About: Geoffrey Tillotson

Geoffrey Tillotson, FBA (30 June 1905 – 15 October 1969) was an English literary scholar and academic. He was Professor of English Literature at Birkbeck College, London, from 1944 to 1969. The son of a millworker, he attended Keighley Grammar School before reading English at Balliol College, Oxford, on a county scholarship (graduating with a BA in 1927 and the BLitt in 1930), after which worked briefly as a teacher before lecturing at University College London from 1931 to 1944. He was principally interested in the works of Alexander Pope and in 18th- and 19th-century literature and poetry (especially Victorian literature). Some of the work was carried out with his wife, the literary scholar Kathleen. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1967.