Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Jane Ellen Harrison
-
Standard Name: Harrison, Jane Ellen
Birth Name: Jane Ellen Harrison
Classics scholar JEH
devoted much of her career to radically unorthodox studies of the development of ritual and religion in early Greek culture. Her findings, issuing in both monographs and articles, were highly publicized and often controversial during her own time, but fell into neglect before receiving sharply increased attention from the late 1980s forward. As recent studies have demonstrated, it is difficult to overestimate the impact of Harrison's work on her specific scholarly field (Greek ritual, art, and myth), on women in academia, or on a range of creative writers. She also published a personal memoir.
Apart from this unusual communcation, HM
and Harrison
studied and published, travelled, and lived together for nearly two decades. Harrison was nursed by HM
through her last illness and after her death in 1928, Mirrlees...
Cultural formation
Hope Mirrlees
Jane Harrison
is the only intimate companion linked to HM
by current critics or historians. Mary Beard
notes that Mirrlees was talked about in ways that pointed to her homosexuality.
Beard, Mary. The Invention of Jane Harrison. Harvard University Press.
HM
returned to France in early 1915, when she and Jane Harrison
spent several months in Paris: they lived at the Hôtel de l'Élysée and studied Russian at the École des Langues Orientales
. (...
Travel
Hope Mirrlees
HM
returned from Paris to England in 1926, via Provence and Burgundy with Harrison
, who was by now in very bad health.
Literary responses
Hope Mirrlees
But it has generally been read with less attention to its abstract meaning, as a covert treatment of the possible lesbian relationship between the author and Jane Harrison
. Virginia Woolf
had read it by...
Literary responses
Hope Mirrlees
Julia Briggs
reads the text as a roman à clef in which Scudéry
is an unflattering portrait of Natalie Barney
(whom HM
would have encountered when herself living in Paris) while Harrison
appears as the...
Dedications
Hope Mirrlees
Virginia Woolf
had asked by letter in January 1923: Are you writing your book again? I very much want to read it.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
HM
worked all through her later years on a biography of Jane Harrison
. She never completed it, partly from indecision as to how much of Harrison's private life to reveal. The text is now...
politics
Marie Belloc Lowndes
The letter challenged a recent antisuffragist manifesto, and stressed three points from Prime Minister Asquith
's statement to suffragists of 14 August. The points were that women had rendered as effective service to their country...
Friends, Associates
Vernon Lee
Back in Italy after the end of the First World War, VL
continued to read widely. She returned to Dante
, Shakespeare
, and Goethe
. She introduced herself to newer writings on philosophy, science...
Education
Mary Agnes Hamilton
Women were permitted to attend lectures at Kiel only by express permission from each professor involved. Mary Agnes improved her German, learned a great deal about ancient Greece, and also saw productions of most of...
She later recorded that she occasionally saw the great Miss Harrison—who, however had no active connection with Newnham at this date, since she had graduated, and was not yet a Fellow. Constance reached the...
Textual Production
Sir James George Frazer
The Golden Bough, a comparative study of human beliefs from the earliest times, had a major influence on modernist writings. SJGF
's text outlines an evolving belief system, which moves from magic, to religion...
Family and Intimate relationships
Frances Cornford
She was the first among the young Darwin women to be married.
Raverat, Gwen. Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood. Faber and Faber.
282
She had been introduced to Francis Cornford the previous year by Jane Harrison
, who knew Frances well, had been an intimate...