Dates

• Existence: 1889 - 1965

Biography

The writer and translator Helen Jane Waddell was born in Tokyo in 1889 of Scots Irish parents, and was educated at Victoria College and Queen's University, Belfast (BA 1911, MA 1912). She remained in Ulster the death of her step-mother in 1920, publishing 'Lyrics from the Chinese' (1913), a play, 'The Spoiled Buddha' (performed 1915, published 1919), and articles, reviews and Bible stories. She registered for a research degree at Somerville College, Oxford, in 1920, where she studied medieval humanism and Latin lyrics and lectured on medieval mime. She taught at Bedford College, London, from 1922 to 1923, studied in Paris in 1923-4 on a scholarship from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and lectured on 'The Wandering Scholars' at Lady Margaret Hall in 1926 (published 1927). She worked as an editor at the publishing firm of Constable & Co., and produced translations and editions including 'Medieval Latin Lyrics' (1929), 'A Book of Medieval Latin for Schools' (1931), 'Beasts and Saints' (1934) and 'The Desert Fathers' (1936). Her novel 'Peter Abelard' appeared in 1933, and was frequently reprinted and widely translated. She received honorary degrees from the universities of Durham, Belfast, Columbia and St Andrews, and delivered the W. P. Ker lecture at the University of Glasgow, published as 'Poetry in the Dark Ages' (1948). Her later translations were published posthumously as 'More Latin Lyrics from Virgil to Milton' (1976), edited by Dame Felicitas Corrigan. From the 1940s Waddell began to suffer amnesia, which developed from the early 1950s into mental paralysis. She died in London in 1965, and was buried at Magherally, County Down.

Found in 3 Collections and/or Records: