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Mildred Katherine Pope (28 January 1872 – 16 September 1956) was an
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
scholar of
Anglo-Norman England England became inhabited more than 800,000 years ago, as the discovery of stone tools and footprints at Happisburgh in Norfolk have indicated.; "Earliest footprints outside Africa discovered in Norfolk" (2014). BBC News. Retrieved 7 February ...
. She became the first woman to hold a readership at
Oxford University 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 ...
, where she taught at
Somerville College Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...
.


Biography

Mildred Pope was educated at Edgbaston High School,
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
. She read French at
Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Iri ...
, and in 1893 was placed in the first-class of the Oxford University women's examination. Interested in
Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intell ...
philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...
, as an undergraduate "she had to rely mainly on tuition by correspondence from Paget Toynbee at
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...
".'Obituary: Prof. Mildred K. Pope', ''
The Manchester Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', 18 September 1956
She taught at
Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Iri ...
, first as a librarian, and from 1894 as a lecturer. She spent the 1894 summer vacation studying with Fritz Neumann at
Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German: ') is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, of which roughly a quarter consisted of students ...
. In that year she was one of the seven founding members of the Associated Prigs. This was the unofficial name of the discussion group that met on Sundays evenings. They never agreed a name or leader but the group would keep notes and the links established were valuable after they left Somerville. Other founder members included Eleanor Rathbone and Edith Marvin. In 1902-3 she spent a sabbatical year working in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
under
Gaston Paris Bruno Paulin Gaston Paris (; 9 August 1839 – 5 March 1903) was a French literary historian, philologist, and scholar specialized in Romance studies and medieval French literature. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901, ...
and Paul Meyer, gaining a doctoral degree from the
University of Paris The University of Paris (french: link=no, Université de Paris), Metonymy, metonymically known as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, active from 1150 to 1970, with the exception between 1793 and 1806 under the French Revo ...
in 1904, with a dissertation on Frère Angier. Given Oxford's policy on admitting women she was not granted a degree from Oxford until after
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fight ...
. She was appointed lecturer, then university reader (in 1928—the first woman at Oxford to achieve that position), and became vice-principal of Somerville in 1929. She left Oxford for Manchester in 1934 and was later honored with emeritate. At the
University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Unive ...
, she was appointed professor of French language and romance philology. In 1939, she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from a French university, in her case the
University of Bordeaux The University of Bordeaux (French: ''Université de Bordeaux'') is a public university based in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France. It has several campuses in the cities and towns of Bordeaux, Dax, Gradignan, Périgueux, Pessac, and ...
. After her death in 1956, ''
The Oxford Magazine ''The Oxford Magazine'' is a review magazine and newspaper published in Oxford, England.''The Oxford Magaz ...
'', in an obituary, called her one of Somerville's "oldest, most distinguished and well-loved members."


Legacy

Pope taught a number of notable medievalists including Eugène Vinaver, Dominica Legge and
Dorothy Sayers Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between th ...
; the character Miss Lydgate in Sayers' '' Gaudy Night'' (1935) is based on Pope. One of her most enduring achievements was the foundation in 1937 of the Anglo-Norman Text Society, a learned society dedicated to the promotion of the study of Anglo-Norman language and literature which is still operating today. In the Society's Annual Texts series, she contributed to critical editions of ''La Seinte Resureccion'' and the ''Romance of Horn''. Her most important publication was ''From Latin to Modern French, with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman'' (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1934; revised reprints 1952 and 1956), which over seventy years after its original publication has been described as 'classic and still indispensable'.


Works

* ''Life of the Black Prince'', By Chandos Herald. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.Chandos Herald, a. 1350-1380., Lodge, E. C., Pope, M. K. (Mildred Katharine). (1910)
Life of the Black Prince
Oxford: Clarendon press.
Editor, with Eleanor C. Lodge. * ''From Latin to modern French, with especial consideration of Anglo-Norman; phonology and morphology'', 1934 * (ed. with T. Atkinson Jenkins, J. M. Manly and Jean G. Wright) ''La seinte resureccion from the Paris and Canterbury mss'',Oxford, Pub. for the Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1943 * ''The Anglo-Norman element in our vocabulary: its significance for our civilization'', Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1944 * (ed.) ''The romance of Horn'', 2 vols., Oxford: Pub. for the Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1955-64.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pope, Mildred 1872 births 1956 deaths British medievalists Women medievalists First women admitted to degrees at Oxford Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford University of Paris alumni British women historians