Jennifer Speake, ''née'' Drake-Brockman (born 1944,

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

) is a Canadian-British freelance writer and editor of reference books.

Life

Jennifer Anne Speake was born in

in 1944. She was the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Guy Percy Lumsden Drake-Brockman and Vera Mary McLeod Harrison Topham, later of

Hilton, KwaZulu-Natal Hilton is a small town that lies between Howick and Pietemaritzburg in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In 1872 the Reverend William Orde Newnham opened Hilton College on a large estate 7.8km north of thtown which is now one of Sout ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. She has an MA and BPhil.

Career

Working at

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, Speake helped ''

OED The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

'' editor John Simpson bring out a second edition of his ''Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs'', and a third edition in 1998. She became sole editor for the fourth (2003) and subsequent editions. Speake's other work included a biography of Thomas Vaughan, a philosopher from Wales. Speake's three-volume 2003 encyclopedia of

travel literature The genre of travel literature or travelogue encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. History Early examples of travel literature include the '' Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' (generally considered a ...

received a 2004 Reference and User Services Association award. One reviewer called it "an amazing collection of those people, famous, not-so-famous, and infamous alike, who have traveled the world over, with long lists of additional books for the travel narrative lover". Another reviewer, while noting inconsistency in its coverage, praised it as providing "an unusually rich entrée into an immense field that crosses cultural, historical and discipinary boundaries."

Selected publications

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Personal life

In the 1970s she married Graham Speake, an English classicist and academic publisher.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Speake, Jennifer 1944 births Living people Oxford University Press people Canadian book editors Canadian emigrants to the United Kingdom People from KwaZulu-Natal 20th-century Canadian women writers Canadian women editors