![Florence Stawell](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Florence_Stawell.jpg)
Florence Melian Stawell (2 May 1869 – 9 June 1936) was a classical scholar.
Career
Florence Melian Stawell, youngest daughter of Sir
William Foster Stawell
Sir William Foster Stawell KCMG (27 June 181512 March 1889) was a British colonial statesman and a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia. Stawell was the first Attorney-General of Victoria, serving from 1851 to 1856 as an app ...
, was born at
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
on 2 May 1869. She was named for the Melians, ancient Greek idealists from Melos of whom Thucydides had written, and was known as Melian. (Melian was a given name in the family since Melian Allin married Jonas Stawell at Cork in 1734. The name had descended through the female line of the Allin, Twogood and Deane families from Melian Wallis who married Matthew Deane of Bristol in 1647.)
![Newspaper photograph and Cambridge Classical Tripos results of Florence Stawell in 1892](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Newspaper_photograph_and_Cambridge_Classical_Tripos_results_of_Florence_Stawell_in_1892.jpg)
She spent two years at
Trinity College Trinity College may refer to:
Australia
* Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales
* Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...
, the
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...
, where she was greatly influenced by the Warden, Dr Alexander Leeper. She then went to
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and entered
Newnham College, Cambridge
Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicen ...
, in the May term of 1889. She was placed in class 1, division 1 in the classical tripos of 1892 but did not take part II of the tripos. In 1894-5, Miss Stawell was a classical don at Newnham but had to resign on account of ill health and henceforth lived chiefly at
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
with occasional visits to her relations in Australia.
In 1909, she published ''Homer and the Iliad: an Essay to determine the Scope and Character of the Original Poem'', a scholarly contribution to the literature of the subject. In 1911, she offered an
interpretation of the Phaistos Disc as
Homeric Greek
Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the ''Iliad'', ''Odyssey'', and Homeric Hymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of Ionic, with some Aeolic forms, a few from Arcadocypriot, and ...
, syllabic writing.
In 1918, she prepared ''The Price of Freedom, an Anthology for all Nations'', and, five years later in collaboration with
Francis Sydney Marvin
Francis may refer to:
People
*Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State and Bishop of Rome
*Francis (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters
*Francis (surname)
Places
*Rural Mu ...
, brought out ''The Making of the Western Mind''. She was associated with
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (6 August 1862 – 3 August 1932), known as Goldie, was a British political scientist and philosopher. He lived most of his life at Cambridge, where he wrote a dissertation on Neoplatonism before becoming a fellow. H ...
in the production of ''Goethe and Faust; an Interpretation'', which appeared in 1928. Miss Stawell's next book was a translation in English verse of the ''
Iphigeneia at Aulis
''Iphigenia in Aulis'' or ''Iphigenia at Aulis'' ( grc, Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Αὐλίδι, Īphigéneia en Aulídi; variously translated, including the Latin ''Iphigenia in Aulide'') is the last of the extant works by the playwright Euripide ...
'' of
Euripides
Euripides (; grc, Εὐριπίδης, Eurīpídēs, ; ) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars a ...
, which was published in 1929, and an excellent little book in the home university library on ''The Growth of International Thought'' belongs to the same year.
She had been doing much work on the
Minoan
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450B ...
script and in 1931 published ''A Clue to the Cretan Scripts''. ''The Practical Wisdom of Goethe: an Anthology'', which appeared in 1933, was partly translated by her. She died at
Oxford
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 ...
on 9 June 1936.
Stawell was a member of the
Society for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to co ...
.
[Woolf, Virginia; Bell, Anne Olivier. ''The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1915-1919''. Hogarth Press. p. 190]
References
*
External links
*K. J. McKay,
Stawell, Florence Melian (1869 - 1936),
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 12,
Melbourne University Pressю, 1990, pp 55-56.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stawell, Florence
1869 births
1936 deaths
Australian academics
Hellenists
People educated at Trinity College (University of Melbourne)
Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge
Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge
Parapsychologists
19th-century Australian women writers
20th-century Australian women writers