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Elsie Duncan-Jones

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British literary scholar, translator and playwright

Elsie Duncan-Jones
BornElsie Elizabeth Phare
2 July 1908
Devon, England
Died7 April 2003(2003-04-07) (aged 94)
Other namesE. E. Phare
OccupationLiterary scholar
SpouseAustin Duncan-Jones
ChildrenRichard Duncan-Jones
Katherine Duncan-Jones

Elsie Elizabeth Duncan-Jones (née Phare; 2 July 1908 – 7 April 2003) was a British literary scholar, translator, and playwright, and authority on the poet Andrew Marvell.

Early life and education

Elsie Elizabeth Phare was born in Chelston, Devon, in 1908, the daughter of Henry Phare and Hilda Annie Bull Phare. Her father was a stationer and radio engineer. She received a scholarship to attend Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied with literary scholar I.A. Richards, and was president of the college's undergraduate literary society. In 1929, she won the college's Chancellor's Medal for English verse.

Career

In 1931, Phare became assistant lecturer in English at the University of Southampton. While there, she wrote a play, Fidelia's Ghost, and published her first book of literary criticism, on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. She had to resign her post when she married a fellow faculty member in 1933.

Duncan-Jones moved with her husband when he became a professor at the University of Birmingham in 1936. Despite nepotism rules, she was allowed a lectureship there during World War II. In 1935 and 1938, she won the Seatonian Prize. She became known for her expertise on the poet Andrew Marvell. In 1975 she gave the annual Warton Lecture on English Poetry at the British Academy. She retired from teaching in 1976, and lived in Cambridge.

In 1937 Duncan-Jones's "heroic and workmanlike" translation of Molière's The Misanthrope was produced in London, starring Lydia Lopokova and Francis James.

Personal life

Elsie Phare married the philosopher Austin Duncan-Jones in 1933. They had three children, including a son who died young; their other children were the historian of the ancient world Richard Duncan-Jones, and the Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones.

Elsie Duncan-Jones was widowed in 1967, and she died in Cambridge in 2003, aged 94 years. British food writer Bee Wilson and classicist Emily Wilson are her granddaughters.

Selected works

  • The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins; a survey and commentary (1933)
  • 'Ash Wednesday', in Balachandra Rajan, ed., T.S. Eliot, a study of his writings by several hands (1947)
  • 'Benlowes's Borrowings from George Herbert' The Review of English Studies (1955)
  • 'Benlowes, Marvell, and the Divine Casimire: A Note' Huntington Review Quarterly (1957)
  • The poems and letters of Andrew Marvell (1971)
  • A great master of words : some aspects of Marvell's poems of praise and blame (1975), her Warton Lecture at the British Academy, published the following year in Proceedings of the British Academy

References

  1. "Elsie Duncan-Jones". The Telegraph. 20 April 2003. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  2. ^ Kelliher, W. H. (2007). "Jones, Elsie Elizabeth Duncan- [née Elsie Elizabeth Phare] (1908–2003), literary scholar". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/89894. Retrieved 13 March 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. ^ "Literary scholar knew her Hopkins". Times Colonist. 22 April 2003. p. 31. Retrieved 13 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ Phare, Elsie Elizabeth (26 May 2016). The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-316-61197-5.
  5. "Appointments at Cambridge". The Guardian. 23 October 1935. p. 12. Retrieved 13 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. "Cambridge, October 24". The Guardian. 25 October 1938. p. 12. Retrieved 13 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. Dzelzainis, Martin; Holberton, Edward (28 March 2019). The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell. Oxford University Press. pp. 167, 322. ISBN 978-0-19-105599-7.
  8. "Warton Lectures on English Poetry". The British Academy. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  9. H, H. (14 February 1937). "Arts: Cambridge". The Observer. p. 15. Retrieved 13 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. "THE MISANTHROPE' OPENS; London Premiere Is Translation by Elsie Duncan-Jones". The New York Times. 24 February 1937. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  11. "Elsie Duncan-Jones". The Independent. 24 April 2003. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  12. "Elsie Duncan Jones". The Times. 25 April 2003. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  13. Clapp, Susannah (21 September 2019). "The LRB is 40. We never thought it would last this long". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  14. Duncan-Jones, Elsie (1955). "Benlowes's Borrowings from George Herbert". The Review of English Studies. 6 (22): 179–180. doi:10.1093/res/VI.21.179. ISSN 0034-6551. JSTOR 510553.
  15. Duncan-Jones, Elsie (1957). "Benlowes, Marvell, and the Divine Casimire: A Note". Huntington Library Quarterly. 20 (2): 183–184. doi:10.2307/3816370. ISSN 0018-7895. JSTOR 3816370.
  16. "The poems and letters of Andrew Marvell / Andrew Marvell Vol I, Poems". Hull History Centre Catalogue. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  17. Duncan-Jones, Elsie (15 October 1975). "Marvell: A Great Master of Words" Warton Lecture on English Poetry.

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