The Denbo Center for Humanities & the Arts presents Conversations & Cocktails with UT Martin Dean Jeffrey Bibbee, “Chaucer for Children and the Art of Housekeeping: Mary Eliza Joy Haweis and Victorian Domesticity.” Mary Eliza Joy Haweis (1848-1898) was a 19th century Martha Stewart. Her Art of Housekeeping (1889) was a best seller, and Haweis brought Chaucer to a new late Victorian audience with her exalted Chaucer for Children series. Conventional wisdom assumes that this best-selling author’s Chaucer works, and her varied domestic books, were written and illustrated to provide needed income during her financially and emotionally turbulent marriage – she wrote of the perfect household that had eluded her during adulthood. This oversimplification ignores the antecedents found in her rather remarkable childhood. Explore the roots of this remarkable writer – a leader in the arts and crafts movement. Dr. Jeffrey R. Bibbee is an historian who focuses 19th and 20th century British studies with an emphasis on politics and religion. Bibbee completed his degrees in history at Auburn University (BA 1997, MA 1999) and King’s College London (PhD 2008). His doctoral thesis focused on the intersectionality of foreign policy and ecumenism before the start of the Great War. Jeffrey has held faculty appointments in history at the University of North Alabama and at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He currently serves as Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Bibbee is the Founding Director of the UNA Centre for British Studies and remains active with the North American Conference on British Studies. In 2018-19, Bibbee was named a research fellow at King’s College London and held a research fellowship with the Georgian Papers Programme – a project based at Windsor Castle. Prior to his work in higher education, Bibbee taught primary and secondary students for Decatur City Schools (AL) and at the Highlands School in Birmingham, Alabama. This virtual talk is part of the 2026-2027 Conversations & Cocktails series presented by the Denbo Center for Humanities & the Arts. Conversations & Cocktails is a free public lecture and discussion series that showcases the original research of our distinguished UT arts and humanities faculty. Join us as we feature groundbreaking work exploring a wide range of topics in the arts and in humanities fields such as philosophy, history, and literature studies.