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Alice Louisa Theodora Zimmern (22 September 1855 – 22 March 1939) was an English writer, translator and suffragist. Her books made a significant contribution to debate on the education and rights of women.
Early years and education
Zimmern was born at Postern Street,
Nottingham
Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robi ...
, the youngest of three daughters of the lace merchant Hermann Theodore Zimmern, a German Jewish immigrant, and his wife Antonia Marie Therese Regina Zimmern, ''née'' Leo, sister of Carl Leo, a syndic of Hamburg.
[ DNB entry: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38621 Retrieved 25 March 2011. Subscription required./ref> Alice collaborated with her elder sister ]Helen Zimmern
Helen Zimmern (25 March 1846 – 11 January 1934) was a naturalised British writer and translator born in Germany. She was instrumental in making European culture more accessible in English.
Biography
Zimmern and her parents emigrated in 1850 t ...
on two volumes of translated excerpts from European novels (1880 and 1884). The scholar and political scientist Alfred Eckhard Zimmern
Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern (26 January 1879–24 November 1957) was an English classical scholar, historian, and political scientist writing on international relations. A British policymaker during World War I and a prominent liberal thinker, Z ...
was a cousin of hers.
Alice Zimmern was educated at a private school and at Bedford College, London, before entering Girton College, Cambridge
Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college in Cambridge. In 1948, it was granted full college statu ...
in 1881 to read Classics. She and Janet Case organized a society for classical drama that performed a 1883 college production of ''Elektra'', "breaking down", as Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
noted, "the tradition that only men acted in the Greek play." Zimmern left Girton in 1885 with honours in both parts of the Cambridge classical tripos. In 1888–1894, she taught Classics at English girls' schools, including Tunbridge Wells High School
The Skinners' Kent Academy (formerly Sandown Court then later renamed to Tunbridge Wells High School) is a secondary school with academy status in Royal Tunbridge Wells. The academy is rated outstanding by Ofsted.
Tunbridge Wells High School ...
(1888–1891).
Career
While teaching, Zimmern produced a school edition of the ''Meditations
''Meditations'' () is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from AD 161 to 180, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy.
Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the ''Meditations'' in Koine ...
'' of Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Latin: áːɾkus̠ auɾέːli.us̠ antɔ́ːni.us̠ English: ; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good ...
in 1887, a translation of Hugo Bluemner's ''The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks'' (1893), and a translation of '' Porphyry: The Philosopher to his Wife Marcella'' (1896). She later wrote children's books on ancient Greece (''Greek History for Young Readers'', 1895, ''Old Tales from Greece'', 1897) and Rome (''Old Tales from Rome'', 1906), all of which were reprinted several times. ''Greek History for Young Readers'' was still being praised in the ''Parents' Review'' six years later.
In 1893, she and four other women were awarded Gilchrist scholarships to study the US education system. They were: Miss A. Bramwell, B.Sc., Lecturer at the Cambridge Training College; Miss S. A. Burstall, B.A., Mistress at the North London Collegiate School for Girls; Miss H. M. Hughes, Lecturer on Education at University College, Cardiff; Miss Mary Hannah Page, Head Mistress of the Skinners Company's School for Girls, Stamford Hill. Each woman received £100 to pursue their studies in the US for two months.
This resulted in her book ''Methods of Education in America'' (1894), in which she praised the articulacy of American school students and their enthusiasm for classic English literature, but noted that their written work and their textbooks were of a poor standard and the teaching of American history ludicrously patriotic.
Zimmern ceased to teach in schools in 1894, but continued to tutor private students in Classics. She regularly wrote journal articles on comparative education and the education of women. Her book ''Women's Suffrage in Many Lands'' (1909) appeared to coincide with the Fourth Congress of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance
The International Alliance of Women (IAW; french: Alliance Internationale des Femmes, AIF) is an international non-governmental organization that works to promote women's rights and gender equality. It was historically the main international org ...
. This book and ''The Renaissance of Girls' Education'' (1898) made big contributions to the debate on the education and rights of women in Zimmern's time. In the former she noted an "intimate... connexion between enfranchisement and the just treatment of women." While most of her arguments are moderate and pragmatic, she acknowledges the militant tactics of British suffragettes as effective in making women's suffrage "the question of the day".
Much of Zimmern's research was done in the British Museum Reading Room
The British Museum Reading Room, situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, used to be the main reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras, London, ...
, where she associated with suffragists and Fabians such as Edith Bland, Eleanor Marx
Jenny Julia Eleanor Marx (16 January 1855 – 31 March 1898), sometimes called Eleanor Aveling and known to her family as Tussy, was the English-born youngest daughter of Karl Marx. She was herself a socialist activist who sometimes worked as a ...
, and Beatrice Potter
Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, (née Potter; 22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943) was an English sociologist, economist, socialist, labour historian and social reformer. It was Webb who coined the term ''collective bargaining''. She ...
. Other works by Zimmern include ''Demand and Achievement. The International Women's Suffrage Movement'' (1912), a translation of Paul Kajus von Hoesbroech's ''Fourteen Years a Jesuit'' (1911), and ''Gods and Heroes of the North'' (1907).
Resident in Hampstead in her later years, Zimmern was limited in her capacity to travel in the last decades of her life, although she remained interested in the rights of women and in pacifism, and continued to entertain many visitors from abroad. Her last work was a translation of ''The Origins of the War'' (1917) by Take Ionescu
Take or Tache Ionescu (; born Dumitru Ghiță Ioan and also known as Demetriu G. Ionnescu; – 21 June 1922) was a Romanian centrist politician, journalist, lawyer and diplomat, who also enjoyed reputation as a short story author. Starting his ...
. She was unmarried and died at her home, 45 Clevedon Mansions, Highgate Road, London, on 22 March 1939. She was buried on 25 March at Kentish Town parish church. She left £150 to Girton College to establish the Alice Zimmern Memorial Prize in Classics.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zimmern, Alice
1855 births
1939 deaths
19th-century British women writers
19th-century British writers
20th-century British women writers
20th-century translators
Translators to English
English Jews
English people of German-Jewish descent
English suffragists
British women activists
Jewish suffragists
People from Nottingham
Alumni of Bedford College, London
Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge
19th-century translators