Jean Robertson (also known as Jean Bromley; 27 September 1913 – 23 August 1990

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

) was a British scholar of

English Renaissance The English Renaissance was a Cultural movement, cultural and Art movement, artistic movement in England during the late 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginni ...

literature. She won the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies 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 sa ...

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 sc ...

in 1974.

Life

Jean Robertson was born in 1913 to Ainslie Robertson and Phyllis Mary Raeghton. She attended Howell's School, Denbigh and graduated from the

University of Liverpool The University of Liverpool (abbreviated UOL) is a Public university, public research university in Liverpool, England. Founded in 1881 as University College Liverpool, Victoria University (United Kingdom), Victoria University, it received Ro ...

. She was an assistant lecturer at Liverpool between 1937–1942 in the English department. In 1939, she married J. S. Bromley, a naval historian (1913–1985). By 1942, she was working for the

Board of Trade The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for Business and Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...

on war service. She was a research fellow at the

Huntington Library The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington and Arabella Huntington in San Marino, California, United State ...

in California, publishing articles, among others, on

Nicholas Breton Nicholas Breton (also Britton or Brittaine) (c. 1545/53 – c. 1625/6) was a poet and prose writer of the English Renaissance. Life Nicholas belonged to an old family settled at Layer Breton, Essex. His father, William Breton, a London merchant ...

. Robertson taught English literature at Liverpool till 1949. She was in Oxford, where her husband was a Fellow of

Keble College Keble College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum and the University Parks. The college is bordered to the north by Keble Road, to ...

, from 1949–1960. In 1964, she became a lecturer at the

University of Southampton The University of Southampton (abbreviated as ''Soton'' in post-nominal letters) is a public university, public research university in Southampton, England. Southampton is a founding member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universit ...

, and Reader in 1972. From the 1950s, she was an assistant editor of ''

The Review of English Studies ''The Review of English Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering English literature and language from the earliest period to the present and published by Oxford University Press. ''RES'' is a "leading scholarly journal of English lit ...

'' at Oxford, to which she contributed articles for several decades. She was also a secretary of the Oxford

Bibliographical Society Founded in 1892, The Bibliographical Society is the senior learned society in the UK dealing with the study of the book and its history. The Society promotes and encourages study and research in historical, analytical, descriptive and textual ...

. Jean Robertson died in 1990 in Birmingham.

Research

Robertson's treatise on medieval letter-writing manuals (''The Art of Letter Writing'', 1942) was well-received. She traced over two centuries of English letter writers, beginning with Latin formularies, and pointing out the social significance of the changes in epistolary models over the period. For instance, the popularity of Nicholas Breton's ''A Poste with a Packet of Madde Letters'' (1602), she showed, sparked a trend for pithy and entertaining guides to correspondence. However, other scholars criticised the work for not establishing clearly enough what the golden standard was for letters: a simple style (as espoused by

Sir Thomas Browne Sir Thomas Browne ( "brown"; 19 October 160519 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a d ...

Hannah Woolley Hannah Woolley, sometimes spelled Wolley (c.1622 – in or after 1675), was an English writer who published early books on household management; she was probably the first person to earn a living doing this. She variously worked as a servant, ...

) or affected (as evidenced in ''Cupids Messenger'' (1672)). Robertson produced the first reliable edition of

Philip Sidney Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554 – 17 October 1586) was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan era, Elizabethan age. His works include a sonnet sequence, ' ...

's ''Old Arcadia'' in 1973. There had been five manuscripts found in 1907 but only one of these, arbitrarily chosen by Albert Feuillerat, was printed in 1926, with no effort to establish concordance between the copies. By the time Robertson began her work, nine manuscripts were known, and she divided these into four groups, representing four revisions by Sidney, before his drastic rewrite into the ''New Arcadia''. Her introduction was called a model of completeness, and the commentary admirably analytic.

Honours

Robertson won the 1974 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for her edition of

's ''Old Arcadia''. In 1979, Robertson was awarded a

Doctor of Letters Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or '), also termed Doctor of Literature in some countries, is a terminal degree in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In the United States, at universities such as Drew University, the degree ...

''honoris causa'' degree by the University of Southampton. The International Sidney Society instituted the ''Jean Robertson Lifetime Achievement Award'' in her honour.

Selected works

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Robertson, Jean 1990 deaths 1913 births Rose Mary Crawshay Prize winners Alumni of the University of Liverpool Academics of the University of Southampton 20th-century British women English literary historians British academics of English literature