Christina Colvin, Lady Colvin (''née'' Butler; 20 January 1919,

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the Un ...

– 7 August 2003, Oxford) was a British literary scholar and historian of Oxfordshire. She won the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...

Rose Mary Crawshay Prize The Rose Mary Crawshay Prize is a literary prize for female scholars, inaugurated in 1888 by the British Academy. Description The prize, set up in 1888, is said by the British Academy to be the only UK literary prize specifically for female sch ...

in 1973.

Life

Christina Edgeworth Butler was born in 1919 in Oxford, into a family of academic pedigree. Her father, H. E. Butler, was a Latinist; her aunts Ruth and Violet were fellows of

St Anne's College, Oxford St Anne's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It was founded in 1879 and gained full college status in 1959. Originally a women's college, it has admitted men since 1979. It has some 450 undergraduate and ...

; and both her grandfathers were Oxford dons. She attended

St Paul's Girls School St Paul's Girls' School is an independent day school for girls, aged 11 to 18, located in Brook Green, Hammersmith, in West London, England. History St Paul's Girls' School was founded by the Worshipful Company of Mercers in 1904, using part o ...

and

University College, London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. She married

Howard Colvin Sir Howard Montagu Colvin (15 October 1919 – 27 December 2007) was a British architectural historian who produced two of the most outstanding works of scholarship in his field: ''A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840 ...

, an architectural historian, in 1943, and moved to Oxford when he took up a faculty position at St John's College. From 1953, Colvin worked on several volumes of the Oxfordshire issues of the

Victoria County History The Victoria History of the Counties of England, commonly known as the Victoria County History or the VCH, is an English history project which began in 1899 with the aim of creating an encyclopaedic history of each of the historic counties of En ...

. She contributed to the topics of

poor relief In English and British history, poor relief refers to government and ecclesiastical action to relieve poverty. Over the centuries, various authorities have needed to decide whose poverty deserves relief and also who should bear the cost of h ...

and religious nonconformity in volume 14, on the

Bampton Hundred The hundred of Bampton was the name of one of thirty two ancient administrative units of Devon, England. The parishes in the hundred were: Bampton; Burlescombe; (part) Clayhanger; Hockworthy; Holcombe Rogus; Morebath and Uffculme Uffculme ...

. She was a co-author of volumes 10–13. Colvin also edited two volumes of the letters of

Maria Edgeworth Maria Edgeworth (1 January 1768 – 22 May 1849) was a prolific Anglo-Irish novelist of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the ...

, who was her great-great-aunt. The papers, on loan from Dublin, were at the

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the sec ...

, Oxford, and she worked with her sister-in-law

Marilyn Butler Marilyn Speers Butler, Lady Butler, FRSA, FRSL, FBA (''née'' Evans; 11 February 1937 – 11 March 2014) was a British literary critic. She was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge from 1986 to 1993 ...

in preparing them for publication. She won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 1973 for ''Maria Edgeworth: Letters from England, 1813–1844'', while Butler won for ''Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography''. Edgeworth's descendants were known to have destroyed or amended several documents of Edgeworth's, but Colvin was able to restore them from later manuscripts.

Selected works

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Colvin, Christina Alumni of University College London People from Oxford 20th-century English historians Rose Mary Crawshay Prize winners 1919 births 2003 deaths Wives of knights