1899. For Michaelmas Term 1899, she acted as assistant to Miss Lee, Tutor and Lecturer to the Association for the Education of Women, but then for family reasons had to give up work for some months. From May 1900 she was lecturing in London: she was appointed Lecturer in English Literature under the London School Board, giving weekly lectures in the Evening Continuation Schools at South Hackney, and on Shakespeare in Welwyn, Hertfordshire. She was appointed to the staff of Bedford College, University of London, in 1901: Assistant Lecturer in English, 1901-1906, Lecturer in English Literature, 1906-1913, and Hildred Carlile Professor of English Literature (and Head of Department), 1913-1929. She was made Emeritus Professor of English Literature in 1929. In 1911 she was awarded a doctorate of the University of Paris for her thesis 'Chaucer devant la critique', and in 1929 she was made D. Litt. of the University of London for her '500 years of Chaucer criticism and allusion'. She was awarded a Research Fellowship by the Federation of University Women, 1912, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1916. She was a member of the British Educational Mission to America in 1918, on which she met Virginia Gildersleeve, Dean of Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, USA, with whom she lived during the summer vacations, either in England or in the USA, for the rest of her life. She was Visiting Professor at Columbia University, 1920-1921, first President of the International Federation of University Women, 1920-1924, and member of the Departmental Committee to inquire into the position of English in the Educational System of England, 1929-1931. She settled in 1936 in Tucson, Arizona, USA, in the hope of relieving her arthritis, and she died there on 24 October 1942.

Publications include: 'The works of Dr. Samuel Johnson' (H.K.Lewis, London, 1898); 'Richard Brathwait's comments in 1665, upon Chaucer's Tales of the Miller and the Wife of Bath' (ed.) (London, 1901); edition of 'The Castle of Otranto' by Horace Walpole (Chatto & Windus, 1907); 'Chaucer devant la critique en Angleterre et en France depuis son temps jusqu'à nos jours' (Paris, 1911); 'William Law and the mystics' in the Cambridge History of English Literature (1912); 'Mysticism in English literature' (Cambridge University Press, 1913); 'The privilege of living in war-time: an inaugural address to King's College for Women' (University of London Press, London, 1914); 'Five hundred years of Chaucer criticism and allusion, 1357-1900' (Chaucer Society, 1914-1922, Cambridge University Press, 1925); 'The training of the combatant: an address delivered for the Fight for Right movement' (Dent and Sons, London, 1916); 'Poetry in the light of war' (English Association, London, 1917); 'The refashioning of English education: a lesson of the Great War' (Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1922); Essay on Jane Austen in 'Essays by Divers Hands' (Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature) Vol VII (Humphrey Milford, London, 1928); 'Essays and studies by Members of the English Association' (ed.) (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1928); 'Keats's Shakespeare: a descriptive study based on new material' (Humphrey Milford, London, 1928); 'Imagery in the Sir Thomas More fragment' (Review of English Studies, Vol VI, No 23, July 1930); 'Leading motives in the imagery of Shakespeare's tragedies' (London, 1930); 'Shakespeare's iterative imagery, i, as undersong, ii, as touchstone, in his work' (London, [1931]); 'Shakespeare's imagery and what it tells us' (Cambridge University Press, 1935)

From the guide to the Papers of Professor Caroline Spurgeon, 1890-1936, (Royal Holloway, University of London)