Rosemary Estelle Woolf (27 December 1925 – 13 April 1978) was an English scholar of medieval literature, known especially for her work on medieval English religious lyrics, ''The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages''.

Biography

Woolf was the daughter of British film executive

C. M. Woolf Charles Moss Woolf (10 July 187931 December 1942) was a British film distributor. Biography Woolf made a fortune by financing, distributing and exhibiting films after World War I, including some of Alfred Hitchcock's first films. In 1935 he res ...

. She was the first woman in her family to attend university, receiving a B. Litt. from

St Hugh's College, Oxford St Hugh's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. It is located on a site on St Margaret's Road, to the north of the city centre. It was founded in 1886 by Elizabeth Wordsworth as a women's college, and accepte ...

in 1949. She became a lecturer at the University College of Hull in 1948. She became a lecturer in English 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, Ir ...

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 ...

in 1961, teaching Old and Middle English literature and the history of the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

. She is commemorated in the Rosemary Woolf Fellowship at Somerville, which was established through a legacy from Lotte Labowsky (1905-1991).

Notes

References

* 1925 births 1978 deaths British women academics British academics of English literature Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford Alumni of St Hugh's College, Oxford Academics of the University of Hull {{UK-academic-bio-stub