Kathleen Mary Tillotson CBE, FBA, FRSL (3 April 1906 – 3 June 2001) was a British academic and literary critic, professor of English and distinguished Victorian scholar.
Her various works on Elizabethan literature have accumulated significance in the literary sphere, conducting important research and producing publications that feature her editorship.
She then studied for the B.Litt under the supervision of David Nichol Smith and George Gordon, her fellow students including future husband Geoffrey Tillotson, and John Butt.
Her notable works include Novels of the Nineteen-Forties, Mid-Victorian Studies, and editions of Jane Austen's letters to her sister, and Oliver Twist.
The Tillotsons undertook advisory work for publishers, for government departments and for academic institutions, and were members of numerous literary societies.
[2] During the Second World War, Bedford College was evacuated to Cambridge, where Kathleen would often cycle around town with her eldest son Edmund in the bicycle basket.
This loyalty continued strongly after her retirement in 1971, and it was a great sadness to her when in 1985 the college was amalgamated with Royal Holloway and the new institution became fully co-educational.
[1] Tillotson collaborated with J. W. Hebel and Bernard Newdigate on The works of Michael Drayton, which won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 1943.