In a recent New Yorker, Mary Norris writes about American Classicist: The Life and Loves of Edith Hamilton, a new biography of Edith Hamilton (Class of 1894, Greek and Latin).
"She went to Miss Porter’s School and Bryn Mawr College, the women’s school near Philadelphia that is famous for turning out classicists and classical archeologists, and had hoped to earn a Ph.D. and have an academic career," writes Norris.
While Hamilton didn't go on to earn a Ph.D., her writing and translation work was hugely influential, writes Norris.
"Thirty-seven years later, in 1926, tragedy was the subject of her first published essay in Theatre Arts Monthly. It attracted the attention of an editor at W. W. Norton, which published a collection of her essays under the title “The Greek Way” (1930). The book was such a success for Norton, a young firm at the time, that it was soon followed by “The Roman Way” (1932). Hamilton’s writing, unencumbered by scholarly apparatus, seems to rise spontaneously from deep knowledge and love of her subject. Her translations of “Prometheus Bound,” “Agamemnon,” and “The Trojan Women” were published by Norton under the title “Three Greek Plays” (1937). Hamilton’s “Mythology” (1942), conceived by an editor at Little, Brown to replace the venerable “Bulfinch’s Mythology” as a reference book for the general reader, has yet to be supplanted."
Read the full article on The New Yorker website.
Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies