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Worldwide Doyle 2025 - Dr Jonathan Cranfield

Conan Doyle: Marriage and Divorce

0	ONLINE: Zoom - online event
P	Wednesday 25th June, 2025
N	7:00pm

Event information

This talk will examine Arthur Conan Doyle’s role in the movement for divorce reform in the early twentieth century. Doyle was perhaps an unlikely champion for divorce reform which had historically been the preserve of radical thinkers from the feminist and atheist margins. Yet the unpopular divorce reforms of the 1890s helped to assemble a diverse coalition to argue for a complete reformulation and destigmatization of marriage dissolution. Debates on this topic in Britain help to reveal Conan Doyle’s key role in the fraught transition away from deep-seated Victorian attitudes on the subject. The issue formed a crucial part of his developing views on a number of issues including home rule for Ireland, free trade and female suffrage.